As part of a more or less secret Las Vegas show, the punk rock band Green Day (since 1989) announced a tour for the coming year. The musicians around frontman Billie Joe Armstrong (50) will perform the stadium shows with their colleagues from The Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and the Linda Lindas.
“I have a big announcement. It’s really big. Get your cameras ready,” Armstrong said before announcing the tour to fans at Fremont Country Club, according to Rolling Stone magazine. Many of them lined up that morning to get a front-row seat at the 850-person downtown venue.
Armstrong and the band performed a song from their upcoming album called “The American Dream Is Killing Me” at the small concert. In general, the evening was more of a homage to their successful album “Dookie”, which celebrates its 30th anniversary next February. “It’s not quite the anniversary,” Armstrong admitted, explaining why October was still notable in this context: “The record came out in February 1994, so we were just scared shitless in October 1993.”
Green Day saw the not-so-surprising show as a warm-up for the “When We Were Young” festival in Las Vegas, which they are co-hosting with Blink-182 on Saturday and Sunday. The punk band had been teasing fans for a week with hints of a secret show, but didn’t reveal any further information. On Wednesday, however, they revealed the details and had a banner erected at the Fremont Country Club saying, “Things are getting serious.” On Thursday, the banner hung from the building’s roof read: “Welcome to Paradise,” the name of one of her most famous songs.
