KISS used to be the gold standard in boffo arena concerts (I hear they're still pretty damn good). Fire. Lights. Smoke. Loud, loud noises. I saw KISS at Lakeland Civic Center back in the late 70's, and they delivered. Got to tell you, though, Green Day has got all the bells and whistles that KISS had, plus a few more. Fire? There were flame balls galore. Light show? What? You kidding me? Flood lights, spot lights, red, green, blue lights. Loud, loud noises? Two days later, my ears are still ringing. Oddly, I'm not sure how that makes me feel. I went to KISS back in the day for the show; but I actually like Green Day's music. I'm not complaining. The music was still good, and these cats do a great job of entertaining the crowd. In addition to the old KISS stuff, add the following: Shower of sparks, confetti, call and response (Aaaay-O!), a toilet paper shooter and a T-Shirt cannon. The Kaiser Chiefs opened the show with a pretty good half-hour set that included their signature song, Ruby (unlike the apparently more self-assured Green Day, Kaiser Chiefs videos are generally embedding disabled). Not bad, but not what the people came to see.
Green Day kicked off their 21st Century Breakdown show with the title song from that c.d. They performed about half the songs from that c.d., including Static Age, and crowd-pleasers Know Your Enemy and 21 Guns, and a rousing and Christian-baiting version of East Jesus Nowhere, a bit of which from another show follows:
Green Day are not lazy, that is a fact. They cranked out the tunes and the effort for almost three hours. In addition to songs from 21st Century Breakdown (sadly- for me, anyway- one of the few songs from the new album they didn't play was my favorite, Peacemaker. Ah, well, you can't have everything in this world), they played, among other songs, Holiday and Boulevard of Broken Dreams from American Idiot, Longview from Dookie, Brain Stew from Insomniac, Welcome to Paradise from Kerplunk/Dookie. Billie Joe and company know that entertainment is better if the audience is involved. Call and response episodes were frequent and appreciated. Many of us shouted "Yeah, Yeah!" at the appropriate spot when they broke into the Animal House/Isley Brothers classic "Shout". Audience members were hailed to the stage to lead the singing on Longview. They closed out the set with American Eulogy from the new album, but came back quickly for an encore which began with the title tune from American Idiot and included Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) from Nimrod, and Minority from Warning. Here is a link to some photos from the Atlanta show from Green Day's official Website.
This is a clip showing some of the previously mentioned toys. It is from a different show, but similar to our Atlanta experience:
We all had a good time, and, in the end, we were all pretty tired.
4 comments:
So was it a stoner crowd? Seems like EVERY concert we attend in the Sunshine State is a bunch of lazy potheads who SIT through the entire show. I wondered if it's like that everywhere, or if it's just Floridians enjoying the State flower.
Not really a stoner crowd. Green Day sorta demands audience participation. Everybody was on their feet the entire show.
Saw Kiss open for Aerosmith ... Kiss blew them away ... and I'm not a big Kiss fan
Chase, I guess that's proof that being a good musician or songwriter doesn't necessarily make one a good entertainer. KISS and AC/DC put on a great show, whether or not you like their music. A few of them, like Bruce Springsteen get rave reviews and know how to work a crowd with or without the gimmicks. I really enjoyed the show, but with all the bells and whistles, I hardly had time to comment on the music, or what a fantastic job drummer Tre Cool did to pace the show, and I certainly didn't have enough room to mention that their were two extra musicians in the group or to compare this show to the 2002 or 2003 show I caught in the ATL.
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