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Posted: 10/5/06
September Green Day Report
Green Day Didn't Feel Like Sleeping this September!
All right, tell your mother to stop holding her breath and wetting her bargain-bin nylon panties - something interesting, in fact, SOMETHINGS interesting, have finally happened in Greendaylund.
That's right, no more endless speculative ramblings or disarmingly acute philosophical treatise on fame, fortune, and the future of this crumbling society.
Finally, Green Day fans get some real news!
Rising Up Out of the Muck
News became real right around the seventh of this month of September when Green Day announced that they would be collaborating with U2 on a single to help benefit Music Rising (www.musicrising.org).
Music Rising is a charity organization started by U2's guitarist The Edge and music producer Bob Erzin. The organization is funded in large part by Gibson Guitars and is dedicated to helping the musicians of New Orleans replace instruments lost during Shitstorm Katrina.
Phase I of the Music Rising project involved helping individual musicians. Phase II is now working on helping schools, churches, and other public services get re-supplied with instruments for their various bands and choirs and late night hoochie-coos.
To help fund phase II, Green Day and U2 got together and recorded the single, "The Saints are Coming," a cover of the song originally done by Scottish punk band The Skids in 1978. Green Day and U2 spent most of September working on the tune, and debuted it on the 25th at the Louisiana Superdome.
Pre-Game Show
This was a super-important event because it was the reopening of the Superdome which has been shut down since the hurricane. As you may recall, all eyes were on the Superdome last year at this time as every horror story you can imagine poured out of its gates.
But by all accounts, the 25th saw a spectacular event take place. Green Day and U2 kicked off the night with the Edge performing alongside Green Day for the show-opener, which was "Wake Me Up When September Ends." This was an interesting and appropriate song choice, bringing to mind the video made by Karmagrrrl Zadi Diaz (http://karmagrrrl.org/2005/09/wake-me-up-when-september-ends.html) last September.
Next, the bands played "The Saints are Coming," another song chosen for its contextual appeal and ever-so-apropos given that this was the New Orleans Saints first game back on their home turf. The show ended with U2's "Beautiful Day." Green Day and U2 performed alongside a New Orleans brass band, which really added to the kick-ass-ed-ness of the show.
The Road to Sainthood (The Saints are Coming video and lyrics)
According to Rolling Stone magazine, the crazy road to Billie Joe and the Edge rocking out together on guitar with the help of NO brass started way back in February, the night before the Grammy's.
Determined to look properly rockstar-disheveled for their TV appearances on the morrow, Green Day and U2 were boozing it up together in Hollywood. Somewhere between the red wine and the caviar, they discovered that they had a lot in common politically. "I love you, man," Bono sobbed into Mike Dirnt's vintage Mutants t-shirt. "I love you too, man," Mike said, casually swigging from a champagne bottle.
There and then, Green Day and U2 decided to keep their reddened eyes and half-deaf ears open for an opportunity to work together.
Seven months later, the opportunity finally presented itself. The Edge came up with the idea of the two bands recording the single, "The Saints are Coming," to benefit Music Rising. Good job, Mr. The Edge!
To get started, The Edge had to convince Skids frontman Richard Jobson to let them do the song. This proved to be difficult as Jobson, now a successful filmmaker, couldn't believe that The Edge was actually calling him about a song he had written 30 years ago as a teenager.
"I thought it was one of my Irish mates winding me up!" Jobson admitted. With no small measure of convincing, he finally came around. And after he was made to believe in The Edge, Jobson happily allowed the bands to record his song.
Green Day also agreed to the project, and didn't need quite so much convincing that they were actually speaking to U2. By mid-September, the guys were recording at Abbey Road Studios in Studio Two, the famous location where the Beatles did almost all their work.
Even though Green Day is one of the biggest rock bands in the world, the rush of working with legends like U2 was not lost on them. "To be sitting there in the studio with U2 and talking on a creative level was something you wouldn't imagine in your wildest dreams," Billie Joe told Rolling Stone.
The bands had a lot of fun working together, jamming to the Buzzcocks, Stiff Little Fingers, and the Beatles between bouts of arranging and practicing "The Saints are Coming."
During breaks, Bono also found time to send dirty emails to Adrienne Armstrong. At first, Billie Joe thought that he might have to kick Bono's ass, but then they all had a pint and the tension passed.
Which One Went Shoeless?
As part of the project, Green Day and U2 did a photo shoot on the Abbey Road crosswalk, where the Beatles shot their famous "Abbey Road" album cover in 1969. Photographer Anton Corbijn shot the two bands walking across the street towards each other, shaking hands. Tons of passersby stood around gawking and flashing their video phones at the guys. You can check out cool videos of the shoot on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr69wdd85Hw).
You can also find videos of interviews and Superdome rehearsals leading up to the night of the 25th all over the internet. Most of the interviews are with Billie Joe and The Edge, who talk about how important music is to New Orleans, and how they feel great about being part of the celebration at the Superdome.
Controversy Surrounding the Saints
Despite all our best and most saintly intentions, the world is still a pretty fucked-up place, so Superdome night wasn't exactly the moment when all the children joined hands and sang punk songs.
While people celebrated inside the dome, protesters marched outside. Lots of people in NO are generally pissed because the city spent something like 185 million dollars on restoring the stadium while many homes, schools, and hospitals are still in ruins, particularly in the uber-fuxored Ninth Ward.
But like The Edge says about his own charity work, you can't fix everything, so you've really just got to find one thing to focus on, and do what you can in that area.
Punks and anarchists who don't think Green Day is doing enough for the little guy can always get on with organizations like Common Ground (http://www.commongroundrelief.org/) and Food Not Bombs (http://www.foodnotbombs.net/katrina.html), groups that are still out there on the streets every day, helping people in New Orleans get their lives back together.
And that's what the DIY ethic is all about - help yourself, help each other, and do what you can. Green Day might not be working in a soup kitchen, but they did take part in putting together one of the most-watched TV shows ever (15 million viewers!), which reminded a lot of people that the fallout of Shitstorm Katrina is not a memory, but something that's affecting communities to this day.
And More Controversy
Yes, you can see it all go down on YouTube, and download the entire history of the world on BitTorrent, but Green Day and U2 are encouraging fans and supporters not to take this route when it comes to "The Saints." They tried to release only parts of their live performance for the intarwubs because they want people to buy the live song, as well as the soon-to-be-released studio version.
That went really well for about 48 hours, and then it was all over the net. Video clips continue to get taken down, but new ones are springing up constantly. So go ahead, watch YouTube til your eyes bleed, but shell out a couple bones for the single, too. Imagine how happy you would have been if you could get 300 people to shell out 99 cents each towards your first guitar.
Pretty fucking happy, right?
Right! So think of the fucking children and buy the single, released Oct. 6th.
In Other News
All those dying for some fresh GD will get what they have coming to them soon enough. There's apparently a video in the works for "The Saints are Coming." A videographer shot a ton of footage at the Abbey Road studio sessions, as well as at the Superdome and throughout the devastated Ninth Ward, so that should come together into a sweet vid (thoughtful and compelling as all get-out) soon enough.
And Finally, a Word on the Gibson
Billie Joe appeared in a fairly interesting video on Gibson.com this month, talking all about his new signature guitar, the Billie Joe Jr., as he calls it. The guitar is a Les Paul Jr. Vintage 850 with a custom skinny neck. It's a replica of the guitar, Floyd, which Billie Joe plays in the studio, and it's got that, in our man's own words, "special, punchy, mid-rangy, good rock and roll 50s sound to it, but you can crank it, with lots of distortion."
Sounds good to me. I'll just go rob a bank and buy one right away.
(Ed's note: G--D does not endorse robbing banks for anything other than Green Day concert tix.)
See ya next month with more Green Day news that actually scratches the surface!
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