10 Legendary Bands That Were Actually Side Projects
5. The Network/Foxboro Hottubs
It’s completely natural for any rock star to want a side project every now and again. For all of the fun that you may have with your friends in the main outfit, there comes a point when you’re going to want to see what else is out there for you to explore. That’s healthy for any band, but there are few side projects that have every member of the main band in it.
Around the time that Green Day were entering their rock opera period, they made a few side projects together to blow off steam. Though it would make sense just to release their written songs as Green Day cuts, The Network is not a Green Day sounding project by any means, sounding like something that you would find on an early new wave record by Devo. It was already strange hearing this when the next thing that they would release would be American Idiot, but they found time to cleanse the palette again before 21st Century Breakdown, breaking out the ‘60s fashion and shaping The Foxboro Hottubs into a dirty garage rock band that would have killed it about half a century earlier.
Though neither of these are what you come to Green Day for, it’s a nice change of pace and a way to see just what makes Billie Joe Armstrong tick when he’s not in raw punk form. Any other act that does this would have been considered a joke, but the fact that they’re actually good is practically a miracle.