Though Green Day is officially touring to promote their latest album, Saviors, this year is also being touted as a 30th and 20th anniversary celebration of their two biggest albums, the 1994 breakthrough effort Dookie and 2004’s unlikely masterpiece, American Idiot, respectively. Both LPs will be played in their entirety at Fenway Park tonight (August 7). Not-so-conspicuously missing from the hype for the mid-week evening at the ballpark is mention of the infamous riot in Boston when the then-snotty-nosed pop-punk trio played a free show on the Esplanade that turned ugly the year Dookie came out.
Hosted by alt-rock radio station WFNX and The Boston Phoenix, the September 9, 1994 performance — which we wrote about for its 20th anniversary — was expected to draw about 5,000 when it was booked that February. Shortly afterward though, Green Day got Green Big, and around 65,000 turned up. Depending on who’s telling the story, things went south when a crowd surge through the barricades led the band to flee the proceedings… or when law enforcement cut the power, pissed at the foul language emanating from the stage and a flowerbed by the guardrail getting ripped up by fans and frontman Billie Joe Armstrong.
It was the ‘90s – don’t ask.
Regardless, the music stopped abruptly less than 20 minutes in, and a generation of kids raised on sugary cereals and Saturday morning cartoons started throwing bottles and doing a bunch of other unrest-y shit. Some 50 people were locked up by police, and a legend was born.
One month away — almost to the day — from the 30th anniversary of the chaos on The Charles, it’ll surely be a much tamer situation in the shadow of the Citgo sign. Still, pour out a Snapple when Dookie gets played and toast to a more testosterone-fueled era.
The rest of the bill tonight is stupid impressive, with support from The Smashing Pumpkins, who last week released their best album in decades, the brilliant Aghori Mhori Mei. Rancid will deliver some additional dirty, Bay Area punk cred, while teen sensations The Linda Lindas show there’s hope for the next generation of the genre, as well as providing a reason to arrive right after doors open.
GREEN DAY + THE SMASHING PUMPKINS + RANCID + THE LINDA LINDAS :: Wednesday, August 7 at Fenway Park, 4 Jersey St. in Boston, MA :: Event info :: Advance tickets
