SO, one of my old bands, the scrodonauts, got on a battle of the bands bill to get the chance to open fro Green Day on their Nimrod tour at the Civic Center in Fargo. We were a punk band and thought we had a good chance.
Well, the night came and we WON! YAY!! We even beat out our arch enemy's band, can't remember their names now, they wore makeup, asses. We thought we had the chance to play at the Civic Center with Green Day, not that we really cared about them anymore, but still a chance to play in front of thousands or screaming fans, of theirs. That night was also going to be the scrodonauts CD release party. We had just finished recording at Super Asbestos Studio too, thanks Zespy, and we were stoked to release it that night.
The night before the show we were all at Ralph's and in comes Billy Joe and Mike Dirnt from Green Day. They knew some people in Fargo and knew of Ralph's so they came down for a beer. Neil, the singer of the scrodonauts and I shared a picture of beer with Billy at the bar and just shot the shit for a good 15-20 minutes. Nice guy. He knows some of the same people as us, his wife is from MSP and her brother is Steve Nesser pro-skater/played in Fistacuffs (a band we had played with.) So Andy, our bass player ends up going to their hotel to party more, why not me? not sure actually, I am a busy guy ya know. Anyway Andy got in a fight with Billy!! "Andy did not exactly get into a fight Billy Joe directly. He innocently inquired about a Screeching Weasel button on Billy's jacket. Apparently this was a sensitive issue for old Billy at the time, and he yelled at him. This prompted Billy Joe's very large "friend" (bodyguard?) to pin Andy against the wall by his neck. Billy felt bad and called off his large associate. The Green Day singer apologized to Andy" (From Fargo Band Family Tree)
Next day. At the civic center and my whole family is in town for the show. The Green Day Nimrod Banner is up and the roadies were hard at work. We had our own dressing room with food and beer and, well, we were rock stars! THEN, the tour manager comes up to us and says, " Tre (drummer) hurt his foot last night fooling around in the hotel and they are cancelling the show." NO!! So, they did. Never saw or heard from them again. They still owe us one. But we played at Ralph's that night and the show killed, the back room was packed and fun was had by all. For a while after that there were a lot of jokes and funny stuff that were made about it. Here is a flier that says we just got off the road with Green Day.
And here is a pic of us playing at a SK8 park in Grand Forks to a small yet happy crowd. Yay. BTW, our recording never came out, but we got tapes yo. Boo Hoo, so is the nature of most F-M bands.
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