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Before the American Idiot musical travels cross-country from Berkeley to Broadway, Green Day will shoot a video for a new version of the 21st Century Breakdown single “21 Guns” with the cast of the show, the band announced on their official Website. The band rerecorded the track with the stage performers, with Billie Joe Armstrong producing. The new version of the song is expected to hit radio and digital services by the end of November.

Go backstage with Green Day: exclusive tour photos.

After premiering on September 4th, the American Idiot musical was extended several times due to “record-breaking sales and unprecedented demand for seats” at California’s Berkeley Rep. American Idiot went on to become the Rep’s top-grossing show in its history. (more…)

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New York’s Great White Way is about to turn a shade of green. According to Playbill, Green Day’s American Idiot musical, which wraps up its San Francisco run on November 15th, will make the leap to Broadway. “There is a Broadway future for the show, but at this time no dates or theater are confirmed,” the show’s spokesman Michael Hartman said.

Meet the cast of the American Idiot musical.

The intention to move the Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s smash hit to New York was revealed November 9th, when a casting notice seeking performers for the Broadway staging of the show was made public. The notice gave no details as to when production on the Broadway American Idiot will begin, or what actors will carry over from the Berkeley Repertory run. The musical premiered in September and was eventually extended five additional weeks past its original run, making it the top-grossing show in the Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s history, Playbill writes. (more…)

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Green Day waited until November 1st to celebrate Halloween, taking on their alternate identity — garage band Foxboro Hot Tubs — for a secret late-night show in London. The performance at the small Garage venue came just hours after Green Day’s final official U.K. concert at the city’s Wembley Stadium. For the Foxboro Hot Tubs show, the 21st Century Breakdown crew rifled through their entire album Stop, Drop and Roll and loaded Green Day rarities and covers into the two-hour set, NME reports.

On the road with Green Day: shots of the band goofing off behind the scenes.

The Reverend Strychnine Twitch, or Billie Joe Armstrong as he’s usually called, first alerted fans to the surprise show on the Green Day Website earlier yesterday. The band then posted a photo of themselves in their Foxboro garb on their Twitter page. According to NME, in addition to playing Foxboro’s entire 2008 debut album, the band also unearthed the Warning rarity “Blood, Sex and Booze” plus a track called “Supermodel Robots” from another surreptitious Green Day side project, the Network. (more…)

Fans waiting for a new Green Day record are about to get one. Sort of: The Bay Area punks have just revealed that the rowdy garage-rock band called Foxboro Hot Tubs — who posted six tunes online in December — is in fact the rock superstars working under a pseudonym. And just as two of the new tracks are gaining traction on rock radio, Green Day have announced that the Foxboro Hot Tubs’ full-length album, Stop
Drop and Roll, will be out “any day.”

Billie Joe Armstrong and Co. say they consider the FHT album, recorded with perennial Green Day sidemen Jason White and Jason Freese, to be “the next Green Day record.” “We record live to an eight-track reel-to-reel machine,” they say in an e-mail to Rolling Stone. “We write songs as we go, on the fly, fast and spontaneous.”

From the design of the Foxboro Hot Tubs’ Website — which includes Sixties clips of girls dancing the Swim and the Jerk — to the style of music, Green Day are riffing on the aesthetic of classic garage bands like the Animals and the Kinks on this project. Specifically, their inspirations were “red wine and the Troggs,” they say.

The upbeat FHT tunes are presumably very different from the material the trio have been working on for the follow-up to their ambitious megahit, American Idiot, which sources expect out this year. (more…)