Green Day @ 924 Gilman Street (May 28, 1989)

May 28, 1989

Green Day

Setlist

No known setlist for this show.

Concert poster

Green Day concert poster

Performers

Show notes

"Long before Operation Ivy took the stage, it had become impossible to keep track of the doors or to stop people from cramming their way in. Gilman’s legal capacity is 300; paid admissions were more than twice that, and a reasonable estimate might be that a thousand people somehow shoehorned themselves into the tiny warehouse. Other bands on the bill were the Lookouts, Crimpshrine (in what turned out to be their last show as well), Surrogate Brains, and, playing first, a young band who'd just put out their first 7", Green Day."

the mean: "This was Op Ivy's 'last show' (they actually played a house party the next night). Because my parents kept track of the mileage in the car I was borrowing, and I wasn't allowed to drive to Bay Area, I busted the front panel off and took a screwdriver to the odometer. I got busted, but don't regret it for a second. I got to see a piece of history. 700 people inside a warehouse that holds about 250 comfortably."

Larry Livermore: "Green Day played first, followed by the Surrogate Brains and Crimpshrine. Then it was the Lookouts' turn. Pushing my way toward the stage, dragging a guitar case that felt more like an anvil, I told myself there was no reason to be nervous. The vast majority of the crowd didn't care who we were or what we did as long as we hurried up and got out of the way so they could see Op Ivy. I wasn't on drugs, and I don't think I'd even been drinking, but when I tuned up, plugged in, and looked at the crowd in front of me, all I could see was faces piled like so many billiard balls from floor to ceiling. And when I slipped a pick between my sweaty fingers and struck the first chord of Living Behind Bars, it was like slamming an electronic cue ball down the middle of those racked faces and watching them explode to a multi-directional frenzy. I barely remember anything after that. The biggest show of my life and I missed most of it. People tell me we played well, but I'll have to take their word for it, because my next conscious thought was that 30 minutes had gone by and it was time for us to get off the stage. When Op Ivy finally came on, it felt almost anticlimatic. They seemed tired, disjointed, at loose ends. Much of the joy and excitement had been drained out of them. At times it almost looked as though they were going through the motions, like a divorcing couple trying to stay civil for the sake of kids. Even if it was the case, the crowd never noticed. They kept cheering wildly until the band had played pretty much every song they'd ever known, wrapping up with an extended dub version of Hedgecore, their hymn to the pecuilar East Bay sport of diving into hedges."

Performance stats

11th of 37 in 1989
6th of 72 in Berkeley
16th of 1157 in USA

Attendance

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Notable

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