Well well well a secret Green Day show! It's taken me a while to report this (mainly due to the fact I've typed it out two times and both have not saved properly so I'm having to redo the whole post for the third time) but finally here it is... One of the most spontaneous, exciting and adrenaline fuelled 4 hours I've ever experienced.
A few weeks back Tom and I were turning in for the night when I got a notification Abbie had tagged me in a post on Facebook. The post was from Green Day who had taken to social media to divulge that they were going to be playing a gig in a small hotel just outside of sydney. Half an hour before the show!
I actually had no idea they were even in Australia - something I should have known since I absolutely love them. I checked the location of the hotel in relation to our flat and doscovered it was literslly a 5 minute cab journey!
This was when the adrenaline started pumping, knowing there was a possibility I could get to see up and close one of the greatest punk rock bands to ever grace the scene, on my doorstep! I have of course seen them play before in England (and know how good they are live) but this was a chance unlike many others right here!
I got changed and woke Tom up to tell him what was going on but he was so tired and out of it that he said he was going to stay at the flat - something he would later regret. I ran outside and hailed the first cab I could see.
When we pulled up on the street next to the venue and I ran to the doors there were a random handful of about 20 starry eyed Green Day fans who had also got wind of the message. The rest, lucky enough to get here sooner were inside the venue which unfortunately had a 200 person capacity.
And since nobody was obviously going to come out before they'd finished, the chances of getting in to the venue and seeing them in stage were getting smaller by the minute as green day played out their nicely chosen set list
Even though I was outside and the equipment they had in the venue wasn't great, I could still hear every word of the songs and could actually see them on the Tv screens they had in the bar through the window.
It was amazing just to think I was here, when 20 mins ago I was getting ready to go to sleep completely unaware that my all time favourite band had been walking around the area where we are living. And now they were playing a spontaneous show at a venue so small and intimate compared to the arenas and stadiums they usually play that it was like comparing the area of a doormat to a football pitch.
They love doing these types of gigs when they're in the big cities. I remember a few years ago they played at a club in London when they were there for Reading. And of course there have been many in the US also,
I got talking to some people in the queue and one guy told me they were in Australia to headline Soundwave - one of Australia's biggest festivals - which is held in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.
So unfortunately the moment came when they finished off their set and I was still outside. They came back on for an encore and just as it finished I ran around the back of the venue with some others to where the back doors were. Conveniently, there were large windows looking through into the back room behind the stage so when they came off stage I could actually see them through the glass which was pretty cool. I must have looked like a excited kid staring at lions in an enclosure at the zoo.
After a while of me gawping at them through the glass the cars arrived to pick them up and I knew they'd be coming out of the door I was standing right next to. Luckily I'd remembered to bring a pocket sized digital camera and had it at the ready. (Wish I had an iPhone because my camera has a delayed response when pressing down the button to capture an image). So when they did walk out I didn't get any well timed photos to my annoyance, but there were a few ok ones.
I ran round to where the car was pushing through the crowd and watched Billie Joe and Mike get bundled in to the back seats by their bodyguards. Next thing I know, Tre Cool is right next to me asking me and this other guy to let him past so he could get in to the front seat of the car!!! Madness!
Within mintutes they were gone and speeding back to their hotel in the city and what seemed like a lifetime of waiting and an adrenaline rush that nearly matched that of my skydive was actually over incredibly soon. It was hard to comprehend the enormity of what happened in such a short space of time.
The crowd dispersed and people started to make there way home. One poor guy had driven an hour and a half as fast as he could (picking up several speeding fines along the way) and he didn't get insode the venue either. I decided to run back to the flat instead of paying for the privilege in a cab again and got there in about 20 mins. Got unchanged, back into bed and went to sleep like nothing happened.
When I woke up several hours later my first thoughts were "did that really happen or was it a dream".
I actually had to check my camera to see if the pictures were 'real' or not.
It really was a crazy night, and one I will probably never forget about.
^ A few pics from the TV screens inside the pub
^ Billie Joe walking to the cars
^ Billie Joe and Mike (holding the bottle of water)
A bit of media coverage...
...
Green Day surprised Sydney fans with a top-secret headlining show last night.
Following a tweet and an Instagram post from the band at 10:30 last night, fans were given just half an hour to get to the Captain Cook Hotel - a 200 capacity venue in Paddington - for the surprise set from this year's Soundwave festival headliners.
Taking the stage dressed in traditional garb - black shirts, black jeans, black shoes and black hair - the band joked about how the crowd "must have seen the tweet," before launching into a twelve-song, hourlong set that, on the whole, erred toward the earlier albums in their catalogue: Dookie, Insomniac and Nimrod.
...
No comments:
Post a Comment