Show Notes: Eric Davis: "Green Day on cable spools in a corn field outside of St. Peter, MN. May 1992."

Chuck R.: "...That was my stage dive that knocked out the cap on Billie's tooth... I'm also the one that yelled, 'Violence sucks!'"

Adrienne Armstrong: "So when they were in town as a band they would play garages, basements, street corners and even that farm on top of spools."

"The show in question here took place in St. Peter. It started out in Dan Fisher's North Mankato backyard with My Friend Stu and Loin Groove opening. By the time Loin Groove finished, the cops had shut down the show. So in true punk rock spirit, the entire show relocated to a house on 5th Street in Mankato. All of the audience traveled there in a caravan of cars. Before Green Day even started, the show was shut down yet again by Mankato cops. So the crowd made a caravan one last time to a farm in St. Peter (I don't recall whose farm it was). Green Day set up and played on top of a giant wire spool. That is until the St. Peter cops came and unplugged them. Good times."
Amanda Dyslin: "It was dark in the middle of the southern Minnesota countryside, somewhere by St. Peter in the summer of 1992. On a farm with a barn and not much else, there was one light pole casting a shallow glow on three guys standing atop 6' wide, 5' tall wire spools - a makeshift stage to gain high ground over 200 or so people watching. Next to them was a big, old, beat-up beast of a car pulled up by the owner so 15 or so people could stand on top and gain a better view. One of them had a video camera. Ben Gruber, then a sophomore at Loyola High School, was there. In fact, he and a buddy had helped haul equipment for the band, and even gave the drummer, Tré Cool, a ride before the show in Mankato. The music was good, he said. A lot more polished than other punk bands he'd seen in Mankato. He was aware of the five-year-old band, born in Berkeley, California, he said. They'd put out a couple of smaller recordings, including their full-length debut 39/Smooth on Lookout! Records. But they were two years from their breakthrough record, Dookie, which would have pretty much everyone at the show that night in awe of what they had experienced - maybe one of the last stripped-down, small-scale punk shows Green Day would ever perform."

Mankato Free Press: "The night Green Day played St. Peter, the original plan was for them to play at someone’s house behind where Casey's is now on Lee Boulevard in North Mankato. Two local bands went on first. But the cops came and broke it up because of the noise. Gruber and his buddy offered to drive equipment and Tré Cool to a house on Fifth Street in Mankato, where somebody had offered up their basement. But the band took one look and said it was way too small. That's when a girl whose family lived off Highway 99 near St. Peter offered her place. 'This whole caravan of cars ended up driving out to her place,' Gruber said. It was too hot to play in the barn. Gruber suggested the guys make a mini stage out of the wire spools, which they thought was pretty punk rock, even commenting on that stage and show later on a bootleg recording, he said. Gruber said he later recognized songs such as "Welcome to Paradise" off of "Dookie" that they played that night - the night most people look to as the epitome of nostalgia when it comes to Green Day's presence in Mankato. People still go to YouTube to check out the nine or so minutes of footage from that concert, despite being out of focus, jittery and too dark to see much. 'Took me back,' Gruber said of watching the footage. 'That guy filming, he was probably standing right next to me and my friends.' A couple of hundred people have similar memories from that night, having accidentally stumbled upon a concert that would become local legend. None of them could possibly have imagined what Green Day would become."

Opening Band(s): Loin Groove, My Friend Stu