Day 53: It’s a green day on Carson Daly

DAY 53: Burbank, California
Miles traveled: 7,272
States visited: 20
Weather: 64, rainy

I’ve never been a fan of Carson Daly. I didn’t watch him on MTV and I’ve completely ignored his late-night talk show, except for one time years ago when Sigur Ros was the musical guest. But Jason has a friend who works for NBC, and when said friend was able to get us in to a sold-out taping of Last Call with Carson Daly with Green Day as the musical guest, I was ecstatic.

I’ve been to one tv show taping before – The Late Show with David Letterman in 2002. The guests were Will Smith, soccer player Landon Donovan, and musician Yo-Yo Ma. It wasn’t Dave’s most exciting show, that’s for sure.

This Carson Daly taping was sweet because not only was Green Day the musical guest, but they played seven songs instead of the usual one. That’s practically half a concert! The performances aren’t going to air until next week – they’ll be spread out over four shows from June 9-12.

We were 10 feet away from Billie Joe and Mike as the band performed. This is a band that will be in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame someday, and we were close enough to get splashed with their beer. You can’t beat that! The band sounded great. Most of the tracks they played were from their new album. “Know Your Enemy” and “21 Guns” were particular highlights.

They didn’t allow any cameras or cell phones inside the studio – the level of security was such that even Dick Cheney would be proud. So the only photo I have is this blurry one that Carson posted on his twitter:

Now, we have to watch next week to see if I made it on tv. If nothing else I’m sure you’ll see the top of my head in several of the wide shots. Some camera guy kept telling Jason to move to the side because his head was getting in the way. So you’ll probably see Jason’s head too. Yay for large craniums.