Location:
The Viper Room in Hollywood, USA
Date:
July 19, 1997
Notes:
Secret show, performed as "Nimrod"
MTV: "Green Day and a very small number of fans are going to have to be content with the show the band played at the tiny Viper Room in Los Angeles, which was a secret warm up date for Fuji. The rest of the world probably won't have to wait too long, though. The band should be touring by early fall. They have dates booked in Europe for September and October."
Los Angeles Times: "Green Day, performing as Nimrod, lit up the Viper Room in West Hollywood on Saturday night, where it not only offered its hits but also performed Survivor's 'Eye of the Tiger'. S'pose the guys were in a roaring good mood and we know why. The band agreed to perform at the Viper Room on the condition there would be no 'industry list', which meant more room for true fans - who included Johnny Ramone and Winona Ryder, by the way - so when the band passed the mic during its performance of "Longview," the audience was chock-full of participants who actually knew all the words..."
"Billed as Nimrod, Green Day will end their one-year silence on Saturday, July 19 when they emerge from the studio to perform a not-so-secret secret show at actor Johnny Depp's Viper Room, according to their Reprise Records publicist Jim Baltutis. The group, who have been busy working on their follow-up to 1995's Insomniac, haven't played live since last August and picked the date as a warm-up for their gig at the Mt. Fuji Festival in Japan on July 26-27. 'They're finishing up recording in the next few days, then they fly to LA for the show, back up here (San Francisco) to see their kids and then off to Japan,' said Baltutis, who also revealed the names of five songs that will pop up on the new album, Nimrod. The songs, 'Prosthetic Head', 'Hitchin' A Ride', 'Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)', 'Jinx' and 'Haushinka' are just a portion of the more than 30 songs the group has written for this album, which, as previously reported, will be considerably longer than their past releases. 'You'll hear horns, maybe some strings, but you'll definitely have close to the full 72 minutes possible on a CD,' Baltutis said, adding that the album will be mixed during August and the first single should be out around Labor Day, with the album now penciled-in for a late-October release. I heard the track 'Uptight' the other day and it's just classic Green Day..."
"Rather than waxing ecstatic about Green Day's pop/punk prowess, a few phrases can better summarize their last-minute warm-up gig at the Viper Room in LA on Saturday: 'Fuck you, assholes!' 'Can we get a few more beers up here?' 'What's the next song? ... Shut up!' and 'Drinks are on our good friend Johnny Depp.' Needless to say, singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool were their usual smart-ass, beer-drinking, carefree selves. Playing for over an hour, they packed their set with most of their hits (sans 'Walking Contradiction') and scarcely tested out their new material, including 'Chump' and 'Hitchin' A Ride', from their forthcoming album Nimrod, due in late October (probably Oct. 21) on Reprise. (They billed themselves as Nimrod on the Viper Room marquee too.) That Dog's Petra Haden even played violin on one song. The real highlights of the show lay in Armstrong's apparent drunkeness: Several times, he 'blessed' the audience with his Heineken. He dissed Foo Fighter Dave Grohl when, after playing a few songs from commercials, such as the 'Tony the Tiger' theme, a fan suggested he do the Mentos song. To that, Armstrong replied, 'I'm not Dave fucking Grohl. I'm a guitarist, I'm a drummer. I'm a grummer.' And he mocked Prodigy with this nonsensical musical moment, 'I'm the Firestarter too... I'm the cookie cutter,' sung in what seemed to be a Chinese accent. The happy campers further worked the over-packed room into a frenzy by teasing the audience with snippets of their usual cover songs: Survivor's 'Eye of the Tiger', Ozzy Osbourne's 'Crazy Train', and Scorpions' 'Rock You Like a Hurricane'. They also led into 'Longview' with a few chords from Marilyn Manson's 'Beautiful People'. Regardless of the many fuck you's and shut up's to the audience, the band members were quite kind to their fans. At one point, Armstrong had the side door opened, grabbed a kid from the end of the line, and brought him inside the club. The somewhat frightened - but clearly elated - kid, was then stripped of his eyeglasses and forced to stage dive. Throughout the night, the singer allowed other fans onstage to stage dive and sing or rant into his mic."
