~In Billie-Joe’s-hair news, Billie is now blond… Photos from Dortmund, Oct. 14.

~Photos of Mike Dirnt’s wedding. Not new, but quite lovely.

~Some nice photos of Green Day playing in Hamburg. Click on the pic below Fotostrecke. Good fan pics from Cologne and Copenhagen.

I’ve been out of town, so I’m just catching up. Here are some pretty cool photos from the European tour. This one is from earlier today in Barcelona:

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See the set of photos: Green Day in Barcelona Oct. 1, 2009.
More photos, including Kevin Preston and Tre. Another set from Barcelona.

More photos, always, on greenday.com and GDA.

These were posted on Flickr by Grayfamilia. There’s no info on when or where they were taken, but they are clearly uh, historic. I love the old-old stuff, and some of the expressions are pretty great. There doesn’t seem to be much of an audience. The only person you can see is a guy standing there with his hands in his pockets. The venue looks like a dingy basement, but true to form, the band are giving it their all.

That’s Mister Future Rock Star to you…

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(G.B.H. — on the t-shirt — is a very early UK street punk band, formed in 1982.)

More: Billie Joe, Billie Joe, Mike and Tre, Mike, Mike, Tre at a playground?

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Related posts:
Old photos from previous posts.

I got an email about a new book, coming out September 29: Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day. It’s an oral history of punk rock in San Francisco’s Bay Area, told in quotes by people who were there, including Billie Joe Armstrong. I haven’t seen the book, but the website has a fair amount of info and some excerpts, and it looks pretty exciting for anyone interested in Green Day’s history and the mindset and ideals of the scene that nurtured and informed them from their early days, ideals that the members of Green Day still hold dear.

The introduction by Jesse Michaels of Operation Ivy sums it up with an unpretentious sophistication and insight that kind of blew me away. An excerpt:

Many of the people who speak here are as smart and creative as it gets. That is the nature of people who are right there in the forge when a universe is being hammered out. Also featured are many complete morons. That is the nature of people that show up when there is a lot of loud noise and alcohol available. The stories of the great artists aren’t necessarily more fun to read than those of the train-wrecks. And of course, particularly in the early days, most people in punk were a little bit of each.

Punk rock doesn’t usually get a lot of credit for being smart, but an art form that has generated so much inspiration and devotion has to have a substantial core. A casual observer might not go to a punk show and come away thinking, “These guys (or gals) are geniuses.” And it would be hard to blame him, but if he was there, say, for an early Crimpshrine or Operation Ivy show, he may well have missed out by not looking beyond the drunkenness and mayhem to see the underlying strange blend of chaos, stupidity, intelligence, wit, imagination, love, and idealism. (Read the book’s chapter on Crimpshrine, Aaron Cometbus’s early band, including a quote from Billie Joe.)

Discussions of Green Day’s punk roots usually devolve into tiresome debates on whether or not they are a punk rock band — or, even more dismayingly, on what punk is, usually by people who have little information about the subject — which miss the point and confuse the issue. Green Day is a punk band because they were there, right in the bosom of a thriving and exciting scene that was evolving and creating a unique interpretation of punk. The sweetness and catchiness of Green Day’s brand of punk rock was a part of it, and it both added to the mix and drew inspiration from it. It’s easy to miss that essence when Green Day’s music and performances are experienced within the context of mainstream music, as they inevitably are now, and easy to confuse Green Day with just another music industry product. But if one were to set all of that aside, and look instead at their origins, and at the people who helped create the scene that the band grew out of, it would paint a different picture. Green Day is still that same band, that cares deeply about creativity, idealism, and authenticity.

That’s why I love projects like this book. It’s a chance to clear out the cobwebs and be reminded what it is about Green Day that feels so special. And also to be reminded that they didn’t forge themselves out of nothing, but that there are many people, in the East Bay punk scene and elsewhere, whose intelligence and imagination helped make Green Day who they are.

Photo of Billie Joe by Murray Bowles, from the Gimme Something Better website.

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Related posts:
Compilation: 12 Bands from Benicia

~Paparazzi photos of Mike Dirnt and family in New York July 29. (The baby is Brixton, presumably, not Estelle who is much older.) I dislike the intrusion but love the photos…

~Geekstinkbreath has a set of photos from Green Day’s concert in San Jose, including the setlist, and several of Billie Joe’s mom shooting the super-soaker.

~Bob Gruen’s photos of Green Day at Madison Square Garden, including backstage, with family and Courtney Love.

~Some really nice photos from the Atlanta concert from julienphotography. And keep checking all the great photos on GD.com, including Green Day at the White House.

There are so many photos of the current tour it’s hard to know what to post. So I haven’t posted any. But I thought these, by photographer Joe Gall, were pretty cool. Bilie Joe’s expressions are priceless. From lion-maned rock god to goofball in the blink of an eye…

You can see dozens of photos on GreenDay.com and GDA, of course.

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There are some cool new-ish Green Day pics by photographer Ross Halfin. I’m not sure what the deal is with the giving-the-finger-backwards. Maybe Billie Joe feels ambivalent about giving us the finger…? Anyway, I love to see pics with no eyeliner.

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