| Product: |
Green Day - Live |
| Date: |
12/03/02 (188 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: best band on the planet, fantastic set list
Disadvantages: too many Goths
Seeing Green Day live at Leeds Festival last year was by far the highlight of my summer. After waiting all year to see the band and going to Leeds purely to see them I wasn't disappointed.
I arrived in Leeds on the Saturday to catch what seemed to be the punk day. The Friday had been mainly metal and not being a big metal fan I decided to give it miss. The Saturday was fantastic. A beautiful day sat on a hill watching some of the biggest names in music play.
After waiting for PJ Harvey on the main stage and watching her whole set just to get a good view of Green Day I was as eager as anyone there, if not more so. I had missed out on seeing the band when they visited my home town the previous year as I hadn't heard much by them, just the occasional single which didn't really strike me as at the time my musical tastes were somewhat crap. Anyways, about 7.30 5 blue sirens started wailing and a rather short guy wearing a green day shirt and three quarter length shorts walks onto the stage, it was Tre Cool. He walks over to the drums, sits down and on comes Mike Dirnt and finally the god Billie Joe.
Billie recently voted the scruffiest rock star in Kerrang! Magazine lived up to his reputation by wearing his trademark short trousers, dirty trainers and stripped top. Not a named brand anywhere, what a guy. We walked on, put on his guitar, waiting for the cheering to quiet and jumped into Dookie's 1994 release Welcome To Paradise. At first I can only say I was frightened, this was my first festival gig and as Green Day were practically headlining everyone was watching them. I was stood about 30 ft away from Billie Joe and to my dismay a pit had started around me. With little hesitation I decided to join in. I was hardly likely to make my way through thousands of people and as I was pretty much in front of Billie Joe I don't care how many times I get knocked down, I’m staying.
For some strange reason I ended up in
a pit with all the Goths that had been at Leeds since the Friday watching the likes of Marilyn Manson and other 'artists'. As you can probably tell I don't really care for it and I don't really care for Goths. That’s why I enjoyed the pit, I might come across as a bit of a thug but they loved it. I was actually a little scared when I realised that they weren’t really there to enjoy the music but for the violent pits. Instead of debating the greatness of Green Day in the middle of one of my favourite songs I think I just pushed them over a few times.
The set list was fantastic if not a tad repetitive throughout their world tour. I had the bootlegs from some of the other gigs and apart from a few expectations they were the same, this was the case at Leeds.
The sound was amazing and Billie's guitar, that he christened 'Blue' looked as punk as a guitar can possibly look.
A common factor with most Green Day gigs is the audience band. Being a guitarist I was ready for the 'Can anybody here play guitar?' and I tried to get as close to the barrier as possible. My attempt was in vain as the backpack I was wearing was being pulled from all directions and some guy, have no idea where he was from got up instead. As predicted he played Operation Ivy's knowledge Billie introducing it as, "This was a cover song, but I took it and know it belongs to fu*king me" which is fair enough as the band have been playing it since their 1993 Lookout Record's release of Kerplunk. After the honorary band member stage dived but not before kissing Billie Joe goodbye the band continued with their set. Mainly playing songs from what was then their latest release Warning they had the crowd as excited as when they first came on.
Finishing the set with Macy's Day Parade after Tre Cool does his usual stunt and after an hour and a half on stage the gig was by far the best of the day. God bless punk.
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