Welcome HOME Bay Area Legends! (Quote Me On This)

Words cannot describe how absolutely FANTASTIC it was to close out my “summer concert series” by attending the Green Day/AFI show at the Shoreline. Billie Joe, Tre Cool, Mike Dirnt & the gang from AFI ended their long tour at “fuckin’ home” as Billie Joe told the crowd.

VH1 had them on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and they came in at number 91, in my humble eyes, Green Day clearly deserved to be in the top 5 and they are also BAY AREA LEGENDS. 
 
The show at the Shoreline (brought by Live Nation) was all that and a bag of chips. It did not come as a surprise that it was completely SOLD OUT, there was not a spot of grass on the lawn or an empty space and the guys from Green Day most definitely brought down the house.
 
Billie Joe could not be more excited to be HOME, dropping the names from all the cities from the Bay, the crowd cheered as Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Rodeo and many more were named. He kept telling the fans how excited him and the boys were to be back and that although many bands and celebrities choose to move to Hollywood he would never do that and that he was going to stay in Oakland (being from Oakland, his statement brought chills down my spine and tears down my cheeks.) 
 

 

Green Day brings such an amazing vibe to his shows; there is really no exact way to describe it unless you witness it for yourself. I’ve witnessed tons of concerts but Green Day has a special way to reach out to fans and let them known how much they appreciate their loyalty for the past 22+ years that the band has been together. What other band do you know that brings real fans on stage to perform songs with them, during the concert  a LUCKY fan got to sing Longview and at the end Billie Joe gave her the guitar he had been playing (how rad is that?) or be able to just get on stage and sing along with the band, hug them and take pictures. What other bands do you know who do corky renditions of classics from Journey, The Rolling Stones and some others. While the show was going on the band was also collecting footage for a DVD that is in the works and in Billie Joel words’ “most of the footage we’ll use will be from home.”

There might be haters out there who call Green Day sell-outs and what not but in my eyes and the eyes of the sold out crowd from the show at the Shoreline, the band will continue to play SOLD-OUT shows across the world, they will continue to make AMAZING music to please their loyal fan base and decades from now they will still be one of the GREATEST BANDS OF ALL TIME and true BAY AREA LEGENDS.

Photo Credits: Alan Ralph

Berkeley Bound yo!

When you think of Berkeley you think of UC Berkeley, Blake’s, Fat Slice & Blondie’s pizza, or perhaps you recall wandering up and down Telegraph and stopping by the Skate Shop, the thrift stores or even bad ass Amoeba Records where you can find pretty much any type of music you listen to.

Berkeley is also famous for 924 Gilman Street (better known as Gilman) where some of the most influential Bay Area bands have performed, AFI, Tiger Army, Rancid, Operation Ivy and the most infamous of all, none other than Green Day. With such talented repertoire of bands it is only obvious that the city of Berkeley will continue to flourish with amazing talent.

So for this blog I want to introduce to you Berkeley Natives, The Cataracs. If you are from the Bay Area, chances are you already know who Cyrano (Niles) & Campa (David) are. If you are not familiar with them but you listen to the radio, then of course you have caught yourself singing “Poppin bottles in the ice, like a blizzard, when we drink we do it right gettin
slizzard..Sippin sizzurp in my ride, like Three 6, now I’m 
feelin so fly like a G6…” This is the latest tune hitting the radio waves and it is a collaboration between LA’s Far East Movement, Dev and our very own The Cataracs.

Cyrano & Campa who started doing tunes together back in 2004, have come a long way since their myspace music days, their shows at Blake’s and getting recognition from DJ J Espinosa (a famous SF DJ from WILD 949) who first put them in the radio map by playing their song Blueberry Afghani. Thanks to J Espinosa, The Cataracs continued with their local success when another song Baby Baby also hit the airwaves. The Cataracs have collaborated with peeps such as Oakland’s E-40, Ya Boy & Shwayze. The guys signed up with Universal Republic Records last Spring and are currently on tour.

Luckily for their Bay Area fans, the guys will make a stop in San Francisco at the World Town monthly event presented by: Trevor Simpson & Mariam. The Lazer Tag Tour will take place on Thursday August 19th at Ruby Skye, San Francisco’s premier nightclub and concert venue. The Cataracs will be performing with Far East Movement, Dev, Hyper Crush amongst others, you can still buy tickets by clicking here (if it has not sold out by the time you read this.)

Show the guys some love and go to the show, if you want more info about them, check out their myspace page.

Till next blog!

Credits: Indie-Pop