United Center-Chicago, IL
July 13, 2009
By Anthony Kuzminski
{Photo Credit}
Entertainment is full of glorious contradictions these days. Artists who claim to be about the working class, yet none of the characters in their songs could ever afford a ticket to one of their concerts. Even if the shows are affordable, the music is sometimes too hefty for you to truly find a release. Then there are those who provide unadulterated entertainment; an escape from the inconsiderate realities of life. But when it’s over, you have to face that cold world all over again and in some ways, the first step back into it is bitterer than when you ran away. Green Day is the diamond in the rough that manages to do both while not pinching your wallet. As the lights dimmed in the United Center in Chicago and Green Day took to the stage, there was instantaneously a convergence of spirits and a feeling of ferociousness. With a lit up city backdrop behind them, the band came out determined and defiant as they tore through four numbers from their latest magnum opus, 21st Century Breakdown; including the title track. Beneath the lights, Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day’s lead guitarist and singer, was in the zone. As Armstrong sings “I once was lost but never was found, I think I'm losing what's left of my mind”, we don’t just love it, but we believe every word uttered. What differentiates Green Day is you get not just entertainment, but they provide you with mental ammo to take on the world when the lights go on and the party’s over. Artists intermittently fall into an inspired windstorm so abounding that anything they touch turns to gold. There is a lot of sweat, blood and tears that go into creating it, but when they have a pulse on their inner muse, they’re inexorable. For the last half decade, it’s hard to argue that any musical artist has been more vivacious and prevailing than Green Day. As I watched their 140-minute set at the United Center in Chicago, I saw a band reaching for the furthest artistic heights while remaining a intoxicating rock n’ roll band who had retained a sense of rawness and realism.
Green Day is a band who appeals to two distinctive generations and when you enter concert hall, you’re not quite sure if it’s the parents taking the kids or vice versa. Astonishingly, for a band that has been together for two decades, Green Day still have that internal desire to tap into the desperation within their fans veins. The melding of their new album with their classics was effective and seamless, something most acts with an established past can fumble. The 21st Century Breakdown songs managed to flourish even more in concert. The burning “East Jesus Nowhere” was more visceral, “Static Age” was searing, while the thunderous “Know Your Enemy”, which found the GA floor roar to life, featured drummer Tre Cool and bassist Mike Dirnt tightening the seams of the band’s spine with their ever reliant and fastidious playing. “Before The Lobotomy” with its anguished chorus, is semi-hidden on the record but in concert it’s a centerpiece of connection for the audience where confusion and questioning comes to the forefront (“I'm not in love 'cause I'm a mess”). There’s no denying the sheer intensity and scope of 21st Century Breakdown, but I must admit I find it more ambitious after witnessing the concert. It helps take some songs I viewed as borderline and make them essential. The performance of this new material, which has only now truly being digested was nothing short of riveting.
The rest of the show featured a mix of classics with material from American Idiot. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was delivered in a stripped acoustic arrangement. As Armstrong plucked his guitar and let the crowd follow his lead, he brought down home intimacy to the biggest and most corporate of arenas in Chicago. He made you feel like you were in the Metro. “Brain Stew” was preceded with riffs from Ozzy Osborne, Metallica and Van Halen and during the song, a few fans were plucked from the crowd to shoot water guns at the crowd while Armstrong had a gun that propelled t-shirts to the far reaches and balconies of the crowd. Even their propeller guns appear to be far ahead of your average bands and those had to of cost money. “Longview” had two different fans singing the verses which were just plain goofy yet magically sublime at the same moment. The female singer did the better job and Armstrong dared her to stage dive back into the crowd which she did horribly. He commented how it while she sang her heart out, she provided the worse stage dive he had ever seen. The mid-section of greatest hits (“Hitchin’ a Ride”, “She”, “Jaded” & “King For A Day”) allowed the crowd to let their hair down and really lose themselves in the youthful exuberance of the songs. From gut wrenching to downright goofy, they did this all with ease. They even played portions of the Jackson 5 “I’ll Be There”, “Chicago”, “Stand By Me” and “Shout”. As the band capped the main set with a pair of 21st Century songs, “21 Guns” and “American Eulogy”, they never let their guard down as they glided across the stage initiating a bond with everyone in the audience. For a band that has created two socially weighty records, their concerts still infuse an air of silliness into them which helps balance the more weighty material. They unnerve repressed emotions showing there is no shame in raising your fist to the sky to relinquish some demons. Green Day, much like Metallica, may be one of the biggest bands in the world at this moment in time, yet they never seem to forget where they came from.
While the encore had a more loose structure, it proved to be brutally beautiful its anthemic giganticism. “American Idiot” was more than deafening; it provided a secular testifying for the crowd as they roared every last lyric back to the band. “Minority” was a celebratory confetti laced remedy which “Jesus of Suburbia” can be summed up in only one word; epic. The nearly ten-minute anthem was a combination of the entire evening; momentous, piercing, jovial and absorbing. Taking his time before the song, Armstrong carefully picked a fan to play his guitar parts. The winner was a nine-year-old who didn’t just exceed expectations, but he sang along and did a duet with Armstrong, trading off verses, on one of the band’s most challenging songs no less. An artist is only as good as their fans. To make it in the music business you need two things; hard work and luck. Time and energy will bring success at times, but the reality is that someone somewhere along the line did them a favor that infinitely changed their lives forever. Green Day hasn’t forgotten this and made every one of the 17,000 in attendance feel like they were part of a family. At the end of the day, the critical praise is only as good as the audience’s embrace. But in Green Day’s case, it’s something a bit more miraculous. They’re a bunch of punks who don’t just take you away for an hour or two, but make you ruminate what life has to offer beyond the concert hall.
Green Day at this current time respect their fans better than any other act. In a day and age where any and all entertainment is taking a backseat to domestic necessities, the band has priced their tickets affordably (between $25 and $49.50) and even better, the best seats in the house aren’t scalped by the band and auctioned to the highest bidder. While this may seem like a no brainer to an average person, it’s not the norm for the industry. Let me tell you, it’s worth its weight in gold as the most manic fans are closest to the stage, engage the band and in turn, make the rest of the audience hard. Like their Bay area brothers, Metallica, the fan always comes first. Both bands have affordable ticket prices, state of the art stages, have created recent works that speak to the masses and are among the best live bands on the planet. When I see Metallica and Green Day execute such incredible stage undertakings, it makes me wonder why certain bands feel the need to charge more money for far less impressive staging. Make no mistake, you can have the greatest stages in the world and if the performer is lacking talent and heart, it will leave you cold. But Green Day put their money where their mouth is. Even if they didn’t, the music would be enough to carry you home.
Green Day is an example of a band that merely could have made a great career out of doing what they do best; creating catchy three-minute songs. I still feel that Warning (released in 2000) is an album that shows inestimable maturity and has been forgotten about in the midst of the two sprawling epics that followed it. But on the other hand, Green Day wanted more; they aimed for the stars and I’ll be damned if they didn’t just catch a shooting one. Green Day learned a lot from their forefathers, The Ramones, much like Metallica learned from Black Sabbath. Yet both of these acts took their respective genres, spun them on their respective heads and transformed them into something new. This is no simple feat. Green Day is a band who appears to be sincere, when their fans (including myself) look at them, we see poets who help us make sense of the chaos in our life, point us towards the light and help us understand the darkness it can encompass one with. There is a dichotomy between the whirl of Saturday night and the solemn musing of Sunday morning; at this moment in time no band on the planet better melds these two worlds than Green Day.
Anthony Kuzminski is a Chicago based writer and Special Features Editor for the antiMusic Network and his daily writings can be read at The Screen Door and can be contacted at thescreendoor AT gmail DOT com.
Chicago Set List 7-13-09:“Song of the Century”
“21st Century Breakdown”
“Know Your Enemy
“East Jesus Nowhere”
“Holiday”
“Static Age”
“Before the Lobotomy”
“Are We the Waiting”
“St. Jimmy”
“Geek Stink Breath”
“Hitchin’ A Ride”
“Brain stew”
“Jaded”
“Longview”
“Basket Case”
“She”
“King for a Day
(with “Shout,” “Stand By Me”)
“21 Guns”
“American Eulogy”
Encore:
“American Idiot”
“Jesus of Suburbia”
“Boulevard of Broken Dreams”
“Minority”
“Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)”
