~This is a cute, excited blog post about talking to the Tubbies in New Orleans after the show, written by someone who was too young to be allowed in the venue to see the show itself.

Chris Cote of the band Kut U Up, who was famously branded on his ass cheek by Billie Joe in the movie Riding in Vans With Boys (video on youtube), wrote a blog post about being up on stage with the Foxboro Hot Tubs in San Diego, getting handed Mike’s bass and forgetting how to play it, kissing the guys, and getting drunk with them before the show. “We got loose all day, drinking hearty margaritas to the point that the band’s manager politely asked us to stop influencing Billy Joe to get so shit-faced.” Managing the Tubbies must be quite the handful…

There are plenty of pictures of Chris on stage with the band, one on the official site and more on flickr, and now we get a little bit of the inside story from him.

[ Source ]

~Stop Drop and Roll dipped in the charts this week, from number 21 to number 103.

~The June 4 issue of Kerrang has a cover story on Green Day and the Foxboro Hot Tubs. The magazine was at the show in Los Angeles interviewing and photographing fans waiting in line. There are scans of the article on GDA, [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ] from shadowiegirl.

The Roxy just posted some great new photos of the Foxboro Hot Tubs show. Here’s two of the Reverend holding court with his flock:

[ Source ]

There have been so many wonderful reviews of the shows posted on GDC by fans that it may be hard to keep track of them all. Compared to the professional reviews that have come out in newspapers, which I also like, these have a much more personal touch, which makes them even more special to read.

I’ve linked to the various threads about each stop on the tour in my posts on GDA, and so has Andres, so I wasn’t thinking of linking to any of them here, but for those who don’t have the time to sift through all the threads, here’s a sampling of some recaps that are definitely worth reading (you have to register for the forum in order to see them): Dallas, by PedestrianNumber5, Austin, by Met Fan, Phoenix, by justcause, San Diego, by greendayfan518, Los Angeles, by amy_runs.

And check out djrosstar’s recaps of three shows, and his pics with Mike and Tre.

~The Foxboro Hot Tubs site has new photos from the shows in San Diego and Dallas. They also have FBHT t-shirts for sale.

NME adds its voice to the glowing, nearly breathless reviews, that have been coming out, of the Foxboro Hot Tubs tour. (Links to other reviews are here and here.) They say: “There’s still, at this moment, no hotter band in America.” Hells yeah. And another favorite line: “For a man of Billie Joe’s experience he exhibits a youth-shaming amount of bouncing, fist-pumping and riling, as he holds court with a big mop of peroxide-blond hair, wields his mic cord like a coachmaster’s whip, welcomes showers of stagedivers with open arms and regularly dips his face into the swirl of the front row.” His athleticism was really something to behold.

Thanks to girltufty for the scan, or read it online, here. It’s a great photo of Billie Joe too. He can be on fire, but still he has that aw-shucks, amazed and happy look that is so distinctive. Sigh.

~Billie Joe posted a new message on the Foxboro Hot Tubs’ MySpace. He says:
“Thanks to all the Tub Heads for coming out for our first tour. Will there be more?
I got you on my mind, England… “

~Austin 360 has photos taken outside Emo’s at the Foxboro Hot Tubs show, including photos of the band members going in the door, and one of Bill Schneider holding the alligator head.

~Stop Drop and Roll will be out on vinyl June 10 and comes with a bonus CD.

These two weeks have been like a whirlwind. The Foxboro Hot Tubs tour swept through like a tornado, leaving everyone in its path sweaty, jangled, and giddy. I hope that the loopy feeling of happiness and disbelief extends in some way to everyone who could only hear about the shows from far away. I know I felt that way just reading about the stops I didn’t attend. I also know it can be hard to enjoy other people’s delight at something you had to miss, and I know I’m lucky in a way that I can’t extend to anyone, regardless of what I may share by writing about it.

There’s always a bit of an emotional rollercoaster when it comes to something like this — in my case, and probably in your case if you’re reading this, anything having to do with Green Day –that you care about a lot, and that has a special meaning for you. Both taking part and missing out can be a confusing mix of joy and anxiety. Even if you were there, it only lasts for a moment, an hour or two, and afterward you just go back to whatever it is you do, and you wonder why you don’t remember the details better, or if you should have made a bigger ass of yourself, given the chance, or less of one? And then mixed in with these neurotic and intrusive thoughts is this floaty, heady feeling, and a silly grin on your face that just keeps cropping up.

I always have to remind myself that Green Day didn’t invent rock and roll. People felt just as overwhelmed watching Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley fifty years ago. Nor did they invent punk rock, which to me is what these shows were: punk rock shows in their purest sense. Shows where there is no barrier or even distinction, at times, between audience and performers, where it’s just a melee of emotion and sweat and a shared sense of belonging and of collectively witnessing something special.

The essential difference between punk shows and mainstream music concerts, it has always seemed to me, is not the size but the attitude that people bring to each. When people go to a punk show, everyone’s in it together and having a lot of messy fun. But people at a concert for a big mainstream act are there to soak up the show, in some cases acting like it’s owed to them, and the closer they feel to the band, the more proprietary they are, and the more they want something from the band members. But if anyone felt that way going into a Foxboro Hot Tubs gig, their greed was defused by Billie Joe giving himself so freely that it left no reason to demand or expect anything more.

I think that maybe out of all the things that made these shows great, it was the generosity of the band members, and not just Billie Joe, that stood out the most. Everyone has their own reasons and their own wants in attending something like this, but I have to think that whatever they might have been, most of them were fulfilled. For myself, I don’t especially want to physically grab onto the guys. Not that I’m against it, and, uh, it was nice to have Billie Joe squish me when he lunged into the crowd, but it just made me laugh. It was delightful, but my feeling was not, “Oh-my-bejeezus I’m touching him!” (Not that there’s anything wrong with that feeling, or any other, for that matter.) What I really love is the show: the music, plus the antics, the silliness, the banter, the interaction, physical and otherwise, the vintage aesthetic of this particular tour… the whole package. So I’m glad I caught a great performance in New Orleans and not entirely sorry that I missed the drunken excesses of a stop like San Diego, for instance. Don’t get me wrong, even if I had been treated to an hour of nothing but drunken rantings from the Reverend, I would have been delighted. But, call me boring, I prefer to hear their music.

A photo of the melee at the Roxy show:

[ Source ]
(Sorry, I had the wrong source. I fixed it.)

Here’s a couple of photos a fan took of the Foxboro Hot Tubs show in San Diego on May 26. 1, 2. [ Source ]

The guy who shot the photos wrote:

After a couple songs, people were increasingly jumping on stage to give Billie Joe a hug. Definitely was cool to see him (and the rest of the band) interact freely with the fans and basically tell security it was alright. Billie Joe took some guy’s Guinness and pounded it on stage–the guy was still in disbelief after the show.

The number of people running up onto stage completely stalled the set to a standstill. Then they let one guy play bass (poorly) for like a minute while Billie Joe and Mike poured PBR into his mouth.

Some random shirtless guy and I also became the good samaritans who made sure the crowd surfers had a smooth landing. Meanwhile I’m having more PBR thrown on me by the band. Good f’n times.

And by the end of the show, everybody was rushing the stage….so security had their hands full. Finally was able to whip out the camera and get a couple photos with the flash on.

Read the whole post here.

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