Unforeseen Consequences

I think I may have experienced an epiphany of sorts at the Green Day concert I just went to.

Before I get to that, thought, some background. My history with Green Day extends farther back than with any other band. I’ve written about how Metallica was the first band I ever liked, and this is still true. However, Green Day is the first band name I ever remembered. This is because, when I was a wee lad of 7 or 8, I had a babysitter who enjoyed watching MTV while keeping an eye on me. And one time, on MTV, I happened to see a music video with some revolting footage of someone having a tooth pulled. I was traumatized and ended up cowering in horror. This video was stuck firmly in my head for a long time, as well as the words superimposed on the final shot of a bloody tooth lying on a table: “GREEN DAY”. Turns out, the song was “Geek Stink Breath”. Even now I can’t watch the video all the way through. (And interestingly, I associate the childhood experience of the video with a snatch of music that sounds nothing like the actual song.)

My babysitter tried to get me to appreciate some of the crap she listened to, and I can still remember some of the songs to this day (mostly boy bands and rap). I’ve looked up the songs and artists on the basis of lyrics that I remember (thus proving that my brain is amazing at remembering completely useless garbage), but I didn’t remember any of the band names from back then. But by God I was never, ever going to forget the words “GREEN DAY”.

Once the trauma faded a little, I didn’t actually give Green Day much thought until high school. Just after senior year began, American Idiot came out and apparently it was a big hit. I was completely oblivious to contemporary music at the time (I was still catching up on Metallica’s catalogue from the 90s), so I would not have noticed if not for my best friend’s younger brother. He was the singer and guitarist in one of maybe three bands that competed in our school’s Battle of the Bands, and their entry was “American Idiot”. (To avoid hurting anyone’s feelings, this event was not an actual competition; they just let some bands perform for ten minutes each and that was it. Still, the yearbook awarded my friend’s brother the “Best Guitar Solo” recognition on the page devoted to Battle of the Bands.) At the time I was in a phase where I scorned basically any music anyone tried to tell me about, so I was all set to automatically dismiss whatever band originally made this song as stupid, but this high school band’s rendition of “American Idiot” was actually quite good. It was certainly miles better than the other bands’ performances.

Anyway, this concert performed by actual Green Day. For context, the previous night, I had gone to a ZZ Top concert. During this concert, I almost got involved in a dust-up with a drunk fat guy who was under the impression that I was messing with his stuff (I wasn’t). The crowd was composed largely of people like him — older, unpleasant-looking guys, usually accompanied by equally unpleasant-looking ladies, to whose physiques the years have been unkind. I’ve written at length about the crowds at the kind of concert I go to, so i won’t repeat myself here, but suffice it to say the ZZ Top crowd was scary. (ZZ Top was great, BTW.)

So maybe it was just that whole situation from the previous night, but Green Day made me realize several things, chief among which is this: I should probably start listening to bands that are not older than I am.

Not counting Green Day (or openers), I’ve seen nine bands live*. Of these, only two formed after I was born: Tool and Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Most of them peaked before I was born too. And the difference in atmosphere at the concerts is striking. Green Day was not filled with Scary Aging Metalheads; it was filled with people who were of reasonable ages and appearances, many of them younger than me (many of them were little kids, actually). I did not almost get involved in a dust-up. There wasn’t even a whole lot of smoke in the air.

And the band itself was very obviously of a less advanced age. I don’t know if Billie Joe Armstrong is an exceptional frontman and that’s what makes the difference, but he certainly was the most energetic of all the frontmen I’ve seen perform. Some frontmen benefit from an air of aloof detachment (Billy Gibbons) but I’ve never seen anyone engage a crowd like Billie Joe did. He pulls audience members on stage, crowd surfs, hoses people down with water, and lets audience members perform entire songs. It’s also quite convenient that Green Day is a Bay Area band and Billie Joe could name all sorts of random Bay Area towns and diss Los Angeles and scream soulfully about finally being home.

And they went on and on for over three hours, without a break. This is the longest set I’ve seen any band play live. They played all of their classics, didn’t play too much from 21st Century Breakdown, and covered bits of a few classic rock songs. They did everything in a good order, playing some classics up front, then screwing around a lot in the middle (including taking audience requests), and saving “American Idiot”, “Jesus of Suburbia”, and some acoustic things including “Good Riddance” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” for the encore and second encore. And, of course, Shoreline Amphitheatre is still amazing. Essentially, they put together the perfect Green Day concert, and the best concert I’ve ever been to.

As a bonus, the opener was AFI, which I had never heard of before. It turns out they’re actually really good and I will start listening to them.

* The others, in roughly chronological order: Yngwie Malmsteen, Rush (twice), Dream Theater (once as a headliner, once opening for Iron Maiden), Queensrÿche (twice), Def Leppard, Metallica, Iron Maiden, ZZ Top.