Zalex (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} dominatedcheeze) wrote,@ 2009-06-04 15:59:00 |
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| Current mood: |  content |
| Current music: | She's a Saint Not a Celebrity♥Foxboro Hot Tubs |
| Entry tags: | central park, good morning america, green day |
I'm loud and I'm vulgar and I wear the pants in the house because somebody's got to!
Not only was my first Green Day show a dream come true and something that will not happen again for a long time, but my second show was something completely new to even them and probably will be the only time they do something like this. Four days after my first Green Day show at Bowery Ballroom, my second, on Friday May 22nd, 2009 was them playing the beginning of this year's Good Morning America concert series which is broadcasted on live national television. I was honestly not expecting more than four songs, but oh boy was I wrong. This show was unique because Green Day weren't running it themselves since they were actually guests on the network (ABC), but at the same time it was still their show... and their crazy fans which ABC were obviously not ready for. I dont think that they understand that us Green Day fans are loud, obnoxious, and do not abid by the network's rules even if it is going to be on national television. One of the ABC crew guys told us to "keep it clean for the FCC because other bands will be playing this series and we don't want to ruin it for them"... but do we care? No. We only care about Green Day. And ironically enough, this is the day after Green Day refuses to let Wal Mart sell their cd because they want to sell a "clean" version of it. But of course, right after we are told to keep it clean for the FCC, we begin cursing and shit, cause nobody tells us GD fans what to do! Soon after they played part of Longview as one of the little "teasers" that are broadcasted live before a commercial which say "coming up after the break". And it turns out that when they broadcasted it live, they missed the censors in "sick of all the same old shit" and didn't cut the sound off to blurb it out until AFTER thousands of us had sang the 'terrible S word that cannot be said on tv'... but even better, "In the house with unlocked doors and I'm fucking lazy" wasn't cut until after Billie said the even bigger F word.... and of course my cable box/dvr decided to screw up on my last night and not record it.... thank god for youtube.
So Thursday night at 11, I went to meet my friend Dan and his sister outside of some bar near the train station where we waited around until the last train at 12:45am and took that one into the city. Now usually this time of night is considered EARLY for me, but of course tonight I'm dead tired and drinking all the caffeine (Red Bull and Coke) I can since we're going to be up all night. We get to Grand Central an hour later, me and his sister stop in the bathroom and look what we find written in a stall...
ON OUR WAY TO SEE GREEN DAY. How ironic is that?
We take the subway uptown to the 69th street entrance of Central Park and get there by 2am. There's maybe 50 other people there waiting against the stone wall entrance, half of them who I recognize from Bowery. For a while we just sat around, around 2:45 Howie showed up, and Dan went out to a deli a few blocks away to buy... apples and red bull?
A bit later a park security guy comes around handing out wrist bracelets. It was all extremely disorganized because I honestly dont think get bracelets first meant shit. By 4am the line started to get longer and the barricades on the edge of the street were moved in so we're finally standing in a legit line... well more like a cluster. Some guy comes around selling these absolutely ridiculous shirts for five bucks and both Dan and Howie buy one...
6am is coming closer and we're thinking "shit as soon as they open the barricade to the park there's just going to be a mad dash down the pathway leading to the stage". Fortunately they were smart about it and let people 'trickle in' little by little. First maybe the first 25 people on line were let in, closed the barricade and had one security guy escort them halfway in where they would stop almost as if they were check points. A minute later they would let a few more people in doing the same. I was probably in the third group. We get to the last one just right down the hill from the stage, and for about 15 minutes we're waiting there not knowing why we weren't in yet... then we see that there are people with VIP who got to go in a seperate pathway before us, getting front row. Howie is one of them and is kind enough to forward a picture of himself standing in the front to about 5 of us waiting to get in still. But whatever, because once they let us in there were maybe about 5 rows of people in front of us, but by the time soundcheck starts I'm second row. Actually, the people in front of me were two little kids- a 7 year old boy and girl and their mom... and a girl in a wheel chair. I mean it was cute that their mom was taking them to a Green Day show, but also extremely unsafe for them to be there in the front... especially the girl in the wheelchair. Not to sound like a jerk, but I mean its for their own safety, besides they probably could have gotten special privileges in the pit where nobody else could go because of that. At first they're okay but once the show started and the crowd got going she kept pushing back and screaming "YOU'RE SQUASHING THE KIDS! THERE'S 7 YEAR OLDS OVER HERE". I tried not to, but you know I'm pretty small too and by her pushing me back and to the side I was getting squashed myself. At one point she said "Well it shouldnt be that bad, it is Good Morning America!" to which I replied "Yeah, and it's also GREEN DAY". I mean what did you expect, woman... to just stand there bopping our heads doing the Trout? It wasn't until over halfway through that the kids and the girl in the wheel chair were lifted out of the crowd and got to sit on the side of the stage I think... because later on during East Jesus Nowhere Billie walked over to the little girl and had her come on stage and literally asked her "wanna dance?" It was ridiculously adorable and it's a good thing she got out of the crowd.
Around 7 all the roadies, including cat guy started off kind of a pre-sound check, rockin out themselves on Green Day's instruments. It was cute, and I just had to take a video of it. After about a half hour Green Day themselves came out and did the real soundcheck in between the ABC people instructing us on how to cheer, act, where to look, and all that bullshit. Well the soundcheck itself was pretty long, fun, and Billie said was probably the coolest soundcheck he's ever been to... what can we say, we're New York City ;)
For that they played Know Your Enemy, 21st Century Breakdown, Billie quietly sang parts of Murder City as the crowd sang along louder than him, a little tease of At The Library, Longview and American Idiot (I think)?
He stopped after the opening and never actually sang the words so we all sang it to try and get him to, but no luck. Oh well, at least we heard a little of it :)
Later in the show Tre hit his snare drum so hard that he broke right through it and afterwards walks over to Mike cracking up and flexes his muscles all "YEAH LOOK HOW STRONG I AM".
I love Mike's reaction :P
Billie also tried to get somebody to go up and play a song, but obviously ABC wouldn't let them. They're so good to their fans and anybody who thinks differently can suck a fuck.
After that he goes "Mike's side is rockin!" which was totally true and Mike makes that "Yeah me and my side own you Billie Joe" face ;)
I'm pretty sure that the only songs broadcasted live were Know Your Enemy, 21st Century Breakdown (but apparently they cut it off), and Longview? Quite honestly, I have no idea when they were broadcasting live (except when Sam Champion was standing in front of the crowd including Howie doing the weather). But that was what made it so much fun- even the band had to be told when there was free time, when there wasn't, when we were on air, etc. So nobody knew what was going to happen- whenever we needed to pass time without them playing, Billie, Mike, Tre OR THE CROWD, would start something amusing that we'd all become involved in. At one point Billie started playing simon says with the crowd... I lost.
"PUT YOUR HANDS UP!"
Another highlight was when he tried to speak into his mic but we couldn't hear him at all and we all got pissed off. A few minutes later Billie tells us "The reason why you couldn't hear the PA, is because they were doing the weather!" and somebody starts a chant "FUCK THE WEATHER!" It was fucking hilarious because the people at ABC are getting beyond pissed off as they try to stop it, Billie's kind of just standing there looking a bit nervous, and Mike is cracking up chanting with us.
There were also a shit load of blow up beach balls in the crowd going around and instead of sending them to the back like the ABC guys told us to, we start throwing them towards the stage. Tre comes over to Mike's side and starts hitting them back with his drumsticks, Mike with his bass and it becomes Beach Ball Baseball: Mike & Tre vs The Crowd.
Although I don't think I was on TV, Howie was about three times and I still had a blast in the second row. Still pissed off that my cable is screwed up and didn't record but I still saw the videos online, and it wasn't until then that I realized how many people were there... behind me. Zalex Bellink does not settle for anything but the front. Here's some of my favorite pictures....
Billie and Mike havin a moment. Somebody screamed "SECRETS ARENT NICE!" :P
There are so many ridiculous captions that could be put on this picture but I think I'll go with...
Tre: Mmm Billie, you smell good. Lets get a room later.
Billie: Yeah uh no, freak I already got one with somebody else
Mike: Whose tryin to steal mah man!?
Always wanted a picture of somebody else's picture on their phone/camera :)
Awwww at Mike and Tre's totally lookin towards me.
OH HAI MIKE! :)
Absolutely adore this photo. It's currently my computer desktop background :)
Still can't tell if thats the real Blue or not... but Billie has a picture of him and Blue when he was younger on the back... and its A SCREENSHOT FROM VH1 LOLOL.
Billie looks quite pleased with himself... Tre, dont give him Swine Flu.
Somewhere near the end the GMA cast was interviewing Billie and Mike (this I know was broadcasting live). We couldn't hear a word they said because it wasn't projected but Tre, being the freak he is starts running around stage being his ridiculous self and prancing around with a long roll of toilet paper that somehow ended up on stage. The whole crowd is cracking up and screaming at him and you can hear it in the background of the interview on tv probably more than the interview itself.
This is what you heard at home on tv.
This is what we heard live in the park.
I seriously felt like I was at a giant Green Day PARTY where they would play not just entertaining others with music but random funny things. Yet they still managed to play a good amount of other songs besides those on the soundcheck and filmed live... actually I'm pretty sure they played for at least a half hour after the broadcast ended because Billie was just like "FUCK IT, WE'RE GONNA KEEP PLAYING!" and we didnt even get out of the crowd until 9:30. Some of the other songs they East Jesus Nowhere, Static Age, She, Longview, American Idiot, and ended with Jesus of Suburbia where they had this girl come up on stage to sing a few lines. She was actually standing next to me on line since 2am being really obnoxious, she was totally off key, but she had really good stage performance and jumped up and down, pointed to the crowd, put the mic out, and sang with Billie. I think that this is going to be their new thing this tour- getting people on stage to sing for a few lines of random songs.
That week was seriously the most amazing one of my life, and I never would have guessed that my first two Green Day shows would be like these, and not in a giant arena, but I still cannot wait to see them again in two months at Hartford on July 24th and Madison Square Garden on the 27th & 28th... and possibly Albany on the 25th now :) It's times like these that I remember why I love them so much and how grateful I am that I discovered them.
