Perhaps we would have never known that Nils Sjöberg was Swift if the pair hadn't split up following This Is What You Came For's release. It was credited to Harris and Nils Sjöberg, assumed to be a gun-for-hire songwriter, probably from Sweden. In April 2016, the Scottish dance music producer released This Is What You Came For, featuring Rihanna, which duly shot up the charts to No.2 in the UK. But in their time together, they never collaborated on a song - or so it seemed. To confuse matters more, there's another Green Day spin-off band, Foxboro Hot Tubs - a garage rock group that released an album in 2008, Stop Drop and Roll!!!, and includes three other musicians.Įven a cursory reader of the music and/or gossip press in 2015-2016 would have know that Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris were an item. And was Money Money 2020 actually Cigarettes and Valentines, or a version of it? Much later, the band told NME that the supposedly lost album was actually "in the vault", unlikely to see the light of day. Other reviewers took a similar line, but only Mike Dirnt has admitted being part of The Network project.
"For the sake of this review, we're going to simply state that Billie, Mike, and Tré are 3/5 of The Network for simplicity." "If The Network isn't Green Day, they do a great job of sounding like Green Day trying to not sound like Green Day," ran the opening line of Punk News's review of the album. But most of the time it was just 'dude soup'." Foxboro is a housing development located in Rodeo, CA.Meanwhile, in 2003 a mysterious Devo-like new wave group called The Network released an album called Money Money 2020 on Green Day's Adeline Records, which many assumed at the time was a Green Day record in disguise. The name "Foxboro Hot Tubs" was explained in an email that was sent to MTV News: "The Foxboro Hot Tubs were a place we used to sneak booze and chicks into late at night. The songs "The Pedestrian" and "Alligator" were featured in the Hollister Co. Soon after, the song "Mother Mary" became a hit on alternative rock radio, hitting #16 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. The mp3s were reinstated on December 16, but were again removed and replaced with the clock later the website was changed to simply redirect to the band's MySpace.
Five days later, on December 13, the mp3s were taken off the site, which then displayed just a clock.
On December 8, 2007, Foxboro Hot Tubs' site released the band's debut EP, Stop Drop and Roll!!!, in streaming and downloadable mp3 formats, free of charge to the listener. Among the common traits listed are Billie Joe Armstrong's "unmistakable" vocals and guitar playing, and a rhythm section which recalls the sound of Green Day's own Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool. Fans of Foxboro Hot Tubs have noted, on the band's MySpace site, many musical similarities between the band and Green Day.
While the band's history is, as yet, unknown, they comprise the members of Green Day, who are performing "garage" music under a nom de plume. The band consists of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, Tré Cool, Jason White, Jason Freese and Kevin Preston. "Strychnine Twitch" is also mentioned in the lyrics to the title track, Stop Drop And Roll: "Sixteen and a son of a bitch/got a gun and a strychnine twitch".įoxboro Hot Tubs' Album: Stop, Drop, and Roll Billie Joe Armstrong told NME magazine: "The only similarity between Green Day and Foxboro Hot Tubs is that we are the same band." His reasons for starting the band, also told to NME magazine, were that they "love to play music and be spontaneous, and after a few late-night jams and a few too many bottles of wine, we were inspired to record some rockin' eight-track recordings." In a similar manner to other side project The Network, Billie Joe has adopted an alter ego for Foxboro Hot Tubs - Reverend Strychnine Twitch. Soon after, the Foxboro Hot Tubs were discovered and subsequently made headlines, being heralded as the next secret side project of Green Day, which was later confirmed by the band themselves. The group made its debut in December 2007 with three songs on their website.