Monday, August 3, 2009
The Spin Green Day at Sommet Center, 7/31/09
Posted by The Spin on Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 10:03 AM
Check out the slideshows for more photos: Green Day; Kaiser Chiefs
While pre-gaming for our Friday night nostalgia-fest at Sommet Center, we caught a typically unimaginable combo of cowboy-hatted regulars and skinny-tied, stud-belted, prepubescent pop-punkers on Lower Broad. Their mutual perplexity, though entertaining, was just tense enough that we thought it best to down our drinks swiftly and head on over to the arena. After passing scores of youngsters lined up to take pictures beside a giant depiction of Billie Joe Armstrong's face on the Green Day tour bus, we received our mandatory frisking, claimed our tickets at will call, picked up a $9 Miller Lite and headed to our seats as Kaiser Chiefs were kicking off their set.
Kaiser Chiefs were the consummate hype men--warming up the easily excitable crowd and praising Green Day's awesomeness throughout their set--but their urgent style of pop rock wasn't really enough to keep us enthralled. They were something like a British OK Go. Or perhaps a less cool Futureheads. Regardless, many of the kids seemed familiar with the material, and we've certainly seen less worthy openers on arena rock tours.
During the lull before Green Day's set, we noticed that, though the arena appeared to be at capacity, careful inspection revealed that the top tier of seating was curtained off. Still, the place was pretty damn full--there looked to be about 10,000 grandmas, fortysomethings, straight-up children and ladies in leather cowboy hats in attendance.
The moment Green Day took the stage, we understood what our companion meant when he called Billie Joe Armstrong the Bruce Springsteen of pop-punk. In true televangelist/ringleader fashion, Armstrong led the crowd in sing-alongs, brought a 10-year-old onstage to be "saved" and hosed folks down with a Super Soaker. Two auxiliary band members picked up a lot of the sonic slack, allowing Armstrong to primarily focus on vocals and hype, jogging about the stage like a giant-domed Pep Boy. We found it a bit absurd when he launched into a brief diatribe against media--especially considering how much of a media blitz it requires to sell 10,000 tickets and the fact that, well, music is a form of media--but we understand that it's important for these dudes to retain some aesthetic semblance of "punk." Even though the "punk" half of the "pop-punk" moniker doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot anymore.
The first third of Green Day's set consisted mainly of newer material--tunes from American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown punctuated by genuinely jaw-dropping pillars of fire and other gratuitous bits of pyro. But once they started in on songs from Dookie, we remembered just why it was that we'd come. They tore through "When I Come Around," "Longview," "Welcome to Paradise," "Basket Case," "She" and even Kerplunk's "2,000 Light Years Away" with the dynamism that made us like 'em back in '94. Tré Cool was given his moment to shine when he came out front to play "Dominated Love Slave," and the Day busted out feather boas and granny hats for the cross-dressing anthem "King for a Day," which disintegrated into a mini-medley of soul hits including "Shout," "Earth Angel" and "Pretty Woman."
As expected, Armstrong invited an eager young audience member onstage to play guitar on "Jesus of Suburbia" during the first encore, and, while the lucky attendee's tie-dyed, flip-flopped appearance earned him some ridicule from Green Day's frontman, he actually seemed to know the song quite well. From there it was "Minority" and then a three-song stretch of Billie Joe's most popular torch anthems, culminating with everyone's favorite graduation/coming-of-age/sit-com-finale ballad. You know the one. As we poured into the street with $27 worth of Sommet Center beer in our bellies, we came to realize that--while we might have initially decided to go see Green Day with a healthy amount of irony and flippancy about the whole thing--we ended up leaving feeling pretty awesome about our experience. It was something unpredictable, but in the end alright. We totally had the time of our lives.
Comments (19)
Showing 1-19 of 19
It's good to see when rock stars and their post-teen fans can both drop their pretensions and enjoy rock the way it's meant to be enjoyed.
Bonus points for the writer spelling "Billie" right (on first reference.)
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Terrific show but BJA didn't say "Nashville" enough times, causing me several times to forget where I was.
i,too,went to this concert with a certain amount of irony and flippancy about the whole thing. in the end it was awesome though. it had been a good 10 years since i saw them. i was impressed.
Pre-show, I was harboring some too-cool-for-school tendencies deep in my heart. But by the end of the night (especially during the Kerplunk/Dookie segment), I found myself smiling (the horror) and, even worse, doing some rock-and-roll karate air punches. There's something great about seeing The Kids get just as excited about the new stuff as The Olds were about the songs we grew up with. And, dammit, some of those new songs were downright catchy.
I just hope I am still allowed to stand in the back of the room and look disinterested at the next house show I go to.
A-so much fun. I was reminded that I have a lingering adolescent crush on Billie Joe.
I'd say I was there pretty un-ironically, I wanted to see an awesome show and that's what I got. As someone who doesn't really like their later work I was impressed that they were able to hold my attention for the first third of set but when they started kickin' out the old jams it felt no different than when I saw them on the Dookie tour and I rocked out just as hard.I was wondering, was anyone there when they played Sommet in 2005? Did they sell more tickets on that go around?
I couldn't say about '05. I'm thinking it felt pretty sparse, but I was in GA and kind of milling in the back a bit.
I will say this: in '05, I felt like one of the oldest people there without children of my own. Not the case on Friday.
PS - it was Gaylord back then.
Friend o' mine who was at both shows said the crowd Friday was larger than in '05.
I cannot tell a lie. As far as arena shows go—to hell with it, any show for that matter—this was totally a worthwhile experience.
Dookie was the reason I learned bar chords.
Right. Those. I thought "bar" and "barre" were both acceptable. No? Well...at least I remember how to spell "Billie Joe."
Either way is okay. Except in northeast Pennsylvania, where they're called Wilkes-Barre chords.
Just seen Kaisers open for Green Day. We have Green Day in punk rock just like we have Poison in hard rock. Bubble gum, 70% females audience, felt like I was at a taping of TRL. You get the picture.
Thankfully, Kaisers were a refreshing take on it all. Sad that 99% of the audience were clueless about Kaisers but I wouldn't expect any less they were opening for Poison, I mean Green Day. Same thing really.
Hmm, are Green Day not legends in the TRL demographic? Do you complain about seeing sick people and doctors at the hospital as well?
Ha. Yeah, how dare "girls" do stuff like go out to shows, or worse yet, actually play instruments themselves. It's the 21st century; you need to get out of the house a bit more, G.
For the record, crowd looked about 50/50 gender wise and there was a great diversity of age where I was up in the seated section. Guess we oldsters don't like to stand up for three hours, tho in my case it's more a case of not being able to see in a GA crowd when the 7' tall drunken frat boy parks himself in front of me 2 minutes before the show starts...
Went pretty much totally un-ironically, having seen GD at Lollapalooza back before the earth cooled, and knowing how much ass they kicked live way back when. Just sorry I missed the interim tours, but I will be going to a lot of trouble to catch shows in 2010 when the band, er, comes around again.
p.s. anybody else get a kick out of seeing 10,000 Tennesseans scream "not part of the redneck agenda"? Totally worth the price of admission for that line alone, IMO...
i was at that concert too,it was my 1st concert ever and it was a night i wont soon forget!!! Billie Joe looked hot(as always) tre cool was funny and awesome and mike was the best i loved the song 21st century breakdown the most becausee thats when they first came out and i was screaming so much! i had the time of my life i took pics with their tour bus and got to see them in person! so i absolutley loved it i cant wait to see them again
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