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Before going on stage in Florida yesterday, Green Day took to Facebook Live in a bid to raise money for US charity Americares. The band played a 30 minute set of 'old school' Green Day songs, with the proceeds going towards relief for those affected by Hurricane Harvey. You can watch the full video below, with the band coming on at 25:12.



The performance featured Billie Joe, Mike and Tre without the support of the regular touring band members, and took place in what could only be called a tiny room backstage. While the audio quality was far from perfect, the 'garagey' sound, as Billie Joe put it, suited the content of the setlist perfectly.

After a delayed start, which now seems customary for Green Day's live streams, and a short cameo from the drunk bunny, the band opened the set with 'Paper Lanterns', from their 1990 EP Slappy. The set that followed exclusively featured songs written in and prior to the Dookie era, including the first performance of 'Coming Clean' since 2013, as well as renditions of rarely played songs 'Only of You' and 'One of My Lies'. The full setlist is available over on our tour page.

While it was clear that the band hadn't put the same rehearsal time into this performance as they would for their regular live shows, the set flowed smoothly from start to finish and the chemistry between the three members was clear, with only occasional small signals from Billie Joe required to keep everything on track. Even in spite of the confined space, the trio played with energy and passion from start to finish.

Viewers could even be forgiven for forgetting the real reason why Green Day were playing - though not for long. In the breaks between songs, Billie Joe regularly reminded fans to donate to Americares to help with the Hurricane Harvey relief effort. The storm hit Texas two weeks ago, causing catastrophic flooding and killing 65 people, displacing many more from their homes. The band encouraged fans in all countries to donate using the button in the original Facebook post, while those in the US are also able to donate $25 by texting HERO to 20222. Green Day kick-started the donating by putting in $100,000 of their own.

At the time of writing, the performance has been viewed over 3 million times and has raised almost $150,000 for the charity, a number which we hope will continue to rise. The video has even managed to get a 'like' from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The video will be available to view for a week, according to a Facebook post made by the band today. The post read:

[quote]Thanks to everyone who watched our Facebook live performance earlier to support Americares. The money raised will go towards the relief of those affected by Hurricane Harvey.
If you missed out, you can still watch it for the next week http://bit.ly/2x7W4X0 Donations can still be made via the button below the video, or by visiting http://www.americares.org/[/quote]

The performance was summed up by Tre Cool, who said on finishing playing J.A.R.:

[quote]While I'm young and while I'm able all I wanna do is... DONATE TO AMERICARES[/quote]
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