San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
‘Nimrod’ reissue to include bonus material
Green Day plans to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its blockbuster 1997 album, “Nimrod”— the one with the song from “Seinfeld” — with a deluxe reissue complete with unreleased demos and a live recording from the era, the band announced Oct. 14.
“Nimrod 25 — 25th Anniversary Edition,” is scheduled to be released on Jan. 27 in multiple formats, each loaded with demos from the album’s recording sessions and a handful of previously unreleased songs, including the band’s cover of Elvis Costello’s “Alison.”
The reissue will also include the Oakland pop-punk trio’s original studio versions of the singles “Nice Guys Finish Last” and “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” — the latter a song featured in a season nine episode of “Seinfeld” titled “The Chronicle,” as well as countless other tear-stained moments in television show and movie history.
As a teaser, Green Day — singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool — shared the demo for the song “You Irritate Me.”
An additional disc includes a
live Green Day recording from Nov. 14, 1997, capturing the band’s performance at Philadelphia’s Electric Factory. The set list for that show features tracks from “Nimrod,” as well as 1994’s “Dookie” and 1995’s “Insomniac.”
When “Nimrod,” the band’s fifth album, was originally released, writer Jaan Uhelszki described it in The Chronicle “as not the usual smorgasbord
of self-loathing and angst — although there is some of that. Rather, the record transcends the band’s punk roots and ventures into different mediums.”
“This is the record I’ve wanted to make since the band started,” singer Armstrong told The Chronicle at the time. “I was always wondering when I was going to get to make my ‘London Calling,’ and I decided the time was now.”
The band recorded it over four months in Los Angeles, cutting its 1996 European tour short.
“We were becoming the things we hated, playing those big arenas,” Armstrong continued. “That’s why we quit touring. It was beginning not to be fun anymore. So we wanted to stop before it was six months too late and it began to hurt the band.”
Before Green Day pulled the plug on the tour, the singer told reporters, “Not a day has gone in the last year and a half that I don’t think about quitting.”
Seven years later, the band embraced its success and released 2004’s “American Idiot,” borrowing liberally from the Beatles and the Who to craft a vaguely political rock opera stuffed with power ballads and epic song suites.
“Nimrod” may have been the band’s last nod to its 924 Gilman roots.
“I’m only 25, and I still consider myself a punk. It’s the only music I listen to. It’s what I am,” Armstrong said in 1997. “We wanted to stretch as much as possible, but at the same time we never want to abandon the sound that we know how to do best.”
Green Day is set to headline the new When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas next year, along with the newly reunited Blink-182 joining them.
“Nimrod 25 — 25th Anniversary Edition” is available to preorder now at Green Day’s site.