Green Day: Anger, Rage and Alienation can be Fun!
Drunk bunnies, crowd surfing, mosh pits, f-bombs, fire at MSG. That’s rock n roll!
It opened with a pink bunny, apparently drunk, chugging bottles of beer and leading the crowd with “YMCA.” It ended with the final encore, “Good Riddance.” In between, Billie Joe Armstrong ruled from the stage, puckishly playing the 15,000-plus Madison Square Garden crowd like a maestro. He and Tre and Mike along with some extra and talented musicians completely rocked it out.
Billie Joe walked on stage and after “Song of the Century” called out some guy sitting down–”you’re not on the f__ing couch watching TV!”– and insisted on everyone standing throughout the show, and stand we did, but for the weak and infirm. Meanwhile, he healed a kid, invited fans on stage to sing, squirt water, even play the guitar–Stephanie, whoever you are, you did great justice to “Jesus of Suburbia.” He told a hilarious story of jumping into a car stuck in traffic to pound a guy who’d yelled out to him “F– you Billie Joe! Green Day sucks!”
Righteous!
And through it all was the music (check out the setlist), and they have built a fantastic canon. Yet, despite the darkness of the instant classics “American Idiot” and “21st Century Breakdown” they play with such unreserved joy that you can’t help but think that the world might be shite, but they’ll go down with, as Billie Joe said at one point, “a guitar sticking out of my chest.”
Posted by Mauro
I’m going tonight. I can’t freaking wait. Going to be awesome.
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