My car finally crapped out and I'd become reliant on public transportation and my skateboard, which helped me learn the city. I'd spend days lurking around the art hallways looking at projects or I'd bring my board and go skate the train station nearby, sometimes I just wandered the streets.
GREEN DAY was rumored to be coming through and that was DEFINETLY gonna be THE bill if the winter to be on. I'd called Matt at MacGregors a few times to pester him, but it was more of a formality. We knew we didn't suck anymore, but the last time he'd seen us was the trainwreck the previous summer and I didn't blame him for politely brushing us off. To my great surprise though, one day there Matt was, on our answering machine, offering Lunkhead the first slot on the four slot Green Day bill! Fuck yeah!
Naturally, Green Day were one of my favorite bands-they were one if EVERBODY'S favorite bands! You'd have to have been a fucking retard not to notice they were NBT. And by NBT, I mean the Next Big Thing, which is a rad term I picked up from Sassy magazine. But Nirvana were getting played out, punk rock was the obvious next step for the corporate culture vultures, and they were circling above Green Day.
Every single person we knew was going to the show, and not necessarily because of us, but we did convince them to get there early enough to see us play. We flyered like mad, knowing full well it didn't matter one bit. This show was gonna be huge.
Show morning arrived snowy. Really snowy. Fuck. The ONE thing that could fuck up our show. Those dudes are from California. How are they gonna deal with a fucking blizzard? The rumor was that they were touring in an old bookmobile. Who'd wanna drive THAT thing in a fucking blizzard? Shit. We told ourselves that people would go anyway because it's Green Day, yet spent all day fielding phone calls asking if the show was still going on. Not a good sign. We'd all grown up here and we were questioning driving half an hour in this shit. They'd be driving all day in it. I called Matt at the club and he said he'd heard nothing from them so he was assuming they'd show. We loaded up the cars, filled our gas tanks for extra weight, and headed out slowly through the snow towards Elmhurst.
It took a couple hours but we still got there an hour early, and found the parking lot already half full, but no Green Day yet. We loaded in and went right on stage, setting up for sound check. The guys tuned up while I went looking for Matt. When I found him, there was still no word, but we gotta be optimistic, right? he said.
Optimistic, schmoptomistic. By the time we were supposed to play, any sting of a possible Green Day no-show was greatly diminished by the fact that the place was fucking PACKED! Rumor was that there was 500 paid before we even started. So, Lunkhead squeezed it's way to the stage, all fully aware of what happened last time we were on it, and were absolutely determined to erase that aberration.
And we did. We howled through the set like our hair was on fire, were on it both musically and banter-wise (which is equally important). I've have more than one person tell me we were the best band that night. While I appreciate the compliment (the other bands were SMOKING POPES, BOLLWEEVILS, and APOCALYPSE HOBOKEN, all heavy hitters) and politely disagree, I mention it because I think it proves Ruvolo's theory about there always being ONE person in every crowd...
So, Green Day did eventually show up and played a great set to a way, WAAAAAYYYY oversold room. Noone could believe the turnout considering the snow, but it made us wonder who many people woulda showed up if it was 45 and sunny.
I remember standing with Pete watching Green Day and overhearing these two yuppie-types (there'd been more and more of them around lately) talking about Green Day, saying "this is the last time you'll see them in a place like this.". Prophetic words, indeed...
