Long-Delayed Recap

In late May, the week before Chrissi and I saw Green Day play a stadium gig at the Emirates, I suggested that my busy routine would prevent me from blogging about it at the time and I also unerringly forecasted that my promises to return to the subject and recap later would all come to naught.

However, last night / early this morning I was watching some of the highlights from the Reading festival (courtesy of the BBC iPlayer which I cannot commend enough for this service) which featured Green Day's main stage set from the opening night. This reminded me that I had intended at some point to post some detail myself on when we saw them live back in June. So today's blog was born.

The Support While we just caught the tail end of All Time Low (sounded decent, haven't heard anything else of them besides this to judge them on) the great thing about the stadium gig is that you had a much better calibre of support acts. The main support act was Kaiser Chiefs, who were excellent in (1) going to their most well-known back catalogue and (2) despite being a major band themselves, being fully aware they were in a support capacity and not thanking the crowd for coming to see them!

The Lead-in As opposed to the typical long (im)patient build-up and sudden appearance, we were treated to two songs played through the PA - the first being Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody (and the sight of a crowd of 60-80,000 all singing along is quite amazing - not sure many other songs could get that reaction either), and the second being The Ramones' Blitzkrieg Bop. This is a song that they often will use themselves when playing live, and watching a pink rabbit costumed person stumble around the stage to the song was the focus for the entry of the main act.

The Opening Song Inspired by conversations with Ollie and Chris the previous week at the Muse gig, Chrissi and I had been trying to do our best to predict the opening and closing songs, with minimal success. While we both got half points as I plumped for American Idiot (used as first song in the encore) and Chrissi opted for Know Your Enemy (second song), we both entirely missed the obvious choice - the tour being called the 99 Revolutions tour should have been a clue that the song of the same name would be the first track played. There were enough clues around us in merchandise and clothing to this as well!

The Setlist As you'd expect for a band with their impressive back catalogue, and with a near-on-three hour set to fill, they pulled out all the stops and near all the classics. If you cheat slightly and count Welcome to Paradise (which appears on both the Kerplunk! and Dookie albums) for the former, then you had at least one song from each of their 11 albums - including plucking the excellent Going to Pasalaqua from their 39/Smooth LP. They didn't dwell on the new albums too much, nor ignore them entirely - striking a nice balance between the two.

Lesser-played songs that made an appearance included Sassafras Roots, which has always been a favourite of mine (and sounds superb live), and King For A Day which true to form featured all three members of the band donning drag. The iconic American Idiot track Jesus of Suburbia was played and is definitely even better live - the separate solos really stand out. One song - the only one that I really missed - notable by its absence was Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life), but enough of the great tracks were played to make it worthwhile.

The Show One thing about watching Green Day - and it was particularly in contrast having seen Muse the previous week - was the sheer element of showmanship about this gig. Billy Joe Armstrong is a great frontman with huge energy, and you felt a participant rather than a spectator, there was constant interaction and conversation with the crowd. You were at a concert rather than watching a live play-through. While the repeated hey-hos did get a little wearing, the times they just paused songs midway through to do something different or have a bit of a chat, then carry on from where they'd left off was great.

I'm not sure if it was the best gig I've been to - it's harder to compare to some of those I saw many years ago when I first started to see bands live - but it's definitely got to be up there as a strong contender.