When Green Day became Green Week.
Lame title I know. But I couldn’t resist.
As mentioned in the previous post, I went to a Green Day listening party thanks to the friendly folk at Warner Bros music. Before I went I kind of made fun of the idea of going because Green Day are the kind of band I listened to when I was 14. A lot. But there was something rather exciting about it.
We were ushered inside to a cinema room where there was coke, beer, popcorn and a deluxe boxset of the band’s past material on every seat. We were played 15 new songs off the three albums including singles Oh Love and Kill the DJ. Tre Cool managed to crash his own listening party by running around and fist pumping to his own songs towards the end. Everyone cheered him as he ran in. What a guy.
If I wasn’t a major Green Day fan before, I certainly was when I left. The new songs are incrdibly fun, upbeat and sees the band go back to basics compared with their more recent album 21st Century Breakdown. Favourite song so far has to be Let Yourself Go.
The rest of the songs were great but i’ll leave them as a bit of a surprise. I did write a small review for stereoboard.
The next day I found out about the secret gig at Shepherds Bush and decided after having no money in my bank account that I was going to be there somehow. I tried with a press pass and there was no success and then I thought i’d try a photo pass. And it happened.
It was tough - there must have been 20 photographers there so basically as soon as you were in the pit, you weren’t moving. I was unfortunately second to the end. But the lights went down and Green Day were there and I was living my 14 year old self’s dream.
We only had two songs to shoot the band and so it was over fairly quickly. Here are some of the ones I have edited so far. Going back I wish I had grabbed myself a better place to take photos from but hey, I'll remember to be a little more feisty next time.
And then somehow I managed to get in for the rest of the show. It was incredible. The whole of the floor was a giant mosh pit with everyone jumping around. They played a mix of older stuff from Dookie and Nimrod and then there were the favourites off American Idiot. The crowd was so energetic that somehow I ended up third row, bumping into a friend and then dancing with a blue haired stranger in the middle of everyone jumping around. They finished with new song 99 revolutions which is one of my favourites of their new stuff.
And the night came to an end. I haven’t stopped smiling and listening to American Idiot ever since.
