Green Day fans in Sydney were treated to an surprise gig on Thursday night when the Soundwave headliners decided to announce a warm-up gig at a local pub at the very last minute.
In Australia for the punk, rock and heavy metal Soundwave Festival, Green Day tweeted out details to a last-minute show at a tiny 200-person capacity venue less than an hour before the guys were to hit the stage at Sydney’s Captain Cook Hotel.
hello Aussie! Green Day is playing tonight at a club called Captain Cook Hotel TONIGHT in Sydney. I repeat, TONIGHT! Feb 20th around 11:00pm
— Green Day (@GreenDay) February 20, 2014
More than enough people caught wind of performance, causing frontman Billie Joe Armstrong to announce “I guess a few of you saw the tweet,” as he walked onstage.
Fans packed out Captain Cook’s for a one-hour, 12-song set featuring favourites from across the band’s 25-year recording timeline, even taking requests from locals around the stage.
Captain Cook Hotel owner Darren Wood told The Australian he only had to try keep news of the gig quiet for a day.
“We got a call today and had to keep it on the down low,” he said.
“It happened in all of about five minutes. Green Day came and checked it out and said ‘this is going to work, we’re 99 per cent going to play’, and just said ‘don’t tell anyone about it’,” he continued.
You can catch Green Day at Soundwave, kicking off this weekend in Brisbane and Sydney before hitting Melbourne (Flemington Racecourse) on the 28th, Adelaide (Bonython Park) on March 1 and Perth (Joondalup Arena) on March 3.
Keep up with all of the Australian tour and festival news and get amongst CraveOnlineAU on Twitter and Facebook for daily sport, music, entertainment and gaming news.
