Green Day at Soundwave – Review
Green Day have a pretty good reputation when it comes to live performances. 3 hour sets, 30+ song setlists you would think makes a pretty epic show.
I am, I guess, more of a typical old school Green Day fan; loving the old classics and pretty much shunning everything after American Idiot, so in that sense there was always a risk that my enjoyment of this show would be hampered by a barrage a more recent songs.
However that wasn’t the case. They played most of the newer stuff earlier in the show – which meant I missed it because I arrived after Eagles of Death Metal finished. Perfect planning.
Holiday was blaring when I entered the stadium. Looking back at the setlist now, they had only played 5 songs before that — I was later informed that they started 15 minutes late. I moved into the mosh section to get to a spot with better sound. It surprisingly wasn’t all that packed in there.
It wasn’t long before Billy Joe acknowledged the 20th anniversary of “Dookie” and then blasted through a string of old songs. “Longview” was fantastic until he invited some over enthusiastic dude onto the stage to sing the final verse. For a start he couldn’t sing for shit. But to make matters a whole lot worse, he sang the 2nd verse again instead of the last verse – which is the best verse. Instead of restoring order and correcting this horrible sin, Billie Joe just let the dude sing out the rest of the song. It was ruined.
The show descended into a circus during “King for a Day”. The band appeared dressed in silly clothing as they clowned around. The song culminated in Billy Joe and the rest of the band slowly falling to the floor, while still playing. He then sang a whole bunch of random songs while laying on the floor. It dragged on for a while, the whole ordeal was a bit frustrating knowing they could have gone through another 2 or 3 songs at least in the time.
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