Location:
The Warfield in San Francisco, USA
Date:
October 20, 1993
Notes:
Incomplete setlist
Gillian G. Gaar, 'Green Day: Rebels With A Cause': "Gina Arnold's book 'Kiss This: Punk In The Present Tense' recounts a more vocal outburst during a show at San Francisco's Warfield Theater, when a detractor in the audience yelled the inevitable, 'Sell outs!' Quick as a flash, Mike responded, 'Takes one to know one!' 'This is about you, buddy,' Billie Joe chimed in, introducing 'Chump'."
ümlaut: "It turned out that Johnny Depp was filming the opening scene of Ed Wood that night in Hollywood. Umlaut also caught the Bad Religion / Green Day tour a couple of weeks later in SF. Billie Joe wore a dress onstage and Tim (Operation Ivy / Rancid) Armstrong stood on the side of the stage during their set. Jayne and I bailed after Green Day. The next time I saw Green Day was 11 years later."
Scott Heller: "I won tickets on the radio by answering what the title of Green Day's first 7" record was! It was the only one that I had! We missed Seaweed and Green Day were pretty entertaining. One of the guys was wearing a dress! All three-chord pop punk stuff. The crowd loved the shit out of them. Bad Religion were excellent and played a good mix of the old and the new stuff. Weird to see them in such a big place. I went to the show with Pete. Last show of this type in the bay area for me. Living in the San Francisco bay area was an incredible experience. Everyone should do it for part of their life. The music scene is hard to beat anywhere in the world."
Santa Maria Sun: "Back in 1993, I was 19 years old and I had it all figured out. I was going spend my life traveling from one concert to the next, partying and interviewing famous rock bands for Rolling Stone magazine. It may sound like I was being naïve, but I did have a backup plan. If things didn't work out with Rolling Stone, I always had Spin magazine as my second choice. This plan seemed logical because I was young and I knew everything, plus I scored a very cool job writing for a little startup magazine in the Bay Area. The monthly magazine was called Deadtrees. (Get it? It was a 'paper,' which comes from trees that were cut down and had died. We thought it was funny back then.) My job for the magazine was to go to concerts and music festivals, be young, party, and then come back with a cool story. Since the statute of limitations has passed, I will admit rum was involved, and the whole adventure was all very Hunter S. Thompson-esque. Before our first issue was to come out, I took a road trip to San Francisco to see a punk band at the Warfield Theater called Bad Religion. I was all set for my first press assignment. My editor scored me some free tickets to the show, but he couldn't pull off backstage passes (I was on my own for that - nobody had ever heard of our magazine since it didn't exist yet). Like any good journalist, I had my little pocket spiral-bound notepad and pencil, and I was ready to take notes about whatever craziness happened with the headliners. But before Bad Religion would take the stage, I had to endure some unknown opening band. I hadn't heard of them and really didn't care at the time. The rumor flowing through the crowd was the opening band was comprised of some local kids from Berkeley. They were called Green Day. Three zit-faced teenagers came out to a very plain and undecorated stage. The only thing on the stage was a bass amp, a guitar amp, a simple drum kit, and two large potted plants. The lead singer, Billie Joe, plugged in his guitar, stood in front of the mic, and then everything changed. He absolutely rocked the Warfield! Green Day had just arrived. The energy was insane, the music was loud and great, and the crowd swirled and moshed upon itself. It was like everyone forgot that Bad Religion was even going to play later that night."
Gina Arnold, 'Kiss This: Punk In The Present Tense': "October 1993. It's midway through Green Day's set at the 2,500-seat Warfield Theater. Not only is it the biggest venue the band has ever played, and the first time they've cracked the Bay Area's BGP curtain (meaning clubs owned or operated by Bill Graham Presents organization), but it is only the second time in their five-year existence that they have played San Francisco. This is the equivalent of a band from Hoboken never having played Manhattan, or a band from Anaheim never playing LA. Berkeley, the band's hometown, is about five miles east across the Bay Bridge. Tonight, Green Day are opening for the band Bad Religion. Green Day are clearly not well known by the majority of the crowd, but their tight poppy punk rock is winning the audience over. The kids - it's a rare all-ages show at the Warfield this night - crush the stage and pogo to songs that sound like what the Ramones would sound like if they were shorter, cuter, more earnest, more energetic, and hell of a lot younger. After a rousing version of 'Don't Leave Me,' from the band's Lookout! LP 39/Smooth, during which singer Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt trade supercharged antics running back and forth cross the stage, the bands stops for a brief breather. 'Hey,' says Billie Joe, who is performing here tonight clad in a fetching white lady's slip, sans underpants. 'I thought they only let old hippies play this joint.' The crowd cheers. 'This,' he continues, 'is a song off our upcoming album.' This time, crowd jeers. Or at least, one member of it does: 'Green Day sucks!' yells a lone voice up front. 'Sell outs!' 'Takes one to know one!' ripostes Dirnt. 'Ah ha ha ... this is about you, buddy,' butts in Billie Joe. The band rips into 'Chump,' which seques neatly into 'Longview.' Halfway through, the band stops dead, hits three power chords, and burst suddenly into 'Eye of the Tiger,' the theme from Rocky II by Frank Stallone. Or was it the theme from Rambo? Whatever: the audience goes fucking insane. Green Day has them in the palm of their hands. They finish up with a couple more numbers, then invite their friends Rancid on stage to sing the old Operation Ivy song 'Knowledge': 'I know that things are getting tougher / when you can't get the top off the bottom of the barrel / Wide open road to my future now - it's looking fucking narrow!' That song - the unofficial anthem for the Gilman Street punk rock scene that has helped Green Day get where they are today - has never sounded less than jubilant, but tonight, as they face down the largest crowd in their life, in the city they couldn't crack, 'triumphant' would be too mild of a word for the atmosphere they're exuding. Tonight, the road for Green Day's future is about as wide as the eye can see."
