Billie Joe Armstrong Revives Side Project Pinhead Gunpowder in L.A.

Billie Joe Armstrong can still DIY when he wants to. His side project Pinhead Gunpowder hadn't played a gig since 2001, but the punk-pop quartet roared back to life this week in a quick tour of SoCal club dates. On Monday, the Green Day singer-guitarist was back to basics at the top of a three-band bill of melodic loudfastrules at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. Ticket price at the door: $7. With a beanie pulled over his bleached hair, Armstrong strolled onto the stage like one of the roadies, a Red Stripe in one hand and a guitar in the other. It was only the band's 19th show in seventeen years, but the room was packed with fans who sang and crowd-surfed to "At Your Funeral," the new "Westside Highway" and a cover of Diana Ross' "Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To)," shifting the lilting Seventies ballad into punk-rock overdrive. Armstrong pulled fans up to watch from the stage, but also told them to put away the digital cameras. "YouTube can't own everything," he said. "There's also something called memories."

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Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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