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G.C Persue Pop-Punk
Perfection on New Album
- April 9th '04:
Good Charlotte's Madden brothers
are hard to please.
Even though hits like "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and "Girls and Boys" helped their last album,
The Young and the Hopeless, sell more than 2.8 million copies, the Madden brothers say the tunes just weren't good
enough for them.
"Me and Benji are never satisfied with the songs we write," Joel admitted. "Truthfully, we've never loved
anything we've written so far. We're always chasing the song that one day we'll really love."
The Maddens and their bandmates
are currently pursuing pop-punk's perfect wave in a Los Angeles studio, where they're recording their third album with producer
Eric Valentine, who also helmed The Young and the Hopeless. "We've written a few songs so far that I really like,"
he said, citing new tunes called "Falling Away" and "We Believe" as examples, "but so far nothing I really love."
Although
it's still early in the process, Joel is keeping details about the songs close to his chest.
"A lot of these songs are
really personal and about what's been happening in my life," he said. "And I'm kind of going to let it be a secret until the
record comes out. Kids are going to be able to see what's going on in all of our lives, and how being on the road for 20 straight
months affected us.
"Everything that's happened to us in the last two years went into these songs," he continued. "It'll
be easy to tell what each song is about. It won't be tricky."
While he's cagey when it comes to the new album's lyrics
and themes, the Good Charlotte singer promises musical growth.
"Musically, our abilities are a lot more than what they
were on The Young and the Hopeless because we've been on the road for two years. So the music has a little more depth,
and it also goes in some different directions. Some of our fans might be a little thrown off at first, but when it comes down
to lyrics and melodies, I don't think they'll be disappointed."
Good Charlotte hit the studio armed with 16 to 18 songs,
and they plan to keep writing and recording until they play the first five dates of the Vans Warped Tour, which begins June
25 in Houston. The still-untitled album is expected to drop in September.
-Joe D'Angelo (taken from mtv.com)
Good Charlotte Takes on KFC:After finding out that Col. Sanders' secret recipe is really cruelty
to animals, members of Good Charlotte joined their fellow tour-mates and PETA pals Goldfinger in a series of demos at KFCs
across the country to spread the word and urge the public to boycott KFC.
The boys wanted everyone to know that before these smart, sensitive,
friendly birds are battered and sold by the bucketful, they are crammed into sheds that reek of ammonia and crap, with tens
of thousands of other chickens. They often suffer broken bones because workers carelessly grab them by their legs and cram
them into crates before shipping them off to the slaughterhouse. Many chickens are still fully conscious when their throats
are slit or when they're dumped into scalding water to remove their feathers. This is the fate of more than 700 million chickens
who are killed by KFC every year.
Oh, and during that same tour, we got the inside scoop on what their favorite foods
were from John Feldmann. John knew the skinny because his wife, Amy, was often doing the cooking for Good Charlotte and Goldfinger.
The list included Tofutti frozen pizzas, Boca Burgers, Starbucks soy lattes, and Gardenburger Riblets, and their favorite
tour breakfast food was Amy's homemade waffles.
Liberation- CD
Recorded for PETA:
Fat Wreck Chords decided
it wanted to put together a compilation CD just for PETA. So we asked all our friends to donate a song, and Fat Wreck did
the rest.
Good Charlotte, The Used, Goldfinger, Propagandhi, Midtown, District 7, Frenzal Rhomb, Conor Obersts band
Desaparecidos, The Faint, Bigwig, The Eyeliners, Story of the Year, NOFX, Anti-Flag, Hot Water Music, and Good Riddance all
came to play.
The songs from Good Charlotte and The Used are very rare recordings that, of course, John
Feldmann got a hold of for us. Trust us, you wont find these songs anywhere else! (the G.C song was "Lifestyles...")
The Twin's D.C Flag Record Label: 11th
Nov '03
Growing up in Waldorf, Maryland, Benji and Joel
Madden worshiped Minor Threat and the Washington, D.C., hardcore scene. The twins didn't exactly fit in when they formed Good
Charlotte, but years later they've found another way to pay tribute to their roots.
When Benji and Joel's record label officially launches with the release of Hazen Street in February, it will
be called D.C. Flag.
"We're just proud to be from D.C.," Joel said recently, in Los Angeles
to shoot the "Hold On" video, "So D.C. Flag is kind of us waving the flag for D.C. and just representing our hometown."
For the Maddens, the launch of D.C. Flag is just as exciting as when Good Charlotte took off. After all, former
Minor Threat singer Ian MacKaye, who runs Dischord Records, is a hero to the Maddens for his work onstage and off.
"We've always had a dream of having a label," Benji said. "We weren't ever really sure if we wanted to do an
indie label, if we wanted to do an imprint ... but it's always what we wanted to do since we were younger ... and we finally
had the resources to do it."
Rather than decide between imprint or indie, the Maddens set up
D.C. Flag to work as both. Bands signed by the label will have the option of being released on D.C. Flag/Epic Records (Good
Charlotte's label) or simply D.C. Flag.
Hazen Street, which features the all-star lineup of
singers Freddy Cricien (Madball) and Toby Morse (H2O), guitarists Chad Gilbert (New Found Glory) and David Kennedy (Box Car
Racer), bassist Hoya (Madball) and drummer Mackie Jayson (Bad Brains), will be released via the imprint route, while D.C.
Flag's second act, New York band Lola Ray, will likely be an indie.
"We're really excited to
be able to give bands the option," Benji said. "The bands that we hang out with, the bands that we love, everyone's got their
own opinion about where they wanna be."
That's not to say D.C. Flag will be an outlet for all
the bands Benji and Joel hang with. The brothers are going to be picky about who they sign.
"We
love our friends and we'll always support them, but it's our dream to have a successful label, and it's our dream to put out
music that we believe in," Joel said. "When I hear bands that I love that I think everyone should hear, I wanna put that band
out."
"I know a lot of bands that if they really got the chance, most of the bands that are
popular, they would just make [those popular bands] look horrible, because they're so good," Benji said.
D.C.
Flag will concentrate on exposing new or relatively unknown bands, although there is one major act Joel is desperate to sign.
"My dream is to put out a Morrissey album," he said. "Morrissey, if you wanna ever put out a record, one record, with us,
man, we will love it!"
- Corey Moss, with reporting by Ryan J. Downey (taken from mtv.com)
Twins speak about shooting the video for "Hold
On": 27th Oct '03
HOLLYWOOD- These days Good
Charlotte are on top of the world, but there was a time when Benji Madden felt like taking his own life.
"I'll be the first person to say I have the most amazing life of anyone I've ever met, but
I did come to certain points of my life where I thought that [suicide] was an option," Benji admitted recently, sitting next
to his brother Joel inside the Sunset Marquis Hotel.
His voice trailing off, he quietly acknowledged
the role that music played in ultimately steering him away from such a tragic and horrible act.
The
Madden brothers and their bandmates have just completed work on a video for "Hold On," the final single from last year's The
Young and the Hopeless. The song is a response of sorts to all of the Good Charlotte fans who have written the band letters
saying that they're contemplating suicide.
"It's the most important song on the album to me
because we wrote it for [that] one specific reason," Benji said. "All of our lyrics are really personal, and we get a lot
of personal letters ... We want to give [those] fans hope, just to let them know it's never worth taking your own life."
"[It's] probably the most important song we've ever done," added his brother, who brought up the impending
10-year anniversary of the suicide of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and the recent death of singer/songwriter Elliott Smith
as examples of the song's continued relevance. "I think about [them and late Alice in Chains frontman] Layne Staley ... and
[other] people we have lost to kind of hopeless situations. And this song is totally about hope."
And
with Cobain in mind, Good Charlotte enlisted video director Sam Bayer, the man responsible for Nirvana's groundbreaking "Smells
Like Teen Spirit" clip.
"He is probably our favorite director of all time," Joel said. "We
never thought we'd get the chance to work with Sam Bayer because he stopped making videos ... I think part of the reason why
he doesn't make videos anymore is because he loves music so much and I guess the industry kind of flips you. It can definitely
scare you away.
"We called him anyway, because he was our dream director for this song," he
added. "We called him and were just like, 'We want to work with you,' and he said, 'Yes'! " The
"Hold On" video, appropriately serious and stark in tone, is not only a collaborative effort between Good Charlotte and Bayer
but a team-up with the band and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
"It's almost
like a public service announcement," Joel said of the mostly performance-driven clip. "[It includes] real people who have
lost sons, daughters and friends, and then kids who have tried to commit suicide, kids who didn't [and] pictures of kids who
have killed themselves."
The Madden brothers added that they could have easily chosen a more
radio-friendly and accessible song from Lifestyles ..., like the bouncy and fun third single, "Girls and Boys," before
it, in place of "Hold On," but they opted to choose message over money. They also saved the video for last in hopes that it
would get more attention than the songs before it.
"We just hope that maybe one kid will see
this video or hear this song and say, 'OK, I'm gonna hold on,' " Benji said.
Ryan J. Downey
(taken from mtv.com)
Twins speaking to MTV at Weenie Roast:
Irvine, California- Good Charlotte are still deciding
whether to put out a fourth single from the album the The Young and The Hopeless, but if so, the band has selected
"Hold On". "It's my favorite song on the record," Benji Madden said backstage at Saturday's KROQ Weenie Roast.
"I think it's sort of an anti-suicide song. It's about coping with life, and we feel like if we were to put out another single,
we would want to put out a song that would actually maybe help people. So that'd probably be the best bet."
Benji, brother Joel and the rest of the band are hesitant to overstretch their breakthrough album, but the guys
will be touring through the year, which sort of calls for a follow-up to "Girls and Boys," which was released in the spring.
An itinerary has not yet been announced for Good Charlotte's headlining fall tour, which they'll launch after spending the
summer in Europe and Japan.
"It's coming together right now," Joel Madden said. "We don't really
have any bands together yet, but we have a lot of people that we love that we're probably going to ask. It's going to go back
around the United States and then that'll be it. One more time the kids will get to hang out and we'll all have fun, and then
we'll go away for awhile and make another record."
At Saturday's festival, the Madden twins
performed acoustic because guitarist Billy Martin had to attend a wedding.
"That's how we write
most of our songs us in a room, writing with a guitar, but we've never done that like this," Joel said. "But it's cool. It's
pretty different."
"They were surprised at first," Benji said of the crowd. "But I think they
ended up liking it."
Corey Moss (taken from mtv.com)
Benji speaks about Girls &
Boys video:
West Hollywood, California- Growing up in the small town of Waldorf, Maryland, Good Charlotte percieved
big-city women as mooney-hungry and phony. When fame sent them to Los Angeles, they realised those kind of people really did
exist.
"We ain't mad at it, it's just funny," guitarist Benji Madden said.
And when something's funny, Good Charlotte write a song about it. So goes the story of "Girls and Boys," the
band's next single.
"It's a commentary on superficiality between girls and boys, women and men,"
Madden explained at a press conference on Tuesday. " 'Girls don't like boys, they like cars and money/ Boys will laugh at
girls when they're not funny.' That says it all. That's the chorus. We see that a lot."
Good
Charlotte will expand on the subject in the video for the song, which they plan to shoot next week during a tour of Australia
and New Zealand.
"We didn't want to do the typical fast cars, money and girls [thing] 'cause
you expect that," guitarist Billy Martin said. "It's gonna be cool, but it's going to have a nice twist on it."
"If we have these big boob, blonde Barbies in our video the girls we wouldn't go out with our fans would be
like, 'Blah!' " Madden added. "The girls we go out with are different not that they're not hot."
Smith
N' Borin, the duo behind Good Charlotte's "The Anthem" and clips for Simple Plan and Bowling for Soup, will helm the "Girls
and Boys" video.
"We met them on the Warped Tour," Madden said. "They're our age, so it's cool
to work with young people." - Corey Moss (taken from mtv.com)
Benji & Billy talk about helping other bands:
Along with continuous touring (the Civic
Tour kicks off March 8 in Grand Forks, North Dakota) Good Charlotte are developing projects outside of music. Martin is expanding
his Level 27 clothing line, while Benji and his twin brother, Joel, are launching a record label with Goldfinger singer John
Feldmann.
"It should be up and going by the summer," Benji said. "Right now we're just
narrowing down the first band we really want to get behind. There are so many good bands out there it seems rock has really
come around in the last few years."
Like Feldmann, who has produced albums for the Used and
Mest, Benji and Martin are interested in working with other bands in the studio as well.
"Me
and Billy talk about it all the time," Benji said. "There's a band from Connecticut called Throne and we want to work with
them. They're like Silverchair or Helmet."
"When you find a band you really like and they're
not signed, you think, 'I might actually be able to help them out,' [and] it's cool we can do that," Martin said. "Between
the label and us wanting to work with other bands, we'll do a bunch of stuff like that." - Corey Moss (taken from mtv.com)
G.C and N.F.G to roll out on Civic Tour:
West Hollywood, California- If New Found
Glory and Good Charlotte are as competitive about thier live shows as they are about the cars they desinged for the 3rd annual
Civic Tour, concertgoers are in for a treat.
"Our car's faster," boasted Good Charlotte singer Joel
Madden at Tuesday's (February 25) press conference to announce the tour, which is co-sponsored by "TRL."
"That's
'cause our massive video game system weighs us down," New Found Glory drummer Cyrus Bolooki shot back. "And all the people
stopping to see how cool it is weighs us down."
"Our car is weighed down with crazy hos," countered
Madden's twin brother, Benji.
A mediator quickly stepped in. "Fire hoses, that is," a Honda
executive said with a smile.
Of course, New Found Glory and Good Charlotte were joking something
they do well and often. The bands are far from competitive and have been friends since they toured together three years ago.
"It's been a good experience learning from them and growing up together," Benji said.
Joel said
the groups would definitely be joining each other onstage during the 47-date co-headlining trek.
"And
we're going to share our beds, 'cause we heard that's the best way to show our love," chimed in New Found Glory bassist Ian
Grushka to the applause of his audience: his bandmates.
"Thank you, Blanket," added Joel to
more cheer.
New Found Glory and Good Charlotte weren't all jokes, however, especially when asked
about the tour's openers, Less Than Jake and MxPx, who'll be splitting the dates.
"Those are
two bands that took both our bands out when we were starting," NFG guitarist Chad Gilbert said. "So we're giving back to two
bands that helped us out early on, and that means a lot."
While Benji said Good Charlotte chose
the Civic Tour because his sister drives an '89 Civic and "the kids can win these cars, and these cars are nicer than the
cars anyone in my band drives," his brother gave a more serious answer.
"There's a million reasons
to get involved," he said. "Being able to offer lower ticket prices to our fans is probably the biggest reason, but also we
got to customize Civics, and I love cars."
Benji who at one point shouted, "Toyota sucks. Honda
what!" seemed to make up for his "hos" comment by saying, "I want to point out how impressed I am with Honda, just being able
to see the scene we're involved in. There's not many companies that would want to be involved in the culture that we're in
at a major level like this, so we're all very surprised."
"I heard all the presidents of Honda
are getting tattoos," Joel added.
As with past Civic Tours, which have featured Incubus, Blink-182
and Everclear, the bands will be joined on the road by the cars designed by each band. Twelve vehicles have been customized
and each will be given away through contests, including one on the tour's website that starts March 27.
Good Charlotte called their design, a pimped-out play off the album artwork for The Young and the Hopeless,
"a ghetto redneck's dream." "I come from a place called Waldorf, Maryland, and it's every kid's dream to have a lowrider,
so we were really excited to put on all the things we couldn't have at home, like rims and the Alpine stereo system," Joel
said.
New Found Glory's similarly loaded fire engine red design was inspired by insides jokes
amongst the bandmembers, including made-up people whose names appear in strange places on the car.
The
first leg of the Civic Tour will kick off April 8 in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and wrap up June 7 in Los Angeles. Dates for
a second leg will be announced later. Tickets go on sale Friday, and a pre-sale begins Tuesday on the tour's Web site.
"It's a more extensive tour than any of us would have ever been able to do," Benji said. "And
we're not just hitting big cities. We're starting in North Dakota. Those kids deserves good shows too!"
- Corey Moss (taken from mtv.com) 25th feb 03
Good Charlotte to rock against Bush:
22nd Sept 03
Good Charlotte, Pennywise and Sum 41 have always been known more for their practical jokes than their
practical advice. That may soon change.
Next year these bands, Green
Day, NOFX, Alkaline Trio and others will unite to raise political awareness and encourage pop-punk fans to vote in the next
presidential election against George Bush. The groups will each contribute a track to the compilation Rock Against Bush
and take part in at least one show on a tour organized and funded by NOFX singer/bassist Fat Mike, who also owns the label
Fat Wreck Chords.
"About a year ago I decided to use my influence to get bands together to speak
out about the president," Fat Mike said. "I think it's our responsibility as citizens and musicians to do so. He's wrecking
the country and the world. He's starting wars for no reason, our economy is in the toilet, he's ruining the environment, and
he does things like cut taxes when we need money."
Green Day, NOFX and Alkaline Trio will record
new songs for the album. The other groups haven't yet announced whether their tracks will be new cuts, remixes or previously
released tunes. The album should be in stores by April or May.
There will be two legs of the
Rock Against Bush Tour. The first will take place around the release of the album, and the second will occur closer to the
election. At the shows, Fat Mike's Punkvoter.com political organization will set up voter registration booths, and the bands
that play will encourage kids to take part in the voting process.
"We're trying to build a coalition
of kids 18 to 25," Fat Mike said. "We want punks and other disenfranchised young people to vote as a block, which no one has
ever done before. Kids are the biggest group of people that don't vote. We want to change that."
Fat
Mike applauds Rock the Vote, which has long been urging youths to show up at the voting booth on election day, but he feels
their nonpartisan methods are flawed. "They don't tell kids why to vote or who to vote for," he said. "The punk scene is very
united. We're gonna get every punk-rock band together, and I think we can take over the country and change the world."
Plans call for the shows to be free and staged mostly at college campuses. Since there may be some logistical
problems with calling the jaunt Rock Against Bush, Fat Mike admits he may have to change the name. "Certain colleges won't
advertise it as Rock Against Bush, and a lot of radio stations won't mention the name either. So we may just call it the Punkvoter
tour or something, but to us it will always be Rock Against Bush."
All proceeds from the Rock
Against Bush album will go toward print and television ads that will encourage punks to oust Bush from office. "We're
just going to put true facts on TV," he said, "and one or two famous punk rockers will be reading them."
With
profits from the disc being funneled into advertising, funds for the tour will be limited, but Fat Mike said he's prepared
to pick up most of the cost. "I'm planning on losing a lot of money, but I don't care. This is something I really believe
in."
Jon Wiederhorn (taken from mtv.com)
Good Charlotte Begin Work
On Next LP- 27/08/03
Before the members of Good Charlotte disappear
to start working on a new record, they want to give a sonic hug to their devoted fans.
The band's next single, the emotive, mid-paced "Hold On," is about all the mail they've received over the years
and how much it has meant to them.
"We get [letters] from kids when we're on tour, and they
all say how much our songs help them," rhythm guitarist Billy Martin said backstage after Good Charlotte's rehearsal for the
MTV Video Music Awards on Tuesday. "That means a lot to us, so this is a big thank you to all of those people."
"Hold On" will be the last single from the band's multiplatinum second album, The Young and the Hopeless.
Good Charlotte have started assembling songs for a follow-up and plan to do much more writing when they hit the road this
fall.
"We're hoping everything comes together when we have our own tour with a practice room
and soundchecks and we're really together a lot," Billy said.
What can fans expect next go-round?
It's too early to tell for sure, but Billy said no one will be disappointed.
"We have all gotten
a lot better on our instruments, and we really challenged ourselves on the last record," he said. "I think we'll just do the
same thing, and hopefully it will be even better."
As much as Good Charlotte are planning for
the future, at the moment they're concentrating on the present. While they've played tons of sold-out shows and made numerous
TV appearances, they've never played a big awards show, and they're somewhat humbled at the prospect of being on the VMAs.
"This is all new for us, and it feels really weird being in here when it's empty and seeing all the names taped
on the seats and thinking, 'Wow, 50 Cent's gonna watch us play,' " Billy said. "I'm kind of nervous, but it's awesome. It's
gonna be great." (taken from mtv.com)
G.C & The Fans That Love Them- 18/11/02
-SuChin Pak Reports:
I spent 24 hours
on the road with Good Charlotte recently. Most of what I saw I already knew from TV reports on tour-bus life, probably from
episodes of "Diary": You can't do much in the bathroom, it's eight grown men living in the space of a large bedroom, running
water is a luxury and the food sucks. That's not, however, what I went to report on.
Good Charlotte are a band with punk
values they look it, they grew up on the music and they believe in the punk ethos. At the same time, though, their video has
already been retired from "TRL," their new album, The Young and the Hopeless, will most likely go platinum in the next
few months, and they're selling out venues that actually have nosebleed sections. And they've got some incredibly rabid fans.
That's why I went with the group to see who these fans are.
The band's fans are not your average punk-rock, "hate-the-Man"
fans, they're the kind that use color markers to write "I love Joel" across their chests. The kind of fans that camp out in
their cars to be the first to the venue, the fans that huddle around the tour bus in hopes of catching a glimpse of the band's
guitarist Benji waking up.
It's the kind of fervor and swooning reserved for boy bands. There were girls slathered in glitter
with gifts for the boys: jelly bracelets that had been carefully beaded with the girls' names ("Kelly, "Michelle," "Donna").
And invariably, there were the ones who stood for hours to see their favorite Charlotte, trembling and crying, too scared
to even attempt a conversation once they got to the front of the autograph line. This is not what most punk rockers sign on
for.
I asked Benji how this feels, to have such emotion pouring out of these fans. He said it was flattering, of course,
but it's also something he doesn't quite know what to do with. To have a complete stranger stand in front of you,
with tears pouring down her face, would make anyone uncomfortable. If he didn't really care that most of these kids have been
looking forward to the show for months, or if he didn't know how lucky they were to have fans that actually follow the bus
from city to city, it would be just another part of the job. But any band will say that they'd be nothing without the
fans. And Good Charlotte will tell you that they're the most important people in the equation. Very few people know what it's
like being onstage, looking out at a sea of bodies. And every single person that I saw in the crowd knew every single word
of every song Good Charlotte played. It's hard not to be moved by this kind of devotion.
I got up the next morning, in
the middle of New Jersey somewhere, just itching to get off of this bus where you couldn't stretch your legs without kicking
someone or knocking over cans of soda. I hadn't eaten anything that resembled a food group since breakfast the day before,
so imagine my frustration at not being able to actually get off the bus. There were groups of people outside, staring at the
front door, armed with cameras, all waiting for the slightest movement, a sign that someone, anyone was coming out. The guys
had figured out a simple system: Call a cab, have security direct the car as close to the bus as possible and hurry out.
Is
this a new variation of "pop"? After years of shuttling in vans, motivated not by the money but by the music, after making
small, gradual steps in building a homegrown fanbase, like any underground band, Good Charlotte have finally found a home.
It's a place where you can love the Prince of Darkness Ozzy Osbourne with the same passion you can love Justin Timberlake's
new solo career.
It's a question of maintaining a delicate balance between staying true to who you are, where you came
from, not selling out and knowing that a couple of teary "TRL" fans don't change what the music is about.
- SuChin Pak (taken
from mtv.com)
G.C On Tour- Showing signs of growing up?
19th Sept 03
MADISON, Wisconsin
- What a difference five months and a half-hour make.
The last time Good Charlotte came through the Midwest, they used their slot between Less
Than Jake and New Found Glory to pummel the crowd with an hour of their fastest, most furious tunes. As they kick off their
Young and Hopeless Tour as headliners, though, they took their extra 30 minutes onstage to focus on quieter, more thoughtful
material. If you didn't know any better, you'd think these guys had grown up a lot since April.
While
that's probably true being on the covers of top music magazines and taking the Viewer's Choice Award at the MTV Video Music
Awards will do that the extra time just gave the Washington, D.C., quintet a chance to highlight the fact that its music's
never been as one-dimensional as its detractors have claimed.
The show at the Alliant Energy
Center's Exhibition Hall began in familiar fashion, with the sounds of "A New Beginning" swelling up while the stage was still
hidden behind a huge banner of the Young and the Hopeless cover. The band then kicked things off with the one-two-three
punch of "Anthem," "Festival Song" and "Riot Girl." Clad in its usual all-black, the band came out with a sense of purpose
that showed its ready for its headlining status, and played everything with more confidence and punch than the recorded versions
suggest.
Running back and forth across the stage, Joel Madden mixed adolescent humor with an
arena-rock sense of purpose. His singing was stronger than ever, and he even closed "Girls and Boys" with some goofy yet entirely
appropriate vocal riffing. The set's first half-hour focused on crowd pleasers, but Good Charlotte's expanded time slot let
them throw in tunes like "Seasons" from their debut CD, and the crowd responded with just as much fervor to the pensive guitar
strumming and harmonics of "Motivation Proclamation" as it did to the fist-pumping choruses of "The Click" and "Hold On."
The night's real surprise came when Joel and his brother Benji sat down on stools for an acoustic take on the
beautifully vulnerable ballad "Thank You Mom." Don't think the Good Charlotte's gone all serious, though; before they began,
Joel rejoined his brother's question, "You guys ready to take a little break?," with the smart-aleck reply, "You guys can
all say, 'Shut up, Benji.' " The rest of the band then joined them for the live debut of "Emotionless," the Maddens' open
letter to their absent father.
Coming out of the acoustic set ("I
feel like we're Dashboard Confessional," joked Benji) with "Say Anything" and "The Day That I Die," the band closed things
out with "Waldorf Worldwide" before an encore that featured "The Young and the Hopeless" and "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." - Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen (taken from mtv.com)
Crashing With Good Charlotte - News:
The
MTV Network recently taped a reality show called Crashing With Good Charlotte in Punxsutawney. The MTV show is
a special where big stars are asked to give up the trappings of their fabulous life and spend 48 hours with a regular family.
The Punxsutawney family had their lives taped with the punk-rock band Good Charlotte and then MTV turned the tables
on the family and they got to live the rock star life during a free concert given in Punxsutawney on October 28.
The Crashing With Good Charlotte episode was done in conjunction with MTVs Fight for
Your Rights campaign to promote awareness for sexual health among teens. Punxsutawney was chosen as a representative town
because Punxsy Area High School senior Amanda Story wrote the winning essay in the Fight For Your Rights essay contest.
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