It’s unclear whether Green Day could have claimed the “punk” identifier in 1994 when they released breakout record Dookie, but they certainly can’t now. Yes, they had “Blitzkrieg Bop” playing on the PA before the start of their two-plus-hour set and a beer-guzzling hype man in a rabbit suit to rile up a crowd (both of which qualify), but nearly everything else about their set spoke to the fact that they’re a stadium rock act…and a very practiced one at that.
They began their set with a solid half our of songs from Uno!, Dos! and Tre!, the songs that revisited some of the band’s earlier scrappiness and Billy Joe Armstrong’s commands to shake fists, wave arms and “Go fucking crazy” even lit up the rafters by about the third song. However, the first moments in which the band truly united the crowd, came when they played American Idiot‘s “Holiday” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” During “Holiday,” Armstrong turned down the lights, shining a spotlight onto the crowd, stating that he could see everyone out there. By “Boulevard,” he could hear everybody, as well. He turned vocals for the first chorus over to the crowd and was so impressed by the loud response that he stopped the song, stating “I looooooove you, Virginia.”
He later returned that love in arena-rock fashion by spraying the audience with a hose, shooting them with a toilet paper gun, shooting t-shirts out into the crowd and breaking into what can only be referred to as “Green Day Karaoke,” which involved two medleys of classic rock or oldies staples such as “Hey Jude,” “Shout,” “Highway to Hell” and “Sweet Child O’Mine.” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” as it turns out, is not in Armstrong’s range, but his voice sounded remarkably strong considering that he screamed between songs for the entirety of his time onstage. It felt as much like a sports event as a rock concert.
Yet, for the scripted nature of the show with all of its lights, costume changes (for “King for a Day”) and sing-a-longs, the most exciting moment of the show was coincidental. Armstrong brought two youngsters onstage over the course of the show. He directed the first, a high school student, to stage dive over the photography pit and into the crowd, a resounding success.
It was clear that he expected his second participant later in the show to be around that age as well. However, while searching the crowd for someone to sing the final verse of slacker anthem “Longview,” he found a kid that could not have been more than 10 with a sign asking specifically to sing that song with the band. Armstrong broke his ringmaster character asking the kid if he really truly knew the lyrics. Not only did the child know the lyrics, but he sang them convincingly. The irony of a youngster who has likely never done the act singing “When masturbation’s lost it’s fun, you’re fucking lonely” was not lost on the band and Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt fell over laughing as they finished the song.
“That was pretty much the most memorable moment in my entire life,” said Armstrong, who gave the kid one of his guitars at the end of the song. It was refreshing to see that for their entire arsenal of effective and well-curated crowd pleasers, that the greatest moment of the show had an element of spontaneity.
