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@Dakke, your posts are always so insightful and I really appreciate them. Your analysis of the behind-the-scenes situation with 21CB is very accurate, I believe. Just maybe a month or two ago, for some reason I felt the need to go back and read their Rolling Stone article from the beginning of that era. And I was blown away by how negative it read. Nothing about it was happy or exciting or hopeful, it was all about what a monster it was to create and how Billie was nervous about his kids listening to some of the darker things he wrote. It's interesting though—all that laboring over the album could definitely be viewed as forced, but I genuinely think it's one of their absolute best albums. I actually like the loose storyline of 21CB better than the more concrete one in AI. I love how Billie plays with identity and who you are versus what you project to the world. How Christian thinks Gloria is this amazing person, only to realize she's just a junkie preaching to the choir, and how Christian rages against "the enemy" only to realize he's his own worst enemy—it is brilliant writing in my mind.

Thank you very much for your feedback. I love discussing matters with you since your posts are also very insightful and in-depth. 21st Century Breakdown is undoubtedly lyrically their most brilliant album. The story, however, should have been less vague. It loses its thread after Peacemaker and only picks it up with Restless Heart Syndrome. Had it been thoroughly fleshed out, the record would have equaled American Idiot storywise. Sometimes a magnum opus can drive an artist crazy to his own detriment. Psychologically Christian is a very interesting character, particularly how his thoughts and perception of the world relate to Billie's own perspective on the things he writes about. Billie's personal state of mind is almost tangible in songs like Restless Heart Syndrome and See the Light. 21CB is on a personal level brutally honest when one looks past the literal meaning of its lyrical brilliance and pierces the dramatic opacity of Christian and Gloria which separates the creator from the listener. I cherish this record intensely because I don't think Billie wants to top it. Few legendary acts have produced more than two distinctive rock operas. They stand next to Pink Floyd and Rush in having accomplished that, but even they couldn't keep churning out such epic records for longer than a decade without some loss of quality. 21CB is the apex of their rock opera era, but also the end of it. They have completed that part of their musical voyage and have moved on and rightly so, for those who try recapture halcyon grandeur by re-enacting their heydays only end up blemishing their legacy. I can talk for days about the significance of this record for them as a band and what it meant for me as a listener and a person.

The gap was due to the difficult writing and conception process of 21st Century Breakdown. It took them 40 months from January 2006 to the end of recording in April 2009. Remember that they needed a third that amount of time to conceive, write and record American Idiot in its entirety (now I do believe Billie certainly drew some inspiration thematically and structurally from Warning, particularly Warning (political) and Misery (story)). It was a very frustrating process and Billie actually created the Hot Tubs alter ego to be away from the new album for a while. The Hot Tubs were their wild, unencumbered counterpart, but it's also around that time (2008) that Billie started drinking more extensively again. In the context of the wild FBHT shows, that posed no cause for concern, but in hindsight it sowed the seeds for the excessive abuse in the period between Broadway musical opening and iHeart. Therefore the long and frustrating creation of 21CB contributed indirectly to him going off the rails and even then Billie knew things were going wrong. If you listen to Restless Heart Syndrome and See the Light and pay close attention to the lyrics, there's a personal darkness lurking behind the conceptional gloom which was only fully revealed on Dos! Now to return to the matter at hand, I don't believe it impacted the quality of the individual songs in a negative way. Save for Know Your Enemy, they are all lyrically of the best musical craftsmanship. The overall story, however, shouldn't have been there in the first place and suffered under the grand ambition to create an even longer and more epic record than AI. With its 70 minute length standard edition, it flirts with the limit of how long a single record can be without losing quality. The gap of course also allowed for more polish, but I don't think the storyline benefitted from the prolonged conception of the record. It almost certainly took a great toll on Billie's mind and body and is probably culpable of giving way to Billie's abuse post release. Rock operas are very time and energy-consuming to write and produce, particularly to keep a story straight and sensible throughout. There's a reason why the Who never wrote a third rock opera after Quadrophenia. Rush stated very explicitly that the troublesome recording process of their fourth opera Hemisphere led them towards more conventional, non-concept records, starting with Permanent Waves.

I still have all my old 90s Green Day tshirts in a box in my attic. My favorite was always the chef doggie one where he's holding a bowl of liquid shit 😆 For the longest time my parents wouldn't let me get the one that said "eat your parents" on it, and I think I eventually found it at a thrift store years later. I never realized until recently when looking at some sold auctions just how much those old shirts go for sometimes. I probably have next month's mortgage payment sitting in my attic (not that I want to sell them!) 😜

Christie Road is a staple this tour and both 2000 Lightyears Away and Private Ale should be represented. Not sure about Holden since they played it often during the 21CB tour, but definitely possible since it's Billie's favorite. I always forget about Bab's. Anyways, Walking Contradiction would be a worthy substitute. Personally I'd love to have something else from Warning besides Minority and Waiting. Mopefully they also perform 21CB songs aside from Know Your Enemy. Personally, I was very pleasantly surprised they played Murder City live during the 1-2-3-4 Records benefit show.

I'm really hoping that Kerplunk and Insomniac will get some good exposure on the tour! I'd do literally anything to see 80, Holden, Stuart and Bab's live in person

I agree with you! The Tre! album solo's are really great, they always catch my ear and keep me rockin' out! Whole album is massively underrated. This song is phenomenal.

Consider this a silent plead to Green Day: please do another Facebook live.

I wonder if GD will do another Facebook live at some point during the tour? I want them to do a Facebook live because the Facebook live threads in this forum have been so hilarious

That's true, great remark from you, they're definitely able to put out quality in quantity, altough it happened under different circumstances, I think that's fair to say. Also the gap between the AI and 21stCB was 5 years, but I'm not sure if it had some impact or big influence on the song's quality.

What's funny is around the 21CB era, GD released 2 hours of material as well which was of higher quality. In 2008 they released Stop Drop & Roll which was 32 minutes, then they released 21CB in 2009 which was 69 minutes long. And they released the B-sides and Bonus tracks which in total was about 24 minutes of material. In total that's 125 minutes (2 hours 5 minutes).

Tis the one I mentioned in the fangirl thread. I hope you enjoy.

a couple of video from 2010 USA Character Approved Award

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I found the old journal I kept when I was 9 years old, in one entry I wrote that my dad bought me 1039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours because I got a good report card

Literally JUST got this done an hour and a half ago. I love it

Cute.