In a House With Unlocked Doors… Part 2

In a House With Unlocked Doors – Part Two

By Sharon Mitchell

Foxboro Hot Tubs – December 2007

This is the story of how Green Day’s alter-ego band stalk my life – or so it seems!

Way back in December 2007, I was working on preparing a sit-down meal for 32 people in my home when something happened that made me lose all concentration. I had been in a three way MSN conversation with a friend who had just won the pumpkin carving contest on the Idiot Club and earned herself one of three signed guitars (my entry apparently came fourth!). She had been in contact with the band’s tour manager, Bill Schneider, about the delivery of her prize, and thought she would not hear from him again after its safe arrival – she was wrong. This e-mail gave her a link to a new band on MySpace – the Foxboro Hot Tubs – and Bill wanted the word spread about them. I followed the link that she gave me and was immediately struck by two facts (1), this band sounded like Green Day, (2) this band WASN’T Green Day. Between us, we got them 43,000 hits in a day, and a lot of abuse from people who thought we were making it up.

A few days later, the MySpace page had some additions. As well as the six free tracks, eleven photographs were put up, random pictures in black and white from the 1940s and 50s. One depicts a woman in a gas mask pushing a covered pram. This pram – the only one of its kind as the patent for the invention was not granted – was made by a man who lived in my small English village – today with a population of 4,500, but probably half that size in the war years. Only one photograph exists of it, taken in a road less than a quarter of a mile from my house, and the pram itself is in the care of the Hextable Heritage Society, as is the photograph. I am the Chairman of that society. I possess the keys to the cabinet and to the Heritage Centre itself. Another weird coincidence.

And they continued … the only album Foxboro released was on 20th May 2008 – my birthday. One year afterwards, on my fiftieth birthday, I was given a gift of some unused artwork that had been rejected by the band for the single Mother Mary, and the original labels for the vinyl release with Highway 1 still in the track listing and no sign of Broadway. I was also at both of the only two performances that Foxboro have put on outside of the USA (Manchester on 31st October and London on 2nd November 2009), and I was totally weirded out when I actually went to Foxboro last year whilst on holiday in California. The central road through the Foxboro housing estate that the band named themselves after is called Dartford Street. Dartford is the town where I was born, and less than two miles from where I still live. Every other road on the estate is named after a huge city – Canterbury, Manchester, Coventry and Edinburgh, for four examples. Dartford is a mid-sized market town of no particular significance apart from it being the birthplace of Mick Jagger and the home of a 1960s tunnel under the River Thames! Most of the hot tubs that the boys used to sneak into late at night are along that one street. Pretty weird, agreed?

I’ll write about the Foxboro show later. I have quite a lot to say about the best gig I have ever seen.