On July 5, 1994, Green Day was poised to emerge from the punk cocoon of 924 Gilman Street and develop into a band that has delivered a decades-long run of bird-flipping, thought-provoking and hit-making music.
But before they grabbed headlines by inciting a mass mud fight at Woodstock '94 and ignited the charts with blistering punk salvos like "Welcome to Paradise" and "When I Come Around," Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool bid one last goodbye to the small-club scene of the Bay Area, playing an intimate show at San Francisco nightclub Slim's to host a bon-voyage party that still rattles the minds of the lucky few who attended.
"Green Day Rising: Before the Dookie Flew" captures the band at the cusp of mainstream success with dozens of never-before-seen photos and on-the-scene reporting, delivering an intimate portrait of a phenomenon-to-be that obscurity couldn't confine, genre couldn't define and the world had no idea was coming.