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The Original Broadway Cast Recording of "American Idiot"
UPCOMING DATES
September 10 -- Billie Joe performing on anti-cancer telethon
September 13 -- Green Day perform at New York Jets halftime show.
September 19 -- Billie Joe and Michael Mayer interviewed in NYC. Tickets: HERE.
October 8 -- Green Day begin South American Tour.
08-11 - MTV
What's It Like To Sing With Green Day At Lollapalooza? Dan Michie Knows
'The entire time, I wasn't even thinking,' super-fan tells MTV News of performing 'Longview' with the band.
It's been a fixture at recent Green Day shows for the band to pick a hyperventilating fan out of the crowd and have them sing "Longview," but rarely — if ever — do they perform the song as mightily as 17-year-old Dan Michie, who wowed fans with his rendition (and boundless enthusiasm) during the band's Saturday night set at Lollapalooza.
In fact, Michie ruled the stage to such an extent that MTV News tracked him down and asked him all about his moment in the spotlight. And, not surprisingly, he doesn't remember a whole lot of it.
"To be honest, the entire time, I wasn't even thinking. It just happened," he laughed. "When Billie [Joe Armstrong] picked me, everyone was screaming so loudly that I didn't know what he was saying. I knew he was pointing to someone around me, and before I knew it, security was yanking me over the barrier. One guard carried me like a baby and pushed me towards the stage, and then, since it was the first time I'd used my legs in like eight hours, I almost tripped and fell on my face."
Luckily, he didn't. He slowly got to the stage and saw Armstrong (and tens of thousands of fans) staring directly at him. And then, things went completely blank.
"There are no words to describe it. If you've ever seen 80,000 people before, that's one thing, but seeing them look back at you, that's something that doesn't even seem real," Michie said. "And then, when I was walking towards [Armstrong] to give him a hug, I was just thinking, 'Oh my God.' You see him in pictures every day, but it's a completely different thing to see him in real life."
And then, after giving Armstrong a quick kiss — "It was kind of wet," Michie joked — Green Day kicked into the song, and Michie just sort of took off. He rocketed back and forth across the stage, belting out the lyrics perfectly, while the crowd cheered and the band tried very hard not to crack up. And, as is par for the course, he doesn't really remember much of this either.
"It just happened. I didn't have to think of the words; they just came out," he said. "And I had seen videos of other fans singing [the song], and they just stood there, so I knew I wanted to run around and go crazy. But I don't really remember doing it." After his performance — and subsequent ovation — Armstrong gave Michie a guitar, which was certainly amazing but sort of presented him with a whole new challenge: How the heck was he going to get home? He had originally planned on taking the train, but Green Day's tour manager wouldn't allow it, so, for a moment, he appeared to be stuck in Grant Park. Thankfully, the band arranged for a driver to take Michie back to his house in the suburbs of Chicago, where he — and the guitar — now safely rest. And though he plays in a band (they're called Patmos), he has no plans of ever using the guitar onstage.
"It's going in a frame," he said.
In the days since his performance, Michie has become a bit of a star. Footage from Lollapalooza has made the rounds on YouTube, and complete strangers are leaving him congratulatory messages on his Facebook page. For a kid who's a Green Day obsessive, it's pretty much the greatest thing that ever could've happened. And it's made even sweeter by the fact that he had come so close to joining the band before, only to have his hopes dashed at the last second.
"When I saw Green Day at the United Center last summer, Billie was looking for people to pull up and play 'Jesus of Suburbia' on guitar," he said. "I had a sign, and after he had pulled up a kid and kicked him off right away, he talked to me for a solid 13 seconds about playing the song. He then proceeded to pick a kid who was about three people away from me. I know what it's like to be disappointed like that, but believe me, if you try really hard and be nice to people, your dreams will come true."
[Full article at MTV]
08-11 - AMERICAN IDIOT AT BRYANT PARK
American Idiot, La Cage aux Folles, A Little Night Music, Fela!, Memphis, Million Dollar Quartet, The Addams Family and Promises, Promises are among the new Broadway shows that will perform at the popular outdoor concert series Broadway in Bryant Park. Other long-running musicals such as Next to Normal, Wicked, South Pacific and In The Heights will also appear at the midtown Manhattan park, as well as the off-Broadway shows Stomp and Nunsense. The weekly concert series will take place every Thursday at noon beginning July 8 and will conclude on August 12. The concerts are free and seats are based on a first come first served basis.
August 12:
American Idiot
[Full article at Broadway.com]
08-10 - A GREAT NIGHT WITH GREEN DAY
You realize how long Green Day has been around (and how many hits they’ve scored) when you ogle their audience Monday night at the Verizon-Wireless-Amphitheatre-at-Encore-Park in Alpharetta.and see hundreds of Moms and Dads in their 30s, 40s and 50s bringing their children — and even grandchildren — to see the venerable punk rock band.
Is Green Day punk? How can a punk band sell 15 million copies of its major label debut? What punk band writes an opera that gets produced on Broadway?
And if Green Day is punk, what were all these little kids doing out on a school night, shoving their fists in the air while Mom and Dad smiled on? Shouldn’t they be cheering Justin Bieber over in Gwinnett?
Maybe not. It’s all rock and roll, very catchy, inflammatory rock and roll, that can seem like a Molotov cocktail one minute and a high school graduation ceremony the next.
The contrast between the wholesome audience (more Izods and haircuts than tattoos and piercings) and the heretical lyrics reached a peak moment, right after “East Jesus Nowhere,” when leader Billie Joe Armstrong staged a burlesque faith healing with a chubby cheeked pre-schooler that he brought up from the audience. The boy, named Zane, endured the event with a face as still as an Aztec frieze. “Zane,” said Armstrong. “You’re insane.”
The crowd, somewhere slightly shy of a 12,000 sellout, ate it up. They were promised the best show of their lives, and they looked like they were getting it. (Actually, Armstrong promised them the best blanking show of their lives, using a modifier that would be his favorite through the evening. He never stopped exhorting the audience — “Get those hands up in the air!” — and he eventually got them to break a sweat.
Did the F-bombs bother Dad and Mom? Not so’s you would notice.
“They’ve been to summer camp,” said Susan Polay, by way of explanation – meaning that her son Samuel, and his friend Dylan, both 12, have heard those words before.
“Eve has already passed the apple,” said father Robert Polay.
Samuel was just weeks before his bar mitzvah, but Green Day in Alpharetta was his first big rock show, and perhaps, said his mother, a rite of passage almost as significant as the upcoming religious ceremony. “Tonight he is a man.”
Despite the coarse language there was plenty of show business shtick to keep the whole family happy. After an opening set by AFI, Green Day came on shortly after 8 p.m., bringing the audience at the outdoor venue to its feet. Armstrong invited audience members onstage to sing, cooled off the first 10 rows with spray from two powerful hoses, and then entered a middle section that was sort of a rock and roll medley from hell.
After “When I Come Around,” he strung together bits of “Iron Man,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” and that Rock Band video game staple, “Eye of the Tiger.”
(Green Day now has its own edition of the Rock Band game.)
After “Insomnia,” Armstrong shelled the audience with a T-shirt bazooka, sprayed them with a toilet paper gun, and then, improbably, turned a chunk of the evening over to that frat-party standard, “Shout.”
Drummer Tre’ Cool came forward, sang and did some high-kicking, the band worked its way down onto the floor, and played another medley while supine, incorporating “Stand By Me,” “Satisfaction,” “Hey Jude,” and (with side-man Jason Freese on saxophone) even a little “Yakety Sax.”)
The core Green Day – Armstrong on vocals and guitar, Cool on drums and Mike Dirnt on bass – are supplemented on this tour by Freese on keyboards, and Jason White and Jeff Matika on guitars.
But the force of nature in the band is Armstrong, who never stops and whose bullet-proof voice only begins to show wear and tear into the third hour of the show, when he took up an acoustic guitar to play the show closer, a solo version of “Good Riddance (The Time of Your Life)”
“They’re keeping punk alive,” said Nora Caudle, who came up from Scottsboro, Ala., with her daughter and her great-nephew to see the band.
“They rock.”
[Full review at Access Atlanta]
08-10 - TWITTER
Show was crazy in atlanta!! It was hot as fuck.. Literally!! Highlight- the banana dude!
Join the Green Day Twitter: HERE.
08-09 - TWITTER
Tre stuck in elevator for an hour at 4 seasons in chicago!!!
More messages from Billie Joe at the Official Green Day Twitter: HERE.
08-08 - MTV
Green Day have come an awful long way since their humble beginnings as a regular act in small clubs in the late '80s. Through a gradual increase in the band's popularity and progressive improvements in their live chops, they have evolved into a slick, well-oiled rock and roll machine. They brought their big-time, stadium-sized sensibilities to the final slot of Lollapalooza's Saturday night (August 7) and delivered an incredible set of tracks that have evolved into classics.
Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong is especially impressive, as he careens from one end of the stage to the other rallying the crowd, inspiring them to clap along and leading singalongs through the extended bridges. All the while, he manages to hold down his guitar and vocal parts, which are sharp as ever (especially on the complex, often dark tracks from the group's most recent album 21st Century Breakdown). Though you may never have guessed it had you seen the group in their infancy, Green Day are a massive rock and roll machine, and Armstrong is the died-in-the-wool star leading the attack.
[Full review at MTV]
08-08 - GREEN DAY BRING THE POWER AT LOLLAPALOOZA
Green Day, of course, pummeled, powered, and pulled out all the stops during their two-plus hour set, reaching deep into their expansive back catalog and using every crowd-pleasing trick in the rock-band hat. And then they invented a few more stunts just for the sake of it. Seriously, if it weren't for the city of Chicago's noise ordinances, they'd probably still be at it.
Bottle-blonde Billie Joe Armstrong bounded back and forth across the stage, led the crowd in countless sing-a-longs, pranced, danced, collapsed, rose again, and at one point, played a solo with his guitar behind his head. While standing on one leg. He pulled kids young and old from the crowd--letting them sing choruses (on "East Jesus Nowhere") or entire songs ("Longview," which was belted out by a kid who totally, completely killed it), assisting them in stage dives, or fire off water cannons. He shouted "Chicago!" more times than the entire Daley clan combined. He donned a feather boa. He mooned the crowd. He fired off T-shirt cannons and toilet paper guns. And at no point did he appear to even be the slightest bit tired.
"They said they're gonna pull the plug on us at 10 ... I told them to kiss my f--king ass, we'll play for as long as we want," he shouted at one point.
"You paid your hard-earned money to buy a ticket to tonight," he yelled later in the set. "It is my honor and my privilege to give you the best f---ing show you've ever seen in your life."
And judging by the boundless energy displayed by his Green Day mates, he wasn't the only one feeling this way. Mike Dirnt scowled and strutted, always keeping his bass thuddingly precise. Tre Cool vamped it up on an extended version of the Isley Brother's "Shout" (while wearing a sun hat, horn-rimmed spectacles and a red brazier, it should be noted), and kept the back beat cracking. At this point, Green Day are a poundingly precise Rock and Roll machine, as evidenced by the covers they effortlessly worked into the set--everything from the opening riffs of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man," and the first verse of the Guns 'N Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine" to the chorus of the Beatles' "Hey Jude"--and the sheer spectacle of their show, an eye-popping, ear-splitting series of pyro bursts and fireworks explosions.
[Full review at MTV]
08-08 - GREEN DAY TWITTER
Lollapalooza was amazing! Best festival in america! Chicago was perfect location! Highlight-screwing up lyrics for she's a rebel! Oops.
Join the Green Day Twitter: HERE.
08-08 - PHOTOS
More photos from Lollapalooza at AP: HERE.
08-08 - CHICAGO SUN TIMES
Friday night, Lady Gaga enjoyed the surprise addition of fireworks to her show, courtesy of a fortuitously timed barrage from the Bears' family night at Soldier Field directly behind Lollapalooza's main stage in the south end of Hutchinson Field in Chicago's Grant Park. Saturday night, pop-punk trio Green Day brought their own.
In a two-hour-plus set, singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool filled the stage with good ol' rock 'n' roll stage antics. Here's a band that has actually gone Broadway, creating a stage musical out of their hit concept album, "American Idiot." But instead of loading down their show with scripted theatrics, they relied on the basics -- pyro, fireworks, pulling people on stage and endless exhortations to fans to put their hands in the air.
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