Green Day

For the past few years, my wife and I have really increased the number of concerts that we attend.  Part of this is related to cancer.  In particular, I'm simply much more focused on experiences than acquiring stuff.  And, I greatly enjoy seeing live music.

This year, we've had a really good year.  Adrian Belew.  Dead and Company.   The Specials.  U2. Echo and the Bunnymen.  The Violent Femmes.  And, last night, Green Day.

To be honest, we've been traveling and driving too much recently.  My wife drove 10 hours on Saturday to take our daughter back to Syracuse and I'd driven almost 4 hours that day to do some trout fishing.  We'd been to Boston three times recently.

I had tried to give these concert tickets away, just to avoid driving 4 hours from our office to the show, and then 3 more hours to get home.  Getting home at 3:00 a.m. when you have to work the next day simply isn't a lot of fun.  But, in retrospect, I'm glad we went.

It was the second time we've seen Green Day.  The previous time was the tour for the 21st Century Breakdown album, and we saw them indoors in Albany that time.  It was a pretty straightforward show, with a focus primarily on playing their music, and playing it well.  Yes, they pulled someone out of the audience to play guitar for a bit, but they've been doing that for years.  Last night, they pulled someone to sing in one song and someone to play guitar in another.  The guy they picked to play guitar was only 15 and was pretty good.

This time, GD's lead singer, Billy Joe, seemed much more interested in audience interaction and getting the audience to respond to him or to sing the lyrics for him.  Maybe it has to do with some of his own personal demons, including a problem that he allegedly had with prescription pills of some sort. I simply don't recall him being this overtly interactive with the audience the last time we saw them.  He came across almost as a diva, demanding to be feted by the crowd.  That was my least favorite part of the show and the biggest change since we last saw them.

I told my wife after the show that 1990 Billy Joe Armstrong would probably hate the 2017 version of himself.  Coming out of the Oakland punk scene of the time, they played a lot of early shows at a place simply known as Gilman.  I think that the club is still there, and if I recall correctly, they had a rule against bands with major record contracts.  So, the early bands that played there - Green Day, Operation Ivy, the Offspring, and others, would no longer be welcome.

But, his desire for adulation from the audience is something that I imagine the old Billie Joe would not have liked at all.

Green Day is a big act these days.  They don't put songs in the Top 40, and they discussed that in a recent interview with Rolling Stone when they played DC on the current tour.  But, they still have quite a following, and I was amazed at an audience of teens to 60-somethings, where every single person seemed to know every single word to every single song.  Their fans are not casual fans.  I haven't purchased their latest album, to be honest, but most people there clearly knew it well.

And musically, they just plain delivered.  The setlist from last night can be found here

They played five songs from their newest album.  They completely skipped the trio of albums before that, a set of related albums called Uno, Dos, and Tré.  The latter one is not a misspelling, but instead the stage name of their drummer - Tré Cool.  I have the first two of those albums and I have to say that they aren't among my favorite Green Day albums.  But, if you read the interview I linked to above, Mike Dirnt of the band talked about how great he thinks they are.

They played 7 songs from their classic concept album American Idiot.  They used the title song to take a good swipe at the current occupant of the White House.

They played 5 songs from their breakout album Dookie.  And, they even went back to 1991 or so, playing a couple songs from Kerplunk.

I have to admit that I wish Billy Joe had sung every word to the songs they played, rather than asking the audience to do it.

But, they played 26 songs, and in many of them, there were new arrangements that greatly lengthened the song.  King for a Day was a perfect example of this and was one of my favorite songs of the show.  American Idiot also fell into this category and was amazing.

It's rare these days to get a 2.5 hour show out of any band that isn't a jam band or Springsteen.

We had purchased lawn seats at this venue.  I hate to use the newer corporate names of these venues, but I'll make an exception here.  The venue, the XFinity Center (which will always be Great Woods to me) was not sold out.  So, every patron who had a general admission ticket to sit on the lawn was upgraded for free to an actual seat.  I'd never had that happen at a show before and it was a nice gesture.

We have tickets for one more show yet this fall - the Psychedelic Furs.  I think it will be my 7th time seeing them, moving them past Bowie to number 2 on my all time list.  Only the Dead in their various incarnations have been seen more.