American Idiots. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Leib. And this is Ghost Town.

Good evening, here's what's happening tonight. It was a violent scene on the Esplanade tonight

when a free punk rock concert sponsored by a local radio station

really got out of control. An estimated 50,000 people crammed the Esplanade to hear the band

Green Day perform. The band ran from the stage as a crowd surged forward during the show.

Dozens of people are injured. We are told at least one critically. After the concert,

thousands rushed off the Esplanade into downtown Boston. Now, please tell us they are still

arresting people this hour. So far, at least 60 are under arrest. At one point, there were 250

law enforcement officers called out to contain the crowd. We've covered concerts gone wrong.

Music festivals turned dangerous and musicians unexplained deaths. And today we're back.

This time we're going to Boston where a dangerous uprising occurs at a low-key college Green Day

concert. On this episode, we're covering 1994's Green Day Riot. In the early 90s, Green Day was

a playful, self-deprecating pop punk band who had recently broken through to have mainstream

success with their third album, Duky. Initially formed in 1987 by teenage friends Billy Joe

Armstrong, Mike Dirt, Sean Hughes, and Raj Punjabi, the band then called Sweet Children,

made a name playing punk venues in the Bay Area. Not to be confused with another band called Sweet

Baby, the band changed their name to Green Day, which was slang for spending a day doing nothing

but smoking marijuana. Look out released Green Day's debut solo album 39 Smooth in early 1990.

Later that year, the band began their first nationwide tour. They toured for most of 1992

in 1993 and then released their second studio album called Carplunk, which sold a modest

50,000 copies in the US, but attracted the attention of reprise record producers.

After signing with them, the band went on to release their major label debut Duky in February

...