Green Day cancels Australian concert

Green Day, currently on tour promoting 21st Century Breakdown in Australia and New Zealand, canceled tonight’s concert in Melbourne after front man, and Casey Affleck look-a-like, Billie Joe Armstrong experienced symptoms consistent with food poisoning.

"Although Billie-Joe was determined to perform tonight it became apparent… that he would be unable to take to the stage – particularly in light of the lengthy 2.5-3 hour show the band traditionally perform,” Green Day’s touring company said in a statement.

The concert has been rescheduled to tomorrow night and representatives said all tickets remained valid and anyone unable to attend tomorrow night should seek a refund from their original place of purchase.

I was a big Green Day fan in grade 9 when they released Dookie. There was something about the fake British accents and dirty sounding guitars that drew me in (along with millions of other teens). In a so-very-clichéd-way, they never revisited the greatness of their first album. And they became irrelevant for a while when "Time of Your Life" became the most overplayed graduation song of all time (narrowly beating Alphaville’s Forever Young and Sarah McLachlan’s I Will Remember You).

Canceled concerts are never cool. In 2000 I had tickets for what I believed would have been the best concert of my life, Beastie Boys and Rage Against the Machine at the then-named Molson Park in Barrie, Ontario. One of the Beasties fell off his bike and broke his arm. They never rescheduled and Rage broke up shortly after. Damn.

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About Ben Chapman

Dr. Ben Chapman is a professor and food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University. As a teenager, a Saturday afternoon viewing of the classic cable movie, Outbreak, sparked his interest in pathogens and public health. With the goal of less foodborne illness, his group designs, implements, and evaluates food safety strategies, messages, and media from farm-to-fork. Through reality-based research, Chapman investigates behaviors and creates interventions aimed at amateur and professional food handlers, managers, and organizational decision-makers; the gate keepers of safe food. Ben co-hosts a biweekly podcast called Food Safety Talk and tries to further engage folks online through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, maybe not surprisingly, Pinterest. Follow on Twitter @benjaminchapman.