This house is mine! (Green Day - Live)

Member Name: buster19761976

Product:	Green Day - Live
Date:	08/02/05 (208 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Energetic punk rock, Back to their best

Disadvantages: Loads of kids!

Where and when?
I saw Green Day in Boblingen in Germany and also at Brixton Academy in London. Both in January 2005

Who are they?
A punk/pop/rock three-piece who started with the fantastic 1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours in 1990 (albeit without their manic drummer, Tre Cool) and made the pop/punk scene theirs with releases including “Basket Case”, “When I come around” and “Good Riddance “Time of your life”. Currently battering the manufactured bands out there by taking their punk-opera master piece “American Idiot” to the top of the charts in the Us and UK.

Am I a fan then?
I’ve been into Green Day since they released Dookie, though I have got the rarer stuff, which includes Kerplunk! and 1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours. So yes, I suppose I am. I’ve seen them once before at the Reading Festival.

The gig(s).
There were lots of similarities between the two gigs. My fears that it would be like seeing the same gig twice were allayed by the fact that the band were very into the songs and didn’t trot the gig out like a formula. The biggest difference was that the German gig had more filler in it (five occasions of Billie Joe doing the “everybody Waayyy-ooohhh” thing). I’ll treat the review as a review of the whole lot.

As the band (Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool) ran manically onto the stage, shouted "This house is mine!" and exploded into the title track from the latest album “American Idiot” I got a feeling that this was going to be a sweaty and amazing night. The new album has a couple of 9-minute long opuses and I was amazed to hear the entire of “Jesus of Suburbia” played live, with the help of a couple of session musicians.

The new stuff went down well with the younger members of the audience. At 28 I was among the older lot but I was reassured to see some 40-somethings pogo-ing around the floor to the older tracks like “Basket Case”. There were some great moments such as when a couple of audience members were dragged on the stage and armed with super-soaker water pistols to soak the crowd. At the London gig the guy brought on first was so excited he threw up. Without missing a beat, Billie Joe exclaimed that the Sex Pistols would be proud of him, saving the kid some embarrassment! Genius.

A few more people were invited on stage later to play “Knowledge”, a cover of an old Operation Ivy song. In Germany, the drummer was fantastic and Tre Cool had to restrain him to stop him playing fill after fill, rather than the simple beat they wanted! The drummer in London wasn’t really up to it and it showed. On both occasions the lead guitarist walked away with the guitar, much to the approval of the crowd.

Some people have said that the handling of political opinions in songs such as “Holiday” is heavy-handed and unnecessary and I’ll leave that up to you. It doesn’t bother me though. The anti-Bush sentiment was hardly prevalent and most of the kids there probably didn’t notice it anyway.

Another cover that went okay was that of Lulu’s “Shout”. A played straight rendition of Queen’s “We Are The Champions” was fantastic and the huge ticket tape explosion left the crowd sweat-soaked but happy. Most of the usual songs were there, with Longview and Brain Stew/Jaded getting the crowd very excited (some of the angry kids nearly forgave their parents for whatever it was that they were so angry about). I wanted to hear “Welcome to Paradise”, but it never came, nor did anything of note from 1039/Slappy apart from Knowledge – a cover. I guess this is down to record label politics, but it’s a shame.

It could be the last we see of Green Day as a power in rock music as they are getting on a bit (as are some of us fans), but I’ll be first in line if they return to Europe. If you can get to see them, even at the festival circuit, then get there!

Summary: