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ARCHIVE - 1/4/06:
It's been another busy month for Green Day. They are getting so many awards and award nominations that you would think some of these big corporations are inventing music award ceremonies just to be seen handing the guys a golden statue.
For example, on December 6th, Green Day won four Radio Music Awards for Artist of the Year, and Song of the Year ( Boulevard of Broken Dreams ) in the Adult Hit Radio, Rock Radio, and Alternative and Active Rock Radio categories. Surely at this point you are saying to yourself, yeah, great, but what the hell is this radio music company you speak of? Is this some new form of technology trying to replace streaming audio? What do these so-called 'radio' people know about music?
Luckily, there are plenty of tried and true yearly music award staples still around to confirm that Green Day really is the best band in the world, as was proven on December 28th when the guys won the ultra-prestigious AOL Artist of the Year Award. Whew! We can all rest easy now that the people who flooded the planet Earth with the most useless CDs known to mankind have confirmed for us that Green Day is cool…
But for serious, it's wonderful to see Green Day getting the recognition they deserve. On December 6th, they also won 6 Billboard Music Awards: Pop Group of the Year, Billboard 200 Album Group of the Year, Hot 100 Group of the Year, Rock Artist of the Year, Rock Song of the Year (for Boulevard of Broken Dreams), and Modern Rock Artist of the Year.
Green Day has also been recently nominated for Best Group, Best Tour, Best Band, and Best Video at the People's Choice Awards airing December 10th. So be good little American idiots and cast your votes asap. After all, if you don't vote, you can't complain once we're all living in the People's Republic of Kanye West.
On December 9th, Green Day was nominated for a Grammy for Record of the Year (Boulevard of Broken Dreams). A Grammy, you say? Is that some kind of old lady's music award? Well, yes, it is, but that doesn't mean it's not still pretty prestigious. In fact, some fans are worried that a Grammy win is once again going to cause an enormous spike in Green Day popularity.
Last time the boys won a Grammy, their shows started to sell out so fast (within hours of the box office opening) that hardcore too-cool-to-run fans couldn't even get in, and those who did could barely see the stage over clouds of blue hair and smoke from Pall Mall 100s. Damn those Grammys all to hell!
In other interesting news this month, it looks like the long awaited "Live Freaky Die Freaky" claymation musical horror flick is finally set for release. "Live Freaky Die Freaky," the brainchild of writer/director Joe Roecker, has been waiting in the wings since 2003, but is at last going to be available on DVD as of January 30th.
Why is this interesting? For starters, punk-rocker-from-back-in-the-day Joe Roecker directed "Heart Like a Hand Grenade," the soon to be released documentary on the making of "American Idiot." Oh, and also, all three of the guys in the band do voices in the movie!
Billy Joe stars as the voice of Charlie Manson (yes, THE Charlie Manson). He also did a song for the movie, "Mechanical Man," which is extraordinarily weird and charming, and is all over the internet by now so check it out ANYWHERE. Mike Dirnt is the voice of a news anchorman, and Tre Cool, once again demonstrating his subtle prowess as a character actor, takes on several minor but vital roles, such as Prosecutor Bug.
If you live in the states, you can watch out for special midnight screenings of the film on January 27th and 28th at these theatres: Alamo Village Cinema - Austin, TX; Brattle Theatre - Cambridge, MA; Angelika Dallas - Dallas, TX; Angelika Houston - Houston, TX; Gateway Cinema 4 - Fort Lauderdale, FL; Grand Illusion - Seattle, WA; Guild Cinema - Albuquerque, NM; Playhouse 7 - Pasadena, CA; Sunset 5 - Los Angeles, CA; Act 1 & 2 - Berkeley, CA; Lumiere 3 - San Francisco, CA; Sunshine Cinema - New York, NY; Avalon Theater - Washington, DC; Music Box Theatre - Chicago, IL; Oak Street Cinema - Minneapolis, MN; Real Art Ways - Hartford, CT; The Loft Cinema - Tucson, AZ.
In other movie news, Green Day made several mentions of an upcoming "American Idiot" movie at press conferences prior to the shows they just put in Australia a few days ago. Apparently, the are working on putting together their own treatment, and still on the hunt for the perfect script-writer.
The word in Sydney and Melbourne is that both recent performances totally rocked ass, but were kind of sad, because it seems Green Day has definitely reached the end of the American Idiot World Tour, despite rumors that a European stint is in the works for springtime.
Of course, the craziest Green Day scandal of the month is all the controversy surrounding Dean Grey's "American Edit," a mash-up album released online by DJ Party Ben and DJ Team 9 several weeks ago. Although Warner music quickly issued a Cease and Desist order against the hosting website, getting it shut down after only ten days of sweet sweet honey-dripping, the topic has just gotten hotter ever since.
December 13th was Dean Grey Tuesday, an official day of protest in which dozens of websites hosted the songs in order to take a stand in defense of non-profit online mash-ups. The protest succeeded in promoting the downloading of more than 240,000 copies of the album. The guys in Dean Grey have consistently refused to profit in any way from the massive success, and insist that anyone just dying to support the project financially should donate the money to one of the many excellent charities promoted by Green Day.
And what do the guys think of all this? They seem pretty impressed, having raised not a whimper of Metallica-esque fussiness about theft of their intellectual property yadda yadda yadda. In fact, Billy Joe has been quoted as saying, "Actually, I was driving in my car, and I heard a Green Day mashup, with, um, Oasis and Aerosmith. It sounded cool! There's been a little bit of talk about doing a mash-up, but I'm not sure who would be the appropriate hip-hop guy yet." Who knows? Maybe the right 'hip-hop guys' just found you, Green dude!
Debatably, the most check-out worthy songs on the "American Edit" album are Boulevard of Broken Songs, which is cut up with Wonderwall, and Eminem's sampling of Dream On from Sing for the Moment; and Dr. Who on Holiday, which incorporates, you guessed it, the Dr. Who theme with Holiday.
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