Green Day
Went to the Green Day world stadium tour 2005 last night. Wow. What a strange and wonderful show. Billie Joe is the human Energizer bunny and the band knows how to dominate a sold-out stadium. Punk rock in the 2005 is a heavyset older women wearing a muumuu standing next to you, completely losing her shit while three shaggy haired kids looking like they just walked off the set of Dogtown and Z-boys (who couldn’t have been more than 10 years old) rocked out with total abandon. I was prepared for a younger crowd but I wasn’t prepared for the parade of children. Hoards of ’em. Like it was a third grade field trip. Hundreds of seven and eight year girls, wearing pink Green Day t-shirts, shouting along to the the call and response of ‘F*** George Bush!’ Aggression without violence was the name of the game last night. It was weird to think that a lot of the crowd wasn’t even alive when Green Day’s ‘Dookie’ album came out.

One of the highlights was when the band kicked into a cover Operation Ivy‘s ‘Knowledge’ and then about halfway though the song they pulled three people out of the crowd to play drums, bass, and guitar. Each person quickly learned their part on their instrument and the song continued with the newly formed band. The girl who got to play bass was awesome. And after the song Billie Joe let the guitarist keep the guitar. The kid collapsed right there on stage. The rock and roll moment was just too much for him to comprehend.

Being a big fan of the new record, I have to say I would have been content if they would have just played that record from beginning to end. But just for the record: one song off Kerplunk (2000 Light Years Away) and then of course ‘Knowledge’ from 1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours.