I sit around and watch the tube but nothing's on....

September 9, 2024 2:23 PM

When Boston went ‘Basket Case’ On this day, 30 years ago (aka 1994), Boston's WFNX (101.7 - Boston Phoenix Radio) threw a "Welcome Back Weekend" concert series to celebrate the return of the college crowd to the city. Booking months in advance, they put together a pop punk show at the famous Hatch Shell. They booked a little known opening act (The Meices) and an up and coming main act - Green Day touring in support of their album Dookie. Who could have predicted the result of booking a suddenly hot band to a free show and packing 60+ thousand people in the park? ">We Want The Airwaves Back segment on the 1994 Green Day Riot and The local news reacts
posted by drewbage1847 (12 comments total)

N.B. - If you watch carefully - at least one of those yellow shirts is me. My pay as a 20 year old college kid for one night of nearly getting killed - One bottle of ice cold MGD, which I still maintain may be one of the best beers I've ever drunk.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:25 PM on September 9 [16 favorites]

I just heard "Basket Case" playing over the speakers at the bagel place over the weekend and was thinking that's one of those songs where once dementia has taken all the things that I actually care about from my mind, I'll still be able to sing it from memory. Strangely fitting given the subject matter.
posted by potrzebie at 2:33 PM on September 9 [3 favorites]

I love the coanchor sadly shaking her head at 2:30.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:18 PM on September 9 [2 favorites]

Huh! Was it just the next night that they went to Blossom Music Center in Cleveland where I saw their $5 concert that also resulted in rioting and torn up lawns then?

I had no idea about the Boston show!
posted by heyitsgogi at 4:23 PM on September 9 [2 favorites]

small mobs of punk rock fans roaming the streets of [boston]...looking for action
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 4:50 PM on September 9

I wish The Meices had been the ones to become famous.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 5:04 PM on September 9 [3 favorites]

Boston Globe article (sorry don’t think the globe gives gift subs) has an anecdote from the band that basically says they were locked in the basement of the hatch shell until police could beat the shit out of everybodyXXXXXXXX uh i mean, quell the riot, and that they also locked a bunch of local prisoners who were brought in to help to work security for the concert. When the riot broke out, the cops threw them all in the basement. The story seems a little unbelievable - unless you happen to a former …client… of the MA department of corrections. In that case, you would know that Dept. of Conservation and Recreation (the state agency in charge of parks, including the Hatch Shell and esplanade around it) frequently brings in DOC prisoners to help set up, keep clean and break down large events (amongst other things). It’s almost certainly true that a couple of dozen incarcerated felons were caught in the middle of a riot and that the DOC guard and state police freaking out and not knowing what to do with them, locked them in a basement with the talent, LOL. Once I was forced to work one of these events about 6 months before I was released. It was the Red Bull flugetag thing, where teams compete to build human powered gliders. I had a friend who worked for Red Bull who I was almost positive would be there. I immediately ditched my work detail, found her and was field promoted to Red Bull Event Coordinators assistant. My friend texted everybody we knew in the city and they all showed up and I got to spend a sunny day with my friends eating the catered staff food and feeling like a normal human being while the DOC guards fumed / were confused. It was awesome, but waking up the next day back in prison was a real kick in the nuts and I battled some serious depression for the next month or so and refused to ever be put on a detail again. Anyway, if you’re ever at an event on the esplanade, or any DCR property and you see people working the event wearing blaze orange shirts that say “EVENT STAFF”, those are convicts out on a work detail and they would definitely love a cigarette if you’ve got one.
posted by youthenrage at 5:40 PM on September 9 [36 favorites]

“This is Boston!” lol
posted by gottabefunky at 5:54 PM on September 9

I had a friend who was reassigned from working out in front and he actually was bringing the band Heines in the dressing room (which is under the Shell). He told me that all of the punk attitude they were showing on stage just kinda melted away and that they were scared and angry.

I still have my banana yellow staff shirt in a drawer somewhere. (I may or may not have used that shirt for "nefarious" purposes)
posted by drewbage1847 at 6:37 PM on September 9 [2 favorites]

I only wish I could have responded with violence the first time I heard Green Day.
posted by pattern juggler at 4:08 AM on September 10

I was in the target demographic (just graduated from college, working second shift downtown), but didn't go to this. We had been to the Boston Pops on the Fourth show at the Hatch Shell a year or two earlier, and that was totally a crush, too: never going to the Shell again.

Pour one out for FNX, though, and the shrieking "THURSDAY NIGHT! VENUS DE MILO! THURSDAY NIGHT! VENUS DE MILO!" promo spots they used to run.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:47 AM on September 10 [4 favorites]

And next spring we'll get to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Cranberries Riot in DC. Much smaller and probably less violent than the Boston crowd, but then we had shown up for an acoustic set, not a punk show.
posted by jburka at 5:42 PM on September 10 [1 favorite]