In a House With Unlocked Doors… Part Seven
By Sharon Mitchell
Foxboro Hottubs
I feel very close to the Foxboro Hottubs side project. Back in early December 2007, I was on line with a friend on msn when she got a mysterious e-mail asking her to check out a new band on MySpace – the Tubbies. She shared the link with me, and when she was asked to spread it around the internet, you didn’t have to ask twice. We got them something like 43,000 hits in a day, and became some of the first people in the world to know about this new part of Green Day history.
Doubters will always doubt, it is their nature, and many refused to believe that this was our boys, but soon, it became clear that it was none other then GD plus a few friends. As the days went on, we petitioned for the band to release the songs as a physical CD, which they did, it was in the shops on my birthday, 20th May. In the meantime, their MySpace page had a few additions, including eleven really random black and white photos from the 1940s and 50s. One of them is of a woman pushing a closed-in baby carriage, and wearing a gas mask. The picture was taken in a road five minutes from my house in a small village in Kent, south east England. Moreover, that pram is in the collection of the local heritage society, along with the original photograph used on the Tubbies webpage – and I am the chairman of that heritage society. I possess the keys not only to the building, but to the cabinet that holds the pram. Weird. A year later, on my 50th birthday, I was given a piece of Tubbies history – the original artwork for the Mother Mary single that was rejected by the band in favour of the dancing girls cover. It is probably one of my most precious possessions, and hangs on the wall in Longview for any visitor to see, although I have promised not to share it on the internet. He also gave me the designs for the label of the vinyl that was released – with the original track listing showing Highway 1 instead of Broadway. And as if that isn’t enough coincidences, when we went to California in 2011, we visited the Foxboro estate – only to find that the central road through it is called Dartford Street. I was born in Dartford – a quiet little market town, when every other road on the estate is named after huge cities like Glasgow and Manchester. Mind = blown.
Then of course there are the two appearances of the Tubbies in the UK, one in Manchester on Halloween where they played three songs, and the infamous gig at the Garage, Highbury, and both of which I was lucky to see.
The 31st October show was good, if short, but the next night was amazing. Some of our party left the Wembley arena show a little early to make sure they got to the second venue on time, but I couldn’t – I waited until Good Riddance finished then dashed for our minibus and the drive across London. Outside the venue, we joined the line of only a hundred or so people, all who had got wristbands earlier in the day, excited as anything about what was about to happen.
The Garage is tiny. I later spoke to a member of the staff and she said they had sold 164 tickets – wow. I was on the barrier, to the side, sandwiched between our friends Nick and Jojo from Top of the Pops and Bullet in a Bible fame, and the legend that is Larry Livermore. The band came on stage after 1.00 am, drunk, smoking in a cigarette-free building, and absolutely on fire. They played for two hours, Billie leaving the stage a few times to throw up, in between crowd surfing and handing out free beer all night. One can came to me after Billie sipped from it and passed it to the guy in front of me who already had a can and a spare. I was driving later, so I slipped the can into my coat as a souvenir. It’s on the shelf behind me as I type, next to my Foxboro cd collection.
It’s a weird feeling when you start believing that a band are stalking YOU!
