Green Day Play New(ish) Songs In Preparation for Live Album

Before getting to the meat of this piece, you need to know the following story.

In 2003, Green Day were working on the follow-up to Warning, their worst selling album to date. They had nearly finished work on their next album, with the working title of Cigarettes and Valentines, when, as the story goes, the tapes were stolen¹. After consulting with producer Rob Cavallo (who would call the music on the stolen tapes “mediocre”), Green Day opted to scrap the project and start over from scratch. A little over a year later, they released American Idiot. Until recently, it was generally accepted that the fruits of the lost Cigarettes and Valentines sessions would never see the light of day.

Fast forward to this past weekend, when Green Day confirm earlier reports that they were recording a live album commemorating the 21st Century Breakdown tour. As a treat to fans who are witnessing one of the shows being recorded, Billie Joe Armstrong announce that they’re playing a new song. That song is entitled “Cigarettes and Valentines”. Check out the (NSFW for language) video below (high fives to Consequence of Sound for being the first people I saw reporting on this)

If you listen very carefully (around the 0:22 mark), Billie Joe admits “it ain’t that brand new”, and this first ever taste of the album (plus the debut of unreleased track “Olivia”) that never was suggests that maybe some of those recordings might see a release in the not too distant future. For what its worth, I’ve often pondered the “what if” of Green Day releasing Cigarettes and Valentines as they planned. Suppose that happens, and the material is as unimpressive as the stories suggest: Does Green Day ever get around to American Idiot? If they don’t, does anyone band in the ensuing six years release an album as defining as that one was? Hell, if Cigarettes and Valentines came out, would Green Day still be around?

At any rate, the last Green Day live album (Bullet in a Bible) wasn’t spectacular, and since again, Green Day are recording this album on the last leg of the tour, I’m not sure it’ll highlight the strongest Green Day performances. But if they’re going to start playing unheard material like this, it might still be worth a grab. In the meantime, check out this B-side from American Idiot (once rumored to be on the lost album, but those rumors are false), and let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Green Day – Too Much Too Soon

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¹Wild, largely baseless theory: Rob Cavallo stole the master tapes from Cigarettes and Valentines. Somehow he knew Green Day were on the cusp of something better than those tapes, so he forced it out of them.

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