09-28 - UK TOUR PREVIEW
"50 Gigs You Must See This Decade" at Q Magazine: Page #1 / Page #2 / Page #3 / Page #4
09-28 - BIG CHEESE MAGAZINE
Look for Green Day to be featured in the new BIG CHEESE MAGAZINE.
09-26 - 21ST CENTURY BREAKDOWN
09-26 - LAST CHANCE TO GET IN TO THE BERLIN SOUND CHECK
Green Day will be hosting 10 very special and intimate IDIOT CLUB only exclusive sound check parties during their upcoming European Tour, which kicks off September 28th in Lisbon, Portugal. The sound checks will be at the following gigs:
10-01 Barcelona, Spain Palau Sant Jordi - CLOSED
10-04 Paris, France Bercy - CLOSED
10-07 Berlin, Germany World Arena - (Last day to enter: September 30th)
10-19 Glasgow, Scotland SECC
10-21 Dublin, Ireland The 02
10-23 London, England The 02
10-30 Manchester, England MEN Arena
11-01 London, England Wembley Arena
11-03 Munich, Germany Olympiahalle
11-10 Milan, Italy Datchforum
The last date to enter to win for Berlin on October 7th is Wednesday, make sure you login to your Idiot Club account or join: HERE.
09-25 - GREEN DAY SINGLE NEWS 'EAST JESUS NOWHERE' DUE
American punk giants Green Day are due to release their new single 'East Jesus Nowhere' on October 19th.
The Green Day juggernaut just keeps on rolling. The band may be taking a break from touring their latest album '21st Century Breakdown' but it seems the trio are keen to branch out into different areas.
Last week Green Day premiered the new musical version of their spectacularly successful album 'American Idiot'. Released in 2004 the record has become one of the defining rock albums of the decade, selling vast quantities around the world.
Green Day have turned the concept album into a new stage production, with the Californians turning up for the premiere.
The band's inspiration doesn't stop there, however, with Green Day also acting as the starting point for a new art exhibition. The group's new album '21st Century Breakdown' is the theme for a new gallery in London.
Now Green Day are set to return to music with their new single. Taken from their latest album 'East Jesus Nowhere' is a stomping punk attack. The opening track of the album’s second act ‘Charlatans And Saints’ and a vital element of the ‘21st Century Breakdown’ concept, the single is a precursor to the band's new UK tour.
Green Day are set to release their new single 'East Jesus Nowhere' on October 19th. The band's UK tour now looks as follows:
October
19 Glasgow SECC
23 London O2 Arena
24 London O2 Arena
26 Sheffield Arena
27 Birmingham LG Arena
28 Birmingham LG Arena
30 Manchester MEN Arena
31 Manchester MEN Arena
November
1 London Wembley Arena
09-24 - GREEN DAY ARE BEYOND SATISFIED
'It's like going to your own funeral,' Billie Joe Armstrong says. Last week saw the debut of "American Idiot," the musical based on characters from Green Day's multi-platinum 2004 rock opera of the same name. The show, which contains all the songs from American Idiot, as well as a handful of tunes from the band's most recent album, 21st Century Breakdown, is directed by Michael Mayer, the mind behind the Tony-winning rock hit "Spring Awakening."
Though the band obviously came from a punk background, the inspiration for "American Idiot" is a little more classic. "Outside of the Who, no one has really gone in that direction before," Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong told MTV News while hanging out backstage at rehearsals for the MTV Video Music Awards. "Just to even say that we're doing the same thing that the Who was doing, it's just uncharted territory."
He's also been blown away by the way the show has come together, and by the talent of the people working on it. "Michael Mayer is great; the cast is great," Armstrong said. "They're really passionate as artists. They put everything they possibly can into it. They're not trying to make it big and Hollywood. They're artists, and that's the most inspiring thing."
The play, staged at the Berkeley Repertory Theater (just a stone's throw away from 924 Gilman Street, the club where the band got its start 20 years ago), will run through November 1, and they hope they can keep it alive and bring it to Broadway. But even if this is as far as it goes, the band is "beyond satisfied" with the results. "We didn't know what to expect," Armstrong said. "The way that the vocal arrangements are coming out, the band sounds good. It's kind of like going to your own funeral. It's great!"
09-22 - KERRANG! MAGAZINE
Look for Green Day in the new KERRANG! Magazine (9/16)
09-21 - PRESS RELEASE
GREEN DAY’S SELL OUT UK TOUR ACCOMPANIED BY SHOREDITCH ART EXHIBITION
21st CENTURY BREAKDOWN
22 October – 1 November 2009
Internationally renowned band, Green Day has commissioned 21 original pieces of art inspired by music from the band's most recent album release, 21st Century Breakdown.
The paintings will be shown exclusively at the StolenSpace Gallery in Shoreditch, East London from 22nd of October until 1st of November to coincide with Green Day’s sold out UK concert tour and opening the day before the band’s two sold-out performances at the O2 Arena in London.
The band, who have sold over 60 million albums world-wide, feel that art and music share a common bond. "We‘re really excited to be associated with this incredible show," Green Day front-man Billie Joe Armstrong said. "Seeing the pieces that our new album has inspired is very exciting. We feel a strong connection to that type of creative expression; we think the fans coming out will love it."
The show's curator, artist, Logan Hicks, said that the gallery will feature contributions from an international pool of artisans, such as world renowned New York-based painter Ron English, Amsterdam-based street artists The London Police, French stencil artist C215, British illustrator Will Barras along with artists Eelus, Chris Stain, Sixten, Adam 5100 and more. Each of the collaborating artists were each sent through a lyric sheet and asked to produce a piece of art that reflected that song, to highlight the connection between music and art.
"I chose artists whom I felt had a similar visual approach to art as Green Day does to its music," said Hicks, a stencil artist and die-hard punk-rock fan, whose portraits of band members Billie Joe Armstrong, Tre Cool, and Mike Dirnt will also be on display. "Although most of the artists represented are well-established in their careers, they embrace the same emotional rawness with their art, which speaks from the heart and swings with the fist.
“Their subject matter is struggle and injustice -- they shoot from the hip and their art is their weapon."
A number of the participating artists were featured with Hicks in Banksy’s “Cans Festival” which took place last year in an abandoned taxi tunnel behind Waterloo Station and attracted over 120,000 people on opening weekend.
For further information and images:
PagetBaker Associates
39 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3PH
+44 (0)207 323 6963
lisa@pagetbaker.com www.pagetbaker.com
StolenSpace Gallery
Dray Walk, The Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane
London E1 6QL
United Kingdom
www.stolenspace.com
OPENING TIMES:
Tuesday - Sunday 11:00am - 7:00pm
PRESS INFORMATION
21st Century Breakdown featured artists:
Artist Track Artist Website
Broken Crow "Song of the Century" http://www.brokencrow.com/
Ron English "21st Century Breakdown" http://www.popaganda.com/
London Police "Know Your Enemy" http://www.thelondonpolice.com/
C215 "Viva La Gloria!" http://c.215.free.fr/
Dabs/Myla "Before the Lobotomy" http://www.dabsmyla.com/,
Meggs "Christian's Inferno" http://www.houseofmeggs.com/
Lucamaleonte "Last Night On Earth" http://lucamaleonte.blogspot.com/
Chris Stain "East Jesus Nowhere" http://www.chrisstain.com/
M-City "Peacemaker" http://www.m-city.org/
Eelus "Last of the American Girls" http://eelus.com/
Adam5100 "Murder City" http://www.adam5100.com/
Will Barras "Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl) http://www.willbarras.com/
Peat Wollaeger "Restless Heart Syndrome" http://www.stensoul.com/
Sixten "Horseshoes and Handgrenades http://www.thismachinekills.com/
Sadhu "The Static Age" www.myspace.com/sadhu1
Pisa 73 "21 Guns" http://www.pisa73.com/
Jeremiah Garcia "American Eulogy" http://www.n10z.com/
Component "See The Light" http://www.component.co.nz/
Logan Hicks Portraits of Green Day http://www.loganhicks.com/
09-21 - LIVE WITHOUT WARNING
With all the fervor surrounding the Berkeley Repertory Theatre's production of "American Idiot," it's easy to forget all the excitement that the Green Day album of the same name generated back in 2004. It was less concentrated-the production "American Idiot" set the Bay Area theater community aflame for weeks before its premiere-but nearly every teenager in the United States had some opinion of Green Day that year. For radio listeners, it was impossible to escape "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" or "Holiday," and every time the latter's opening chords rang out, it was harder not to think of President Bush and his war.
Even for a punk album, American Idiot was daring, and while many eventually revolted against its popularity, the work is a rare modern rock opera that has refused to disappear in time because the time it speaks about is not yet over. It is politically intense, confusing, hyperemotional and grandiose, and for that reason, it is still unforgettable.
Director Michael Mayer's stage adaptation of "American Idiot" is the same sort of thrill. The musical begins with politics: Recorded voices of what are presumably Fox News anchors and political talking heads slobber pro-American lines, while dozens of televisions, scattered around the walls of the stage, flash before protagonist Johnny (John Gallagher Jr.) and the cast launch into the song "American Idiot." A few songs later, Johnny's friend Tunny (Matt Caplan) enlists in the army, thanks to a persuasive military recruiter. But "American Idiot" buries politics in order to let the music dominate the production.
This decision to allow Green Day's songs to speak for themselves does emaciate the plot. Aside from a few monologues by Johnny, it is extremely barren, with songs from American Idiot and a few from this year's 21st Century Breakdown duct-taped together to create a very rough outline of a story. The three main characters-Johnny, Will and Tunny-begin the musical together, but they quickly go their separate ways. Tunny goes off to war, and not shockingly, you soon find him in a hospital; Johnny's other friend Will (Michael Esper) finds that his girl Heather (Mary Faber) has become pregnant during "Dearly Beloved," and his apathy toward the new child leads her to leave him. And Johnny himself? He follows the album's trajectory, creating a ghoulish, drug-dealing alter ego named St. Jimmy (Tony Vincent) to stimulate his pleasure sensors, which also get a good deal of action from Whatsername (Rebecca Naomi Jones).
Aside from the general, do-a-bit-of-everything cast, these characters are the driving force and emotional thrust of the play. Gallagher Jr. plays the slovenly Johnny with ease, slurring out his lines and cracking self-deprecating half-grins. His voiceless interactions with Jones stay in the realm of physical expression, which Gallagher Jr. excels at throughout the play as head bangs and thrashes his way across the stage. Esper and Caplan are slightly more peripheral, but their performances add to the dark aura. Esper's Will is so disinterested that he's almost catatonic, and Caplan's best moments come in the form of facial expressions of wide-eyed fright. But Tony Vincent's St. Jimmy truly hypnotizes. Adorned in gothic artillery and sporting tattoos on his right arm, Vincent skulks around, cackling and menacing his way about the stage. As an alter ego, he doesn't have any self-reflective monologues, but Vincent does better as the silent devil on Johnny's shoulder, slyly goading him into heroin use and taking his small performance time to deliver the line "My name is St. Jimmy, I'm a son of a gun" with a razor tone. It's nearly impossible to take your eyes off him.
All the actors give their best within a plot, which, however thin, needs to be there; while American Idiot the album didn't need any clear plot to be successful, theater is more demanding. But the story is just a formality. Rather than Green Day music set to a performance, the Berkeley Rep's "American Idiot" is a performance set to the music of Green Day. You don't hear "Wake Me Up When September Ends" because it fits the scene; you see a scene because "Wake Me Up When September Ends" is the eleventh track on American Idiot. The plot is rendered secondary here, but it hardly matters because "American Idiot" is just so excessive.
That's the greatest function of the musical: visual eye candy. Actors climb over staircases, tip over towers, play air guitar and convulse on couches. Nearly all of the musical is extreme in its physicality, which rarely fails to entertain. "American Idiot" is a music production for the Internet generation; it's short and wry, but most of all, it's passionate, fierce and uncompromising in its delivery. It's hardly nuanced-the musical doesn't take many breaths, and it feels like actors are always itching to bustle about. It's a ridiculous sight, watching grown men jump on furniture, but their intensity is strong enough that you're willing to go along with it.
Of course, not everyone will be satisfied with a makeshift story and nonstop action. When Johnny asks "Is this the end or the beginning?" near the conclusion of the piece, it's true that it is not exactly clear. Tunny comes back from war, Will's girl returns to him once more with his child and a new man, Johnny sheds his St. Jimmy skin, and nothing really has changed.
But the missing revelation is the point. "American Idiot" is certainly audacious, but it's more about desperation than it is about hope, which is appropriate for this decade and for a generation that saw the tragedy of 9/11, the birth of two wars and the current economic crisis. This is topical, glitzy theater, an immersive experience blown up to ridiculous proportions, and it's so involving that any qualms you feel will have to come after the performance. "American Idiot" might be a circle, but it manages to make going nowhere a thrill of its own
[Full article at DailyCal]
09-21 - '21ST CENTURY BREAKDOWN' INSPIRED ART SHOW
Held at StolenSpace Gallery in Shoreditch, the show will feature 21 original pieces of art inspired by the music from Green Day‘s latest album.
"We're really excited to be associated with this incredible show," Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said.
"Seeing the pieces that our new album has inspired is very exciting. We feel a strong connection to that type of creative expression; we think the fans coming out will love it." He added.
Held to coincide with Green Day's UK tour, the exhibition runs from October 22 to November 1.
[Full article at NME]
