Green Day History Green day is a punk rock band. Green Day, a post-punk band formed in Rodeo, California (a suburb of Berkeley), took America by storm with its album 'Dookie' released in 1993. Some people also know about their follow-up, 'Insomniac', which came out in the fall of last year. But not many know the story behind Green Day, or what they did before they released their first album. Curious about how Green Day came to be? Here's a little bit of history behind the band, its members, accomplishments, and past work. Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day's lead singer and guitarist, lived in Rodeo, California, a small, nosy little town with not much for kids to do. When Billie Joe was about 4, he started getting into punk music. With 5 older siblings, he caught on quickly to their music. At about the age of 10, Billie Joe met future Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt. They became best friends, and have spent most of their time together since then. Meanwhile,in remote Mendocino County, Green Day's current drummer Tre Cool grew up with his father. His actual name is Frank Willard. Lawrence Livermore, of the punk band "The Lookouts," re-named him Tre Cool, which would follow him in the years after. In Green Day's earlier days, John Kiftmeyer (A.K.A. Al Sobrante) was drummer. On their early LP's and first album, '1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours', Kiftmeyer's drum tracks can be heard. But when the time came that John and Mike graduated from high school (Billie Joe had dropped out), John wanted to go to college. So, growing up in the Berkeley scene, a mutual friend of Billie Joe and Tre introduced them to each other, and so Tre became their new drummer. After their second album, 'Kerplunk' came out, the boys were ready to call it quits. But they held on and switched from their small-time label, Lookout Records to the Reprise label. This is when they recorded their third album 'Dookie', and took off into success. But now that their fourth album, 'Insomniac' has been released, Green Day has recently been thinking again about calling it quits. "I just don't know if I wanna be involved in the rock world anymore-- period," Billie Joe said. Green Day has come a long way in the past few years. They used to do small tours (when they still weren't exactly a household name) and traveled in a truck that had been used in the past to distribute books. Billie Joe and Mike would get small jobs at grocery stores and shops, only to ditch them for...other past-times. Well, the bookmobile is trashed now. Green Day just finished a series of concerts in the U.S.A and Canada, and then moved on to Asia and Europe. Unfortunately, recent European tour dates have been postponed because of the band's exhaustion. Green Day also performed at Woodstock '94, which they got good publicity for, but it wasn't a popular gig among the band members themselves. "Our managers told us that we'd regain money that we'd lost on tour by playing Woodstock; so we did, and it sucked," Billie Joe Armstrong said. Despite this, last year's Lollapalooza gig was a big deal for the band, and lots of good reviews followed their performance.