Civic Center Plaza

Billie Joe Armstrong: "It was supposed to be a 'million band march.' It didn't quite make it to a million bands… A lot of my friends were getting thrown out of Downtown Rehearsal Studios, a place that bands had been practicing for years, because the new owners wanted to raise all the rents. That sort of hit home with me because it was about music and art, and it wasn't just that studio; every day you could read in the paper how it was getting worse and worse for musicians in San Francisco. Rents were skyrocketing, even to the point where clubs were having a hard time staying open. After a while it starts to piss you off, and I thought my band could at least help bring attention to the issue. It's funny, because there a guy who buys and sells property who hangs out at my mom's work, and he was telling her, 'Oh, your son doesn't understand.' Well, that’s obviously coming from someone who doesn't see the other side, that's never even been on the other side, that doesn’t know what it's like to be thrown out of where you live."

MTV: "The members of Green Day may no longer have any trouble paying their rents, but the multiplatinum pop-punks will play a free show on Sunday in San Francisco in solidarity with musicians who do. The Berkeley, California, band's performance will be part of an event protesting the Bay Area's rising rents and what organizers say is an increasingly inhospitable climate for artists. '[Green Day are] very committed to the community. They stayed here; they're supporters of the music scene,' said Ian Brennan, the event's promoter. As previously announced, Metallica's Kirk Hammett will speak at the event, which will also include performances from rockers Creeper Lagoon and former American Music Club frontman Mark Eitzel. Former Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra has canceled his planned performance, however. As San Francisco's economy has boomed in recent years, city residents have faced some of the country's highest rents, which make it difficult for many artists to stay in the area. Recently, some of the city's most popular rehearsal studios have closed down, leaving musicians without practice space. Sunday's event, dubbed Take Back San Francisco, will also include a 'Million Band March', with musicians marching from the city's Mission neighborhood to City Hall. Green Day are expected to begin their set at 4:30 p.m. at San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza. The concert will be broadcast live on Berkeley's KPFA-FM radio."

MTV (Richard B. Simon): "Green Day parked their amplifiers outside City Hall on Sunday, rallying for a local music scene that’s had trouble surviving the city’s burgeoning Internet boom.
“I think that there’s been a lot of damage done, and you can’t really reverse that — but if anything, we can put a stop to it,” Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said backstage. “I figure if they can build a brand new stadium for the Giants to play in, they can give [musicians] a place to play.”
As a result of Web sites and technology companies setting up shop in the Bay Area, rent and real estate prices have skyrocketed. Numerous music venues have closed in the past few years, the noted Church of Saint John Coltrane was booted from its 30-year home, and the popular Downtown Rehearsal studio complex was sold to a developer in September, forcing the eviction of more than 150 bands — some 2,000 musicians.
The loss of space has led local musicians to organize events
like Sunday’s daylong free concert and rally, which began with a “Million Band March.”
Perched atop a whitewashed ice cream truck, local musical tricksters the Gun and Doll Show dragged a guitar-packing dummy, leading around 500 marchers — many armed with guitars, drums and saxophones — from the Mission District to Civic Center Plaza, where a stage was erected across the street from City Hall.
Soft-spoken Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett urged the crowd to vote Tuesday for San Francisco’s Proposition L, a ballot initiative intended to limit dot-com office space.
“Being someone who came out of the San Francisco music scene, I felt that I had to get involved and do what I can to prevent the Mission [District] from being turned into some bland business district,” Hammett said backstage. “It’s taking small steps right now to help out all of my fellow musicians, artists and nonprofit organizations to make sure that they don’t just fall by the wayside by all
these dot-comers and the new dot-com economy that’s taking over the city.”
Hammett said he has been helping organize a benefit concert to raise money for a new non-profit that would buy and run rehearsal space.
While Sunday’s rally was political in intent, the event felt mostly like an open-air music festival, staged in front of the gilded dome and neoclassical columns of City Hall. An estimated 3,000 music fans and protesters took in the scene amidst the Civic Center’s statuesque municipal, theater and library buildings.
A cappella hip-hop group Felonious kicked off the show, followed by singer/songwriter Lisa Flores. While other groups played impromptu sets on street corners around Civic Center Plaza, booths promoted Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, independent record labels and pizza slices.
“If we’re not that tight today, it’s ’cause we can’t f—ing practice,” bemoaned Creeper Lagoon frontman Ian Sefchick during a set that included such songs as “Dear Deadly”, off 1998′s I Become Small and Go.
Zen Guerrilla belted out a set of hard-edged blues and squealing guitar feedback, with afro-sporting singer Marcus Durant pacing the stage to belt out tunes like “Slow Motion Rewind.”
Decked out in shades and beige suits, gospel band the Blind Boys of Alabama played tight jumping blues, enchanting the crowd with “When the Stars Begin to Fall.” Victoria Williams and band played a mellow set, including “Crazy Mary.”
The crowd then packed in close as Green Day took the stage. A few fans surfed the pit as the band opened with “Castaway,” from their latest album, October’s Warning. Bassist Mike Dirnt picked a punchy bass solo, then quieted down while Armstrong led an audience call-and-response sing-along.
The singer stopped in the middle of one descending, swing-style crunch to make a dedication to Hammett by blasting out the intro to Metallica’s “Master of Puppets.”
“I’m sorry — I don’t work behind a computer, I work behind a fucking guitar,” Armstrong said, announcing that the band’s set list had run out, then begging requests from the audience.
After “Disappearing Boy,” Green Day teased Skynyrd and Zeppelin tunes. Drummer Tre Cool switched places with Armstrong to sing “All By Myself.”
After a faithful cover of the Who’s “My Generation,” Green Day pulled fans onstage to play their instruments, and Armstrong led the new band — christened Jesus Christ Supermarket — through the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop,” though one unlucky invitee was dragged offstage by security.
Green Day goofed around with the crowd and played for nearly an hour and a half, running through a handful of tunes from Warning as well as older favorites such as “Christie Road” and “Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?” Their most appropriate number for the day’s theme, however, was a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”.
“Don’t it always seem to go/ That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?/ They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

San Francisco Gate (James Sullivan): "The secret band in Sunday's Million Band March and rally is a secret no more: It's a peppy little outfit that goes by the name of Green Day.
You couldn't pick a more appropriate group from among the Bay Area's recent national breakthroughs to represent San Francisco's scrabbling artists in their protest over an economic climate gone batty. Green Day knows a thing or two about following one's muse, and about going batty, and about having no money and having too much money.
The punk revival that Green Day rode to enormous commercial success in 1995 was transfixed on integrity and purity of expression. It's an ideal that has been shunted aside in pop music so fast that it now seems rooted in the "Leave It to Beaver" era. Geez, Eddie, you shouldn't oughta be so cynical and stuff.
Whatever the punk zines say, if they're even bothering anymore to complain about the band's "selling out," Green Day has proven true to itself time and again. And the band still kicks some serious behind in concert.
The remaining lineup for Sunday's event is an eclectic bunch to say the least. Imagine a dinner party with these guests: the old soul Victoria Williams, the most-high Creeper Lagoon, the hung-over Mark Eitzel, the psychotic Zen Guerrilla and the Blind Boys of Alabama.
Before the performances, the ever-theatrical Gun & Doll Show will animate the Million Band March to the Civic Center. Its float will drag a dead body (a fake one, we assume) representing the fate of the artist in the country's most expensive city. The band plans to play "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around." Incessantly, lest anyone miss the point.
Million Band March and Take Back San Francisco rally and "anti-gentrification celebration," noon Sunday beginning at the Women's Building, 18th and Valencia, San Francisco. Free concert to follow in Civic Center Plaza."