New Longshot Shows

[desertrose]

 

[Virginia Lot Lizard]

4 hours ago, Beerjeezus said:

He said it before Missing You.

Me too! They're fun and it's a pity Green Day don't play them. This makes it seem like he thinks no one wants to hear them, which makes me sad, because I do.

He said that?? Anyway, I listen to the Trilogy way more than I listened to Rev Rad or 21stCBD (and I like those records too I just feel more from the Trilogy and think the songs are fun too).

I don’t think I’m alone in understanding how great the Trilogy can be. Super interesting and seems very real sounding. I like the flow of the records and the different textures and feels. 

Actually makes me sad he said he wrote 36 songs and nobody listened haha but it does make me sad for real! DEAR BILLIE: THOSE ARE AWESOME SONGS!!!! And lots of us listen to them and move them! Love them a lot! 

[desertrose]

 

 

[Asik]

22 minutes ago, Virginia Lot Lizard said:

He said that?? Anyway, I listen to the Trilogy way more than I listened to Rev Rad or 21stCBD (and I like those records too I just feel more from the Trilogy and think the songs are fun too).

I don’t think I’m alone in understanding how great the Trilogy can be. Super interesting and seems very real sounding. I like the flow of the records and the different textures and feels. 

Actually makes me sad he said he wrote 36 songs and nobody listened haha but it does make me sad for real! DEAR BILLIE: THOSE ARE AWESOME SONGS!!!! And lots of us listen to them and move them! Love them a lot! 

 This!     Also Tre is the best album i have ever heard. Its so emotional, fun, catchy and sad. American idiot is definitely more powerful and aggressive, but it doesnt have that same cute little vibe. Billie, if you ever read this, know that youre a pure genius, dont doubt yourself and never stop experimenting.

[desertrose]

 

 

[Scentless Apprentice]

On 6/8/2019 at 9:42 AM, Asik said:

That rockaway beach is a very bad song. No idea why they keep playing it

It's the Ramones and it kicks ass...

[LaughingClock]

Possibly have an extra ticket for LA show. First priority to travelers: HMU.

[desertrose]

 

[Beerjeezus]

6 hours ago, Hermione said:

Can you point me towards a video of it? I'm useless .  I listened to it Billie  

I got the quote from a text post by a person who was at Pappy & Harriet's. I'm still looking for a video too...  I listened to it and I complained about it but I still want to hear those songs. It makes me sad if he's not playing these songs because he thinks no one wants to hear them. I do!

[desertrose]

 

 

[Hermione]

22 minutes ago, Beerjeezus said:

I got the quote from a text post by a person who was at Pappy & Harriet's. I'm still looking for a video too...  I listened to it and I complained about it but I still want to hear those songs. It makes me sad if he's not playing these songs because he thinks no one wants to hear them. I do!

Thanks! I'll be on the look out for it then. Poor Billie  

[pacejunkie punk]

I’m sorry too that he feels that way but it’s not reality there are a lot of fans of those albums. They suffered in sales for a host of reasons — rehab, too much material at once, declining music sales in general— but I would never describe those songs as ones no one listened to.  As a classic power pop fan I love those songs and they are at the top of GD albums I play over and over. 

[Squashie]

50 minutes ago, Beerjeezus said:

It makes me sad if he's not playing these songs because he thinks no one wants to hear them. I do!

Well shit, that just broke my little heart. I wanna hear them too!!! The ones he's played with Longshot so far have great energy and clearly the crowd is loving them because they are going nuts. 

[¡Nunes!]

4 hours ago, DadBod said:

Well shit, that just broke my little heart. I wanna hear them too!!! The ones he's played with Longshot so far have great energy and clearly the crowd is loving them because they are going nuts. 

It bothers me that at every GD show there's someone with a sign written "Play [any name of an old song]". I get it, I love the old stuff too, but maybe we just need more signs that say "I love X-Kid" or "Stay the Night > Welcome to Paradise" so they understand and bring it back to the setlist.

Living outside the US it kills me that these Longshot concerts may be the only opportunity to hear a song like Missing You live. I attended 4 shows in 2017 and as much as I loved to hear Armatage Shanks and Scattered I'd have loved equally to hear X-Kid or anything from trilogy.

Back to Longshot shows, Billie seems to have so much fun with small audiences, It's not just warming up for GD, it's enjoying life.

 

 

[The Bellie]

In Oakland, one of the fans I spoke with told me, in reply to me saying that I absolutely love the trilogy, that I was the first fan she ever heard saying that. It slightly surprised me, because the same evening I heard other fans saying they loved some trilogy songs, and especially because on here there are clearly a lot of people who love the trilogy as well. It saddens me that these may still be "underrated" albums, especially in comparison to some other albums, but I must say I'm glad that Billie keeps loving these songs he wrote, as proven by his disappointment that they aren't listened (according to him). Maybe he meant that at the time they came out, they didn't got the listen they deserved, at least not up to everything he put in it, and that now that he plays them with The Longshot, only then they seem to get more success, and he points that out... I don't know. But I definitely hope he'll keep playing a bit of them here and there with GD as well. To me it doesn't matter so much if they don't give them much more place in the setlist, the fact Billie loves these songs makes me happy, cause I love them so much.

Some of you mentioned piano covers of songs, I don't know if some here use guitar pro but you can listen separately to each track (each instrument), and listening to the brass and keyboard on Brutal Love is a blessing  you can see how Billie worked it hard to arrange all the parts together. I say Billie even though he was not alone... but I bet it's mostly him. I don't know why some people here think the trilogy songs got "rushed" and got out when they weren't perfected yet, well I understand but I don't think that way at all, to me it's obvious that the big work was there, and too much rather than not enough. Billie must've put so much of his heart in it, and the number of songs made he disappointment bigger when the popularity wasn't nearly as wide as for the previous albums. Just a word about Walk Away, I'm thinking of it now, when I saw a few days ago with a post on GDC that it was a song written in the early 2000's, it surprised me at first because I thought it was perfectly suited for the trilogy era. Like, the bigger that you come, the harder you're gonna fall, is like an auto-prophecy about the trilogy's outcome. Well, maybe one doesn't prevent the other, Billie did end up putting it on a trilogy record. If I ever get to meet him one day and ask him about lyrics, I would really like to ask him about this song.

Okay, now time for my review of the Oakland gig on Saturday 8th!

* * *

I got a ticket by buying one as soon as it was been sold... Really doing not much with my life now, well I'm doing stuff but not working again yet and it ain't easy, so I really needed something crazy like that to get me started again. And in fact as soon as I was on the way back to France I only thought of one thing: how good I felt when I was working, hard but with pleasure, and glad to earn my own life, and to be able to attend shows with my money, like I did the 2 previous years. This time my parents paid me the trip (not that expensive, but still...). They don't seem to get my hype but get how important it was for me. I'm really grateful to them but boy do I need to get independent again!

So, I arrived in Oakland on Friday night. The plane was almost 2 hours late. I had planned to go where the venue was, and decide if I would then reach my hotel to drop my stuff and go back and sleep outside, or if I was going to actually sleep in the hotel room after checking the venue. My concern was to be 1st row, I'd never been at a Longshot shot yet. So I get out from the 12th street Bart at something past 11 pm... I notice the venue... I hear a gig going on. Before even recognizing the music, I recognize Billie's voice. In fact, I had misread the Longshot post about dates and thought the 2 Oakland gigs were on Saturday and Sunday. So I understand then that I have misread. Impossible to go back to my hotel to drop my stuff, I get closer to the gig. The bodyguard is quite cool and after a few minutes, he allows me to get in without paying, as I said I have a ticket for the next evening, and he sees me with my loaded backpack plus another bag. I still manage to jump a bit in the back rows. There wasn't as much people as the following day; I managed to see Billie quite good even like that. His voice was powerful, gorgeous, perfect, that's all I can say, and what struck me. The advantage from being a little afar from the stage is you can hear the full rendition of the microphone. It's so much better when you hear it live than recorded through a camera... Some of you here may know I'm not a huge fan of cameras at shows, I never pull out my phone; I appreciate live streams of shows I haven't been to, for audio when they're taken from far, and for video when they're taken from close and good quality, but I swear in real it's much better. Your senses catch things a camera will never catch... apart maybe from at a time robots will have taken over on humans lol!

So, after the end of that show I caught unawarely, I stayed with a few fans to wait if Billie would come out. We stayed outside. Only, outside, there were as much of people bearing vinyls, guitars and other stuff they wanted to get signed by Billie. Some fans told me these people wanted to get them signed just to resell them. In fact, when the band came out at nearly 2 am, these people jumped on Billie who couldn't accord us any minute then. He just headed straight to the car with the rest of the band. The next day I learned that he had stayed for a minute inside before going out and had met a handful of fans there. So I had chosen the wrong strategy by waiting outside. I was disappointed but headed for my hotel to get some rest. Walking in Downtown Oakland at night is something, it's desert apart from a few drunk and homeless people, and cars. But it's not very different from Paris really. There's a similitude as for the abundant youth and dancing ambiance alongside bold aggressiveness/poverty that shows up at night especially. I went by a few young, visibly drunk dudes who said, just as they saw me: "Oh my god, I wouldn't like to be a girl alone at night!" and I just thought that the one thing I was afraid of was to not meet Billie the following day. It ended up happening that way... I wonder, with the number of people present, the number of fans surrounding him, if it would had been a really satisfying encounter anyway, to get to speak to him in that context. Maybe it depends on the show... But I don't live close enough to be spoiled for choice!

* * *

I slept one hour (after one already messed up plane night), the time to unpack my stuff, and to get back there at 6:30 am. I arrived second. I was practically assured to get the front row... I was happy about it. The fans I met were all nice. We allowed each other to come and go, do our stuff, get to our hotels, buy food, take a walk... as I would only stay in Oakland for barely 2 days after the show, I was happy to have a little time to spend wandering around from then already. I tasted some local wine and it was really good. I was going from happiness and hope to depression, waiting for the hours to pass in the heat. Many of the fans would be doing other Longshot shows of that small tour, and I was among the only ones not to have met Billie once. I was envious of them. I was trying to reasoning myself, to get to appreciate being there even so, even if I wouldn't meet him. I had thoughts like "the others are good enough to meet him, but I wouldn't, he wouldn't like me anyway, etc." I think I managed to calm myself down for the time of the show... So, when at around 11 pm (I didn't take my phone to look) they finally came on stage (after 2 opening bands I really appreciated, the 2nd one was Dead Sound, the first one I don't know the name but I liked it as much) I was really happy. I had already seen Billie from 2nd row at a Longshot show but front row was much better. The level of the stage was quite low but we hanged on the monitors in front of us. I didn't get too much bumped throughout the show, it was all fun, except the crowdsurfers that we had to keep a bit of our attention on.

I had an amazing view. Billie was like fifty centimeters away from me... He looked rested, relaxed, happy, in good shape. Keeping my eyes straight I was seeing his hand strumming on the guitar. And his bellie also quite well!  I didn't dare put my hand forward to touch him, but at one point when he put his foot on the border of the stage right next to our hands, I dropped a kiss on my hand and lay it on his shoe. I was afraid of getting face-bumped if I'd kiss his shoe directly, lol! and didn't want to make something too showy. It was still a very precious moment to me. If I had met him I would've kissed his hands, that's something I really wanna do, think of it what you will! His hands are very handsome. As for his feet, I didn't find them small for his height. The only other time I touched him was when he quickly touched the hands of everyone on the front row before leaving.

Some people crowdsurfed up to the stage, and embraced him before jumping back. The first one was a girl just getting on the stage from a side, who kissed him (I don't recall where on the face) and then he told her to jump in the crowd. She was scared but did it. And then they played Fell For You and the line "steal a kiss and took a dive" just took all its sense. But people were doing just a bit too much of crowdsurfing and annoying the first row, especially my side, they always got on the stage from there! I had spent enough time and energy not to have to lose all these precious minutes to pay attention to people threatening to kick me in the face... Happily I didn't get hurt. At one point, one tall male fan behind me, who was picking up all the crowdsurfers due to his height and placement, angrily threw on the stage, instead of dropping him, one of them who just kept doing it, I thought it was a fair revenge for all of us front 

* * *

The moment when Billie lay down and asked a fan to hold the mic for him was one of the best. The hottest assuredly. I got to speak to that fan and she was very sweet. I really melted when Billie grabbed the mic so as to bring it closer down. And he sang and played almost with closed eyes then. I was so absorbed in it  One of the moments I also recall well is when the fan on my left lifted up her phone to him, he got closer, understood she was waiting for him to say something in it, and he just said "No!" with an friendly-annoyed tone, turning his head on the side. Then I don't know what he said but we had the first eye contact I remember of the show. It was too quick to really discern the expression he had then. Maybe, by getting distracted by this and that, I missed a few eye contacts opportunities, but it's true that he shares his look with all the fans and not only the front rows.

The second eye contact I recall is when he was about to crouch down for a solo or something. He looked at me, and then I turned my head towards him. It's funny because I didn't get any direct thing but he just seemed to look as if he was observing me. It lasted a split second, I saw his big green eyes at me and it was lovely and intimidating, and then he got back to play his solo and I thought "why do you look furtively at me like that?"  But it was still great. It was the only thing I got from him really, furtive looks, because I didn't get to meet him after. On the contrary to the previous evening where he still got to quickly meet a few fans, there he didn't meet any. He got out at 2:30 with the rest of the band and they jumped in their van. We had been waiting for nearly 2 hours in the freezing cold (after the heat of the gig...), unfortunately, with the same resellers than the previous evening. I was really mad at them... but maybe in any case Billie wouldn't have waited for us, who knows? We still got to say goodbye by waving the hand at the window.

I hadn't practically cried for the evening but the next day I did. I cried of missing the great experience previous evening and sadness that it had stopped to the only show. I was really depressed. Yet, I had woken up after only five hours and didn't feel tired at all (which never happens to me, especially not after 3 hours of sleep in 2 nights!) but I think I wanted to enjoy as much as I could my time there. I got by the sea in Oakland and tried some kayak for the first time. I enjoyed it so much I didn't see three hours pass, the guys had to go and fetch me because they were closing! In the kayak, there was a spider that jumped out and I was so scared I dropped my paddle in the water. I had to swim to get it back, it was fun! The salty water plus the sun burned me really hard! But it was worth it, I really needed to decompress from the emotions, and all I had put in that last-minute trip with the (deceived) hope of meeting Billie at last... Maybe next time.

[Matt3BJ]

Is there any new merchandise?? I am going to tomorrow nights show at the Teragram Ballroom and am hoping to pick up the new tour poster for a friend. Was that or anything new available? Thank you very much to those who have been to this second round of Longshot shows. Take care everyone! -Matt

[silver]

1 hour ago, The Bellie said:

In Oakland, one of the fans I spoke with told me, in reply to me saying that I absolutely love the trilogy...

 

Still, i had an amazing view. Billie was like fifty centimeters away from me... Keeping my eyes straight I was seeing his hand strumming on the guitar. I didn't dare put my hand forward to touch him, but at one point hen he put his foot on the border o the stage right next to our hands, I dropped a kiss on my hand and put it on his shoe. I as afraid of getting face-bumped if I'd kiss his shoe directly, lol! and didn't want to make something too showy. It was still 

I was really enjoying reading about your experience in Oakland (did you come all the way from France for the show???), but it looks like your post cut off - is there more to it?

[The Bellie]

10 minutes ago, silver said:

I was really enjoying reading about your experience in Oakland (did you come all the way from France for the show???), but it looks like your post cut off - is there more to it?

Thanks! I just edited it, I had clicked on the Save button too quickly, typing error  it's pretty long now!

Yeah, I came all the way from France, as I did it last year for 2 different Longshot shows!

[petros]

I'm so glad they are dropping the trilogy songs yeah Billie Joe nobody wants to hear subpar lyrics about nothing and uninspired guitar riffs. It's a shame some of Mike's greatest work gets hurried in those bad albums. 

It feels kinda weird seeing them perform green day songs though. I don't like it. 

[Virginia Lot Lizard]

The Longshot and the Trilogy go hand in hand and it’s a beautiful thing for those who understand it. The best stuff. The real stuff. Love it so much.

[desertrose]

 

[Clockwise]

I've posted this elsewhere but The Longshot does feel like it would be the follow up to the trilogy if the trilogy was successful.

[DookieLukie]

9 minutes ago, Clockwise said:

I've posted this elsewhere but The Longshot does feel like it would be the follow up to the trilogy if the trilogy was successful.

Maybe this is what @LaughingClock meant when he said that the Longshot had some other purpose or meaning (not sure his exact words).

[greenday4924]

I was at the pappy&harriets show and I'm pretty sure Billie actually said "...36 songs no one really listens to" - a bit different in meaning.

Also, did any other GDC members wait around for him afterwards? There were like 12 of us who waited a couple hours before being kicked off the property haha.

[¡Nunes!]

2 hours ago, The Bellie said:

Yeah, I came all the way from France, as I did it last year for 2 different Longshot shows!

That's awesome! After the first tour I promised myself I'd go to US to attend the next Longshot shows, but the really short time between announcement and the shows prevented me to follow the plan