Green Day to Issue 18 Rarities for Record Store Day

Longtime Record Store Day supporters Green Day have planned a special release for this year’s installment of the music-retail event. The punk group is planning on putting out 18 demos, including a previously unreleased track, according to a Facebook post. The group recorded the songs during the sessions that became their 2012 trilogy ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! Although the band has yet to detail just how the recordings will come out – whether as a single release or multiple releases – it did say that the demos will be available on colored vinyl, CD and, as the post put it, “even cassette.” Whatever it is, it will come out on April 19th.
Green Day is a frequent contributor to Record Store Day, offering up exclusive releases. In 2009, they reissued their breakthrough album Dookie on vinyl. And in 2011, they recorded a cover of Hüsker Dü’s 1986 song “Don’t Want to Know if You Are Lonely” for the flipside of a “side-by-side” 7-inch. The following year, they gave a test pressing of ¡Uno! to Record Store Day to give away.

In 2012, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong told Rolling Stone that even though Green Day put out three albums that year, their label counted it as one release. “There was no getting around that,” he said. “That was fine. The record company have been great about it, just stoked. People get so caught up in not trying to do something new and creative: ‘Let’s just put out an EP.’ We said, ‘Let’s do the exact opposite, something dangerous and fun.'”

Earlier this month, Record Store Day organizers announced that Public Enemy frontman Chuck D will be this year’s ambassador. “In this age where industry has threaded the music sound with virtual sight and story, I am honored to be called upon to be Record Store Day Ambassador of 2014,” he wrote. “With the masses, neck bent into their smartphones, let all of us music lovers GPS our way into a reality that is the record store. It’s worth a great try, let’s do this.”

Source: Rolling Stone