Green Day made a surprise return to 924 Gilman Street, one of the many Bay Area punk venues where they played when they were just starting out, for a special benefit concert on Sunday. The secret show was to help raise money for victims of a building fire in Oakland, California, which affected two local, independent publishing houses- AK Press and 1984 Printing, as well as a recording studio (Shipwreck Studio) and dozens of residents.
The legendary punk-rock trio played a career-spanning set at the venue, focussing especially on tracks from 1994’s ‘Dookie’ and 2004’s ‘American Idiot’, but also songs from their pre-major label days, including ‘39/Smooth’s “Going To Pasalacqua”, ‘Slappy’s “Paper Lanterns” and a few classics from ‘Kerplunk’. PunkNews reported that Jello Biafra, former Dead Kennedy’s mouthpiece, introduced the band, and that Rancid’s Tim Armstrong joined them for a cover of Operation Ivy’s “Knowledge”. Armstrong also joined the band for the same song when they played at their pre-ceremony show in Cleveland, Ohio, before their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame last month.
924 Gilman Street is a fiercely independent venue run by a committee, and had previously banned Green Day from playing there in the early Nineties after the trio signed to Reprise, evidently showing that the committee are against bands ‘selling out’. However, back in 2012 a rep for the venue, Mike Avilez, said that he wasn’t ruling out Green Day’s return to the venue: “We’d have to have a meeting on it and vote- but I’d be for it”.
Prior to that, the group also played an impromptu seven-song gig there in 2001 after jumping onstage following a set by the Influents. The set was heavily focussed on songs from ‘Dookie’, much the same as the set played on Sunday.
The publishing companies that were affected by the fire have formed a crowdfunding campaign- proceeds will be split between the two publishers and the residents who live in the building. Shipwreck Studio has also launched its own crowdfunding campaign.
