That is the
kilometrage I put on my car this weekend, lol. On the way to
Boston I stopped and slept for
an hour and a half—after having had about 4 hours of sleep the previous
night—and then nada until after Rob Thomas’s concert on Friday
night. I lasted through the post-concert ice cream
but by the time we got on the bus to go home, it was all I could do to
keep my
eyes open LOL. I changed into my jammies
and stuff in a blind fog and collapsed until midmorning Saturday.
Mel and I wandered around downtown during the
day (okay, we spent a fair amount of time, and money, in Sephora
lol). Oh, it was funny—there was an animé
convention in the convention centre attached to the mall and there were
people
wandering around in the most flamboyant, full-body costumes. It
was a fabulous day to people-watch while
we drank gourmet tea from Teavana! And
then we stopped for Chinese food on the way home, and afterwards I
drove the 2
hours to Amherst for concert # 2. It’s
possible that the guy who blatantly checked me out while I was standing
in line
in the Mullins Center was doing so because my ass was car seat-shaped
by that
time. Although what his excuse would be
for staring down my top when he walked past me then, I have no
idea. At least it meant that Anne and I were right
and the black satin shirt doesn’t suck, lol.
After Green Day, it was back to Mel’s for more sleep! Sunday
brought brunch at Fire & Ice, a
Mongolian barbecue restaurant, and a street fair in Cambridge, which
was
fun. Oooooohhhh and a little while in
the Harvard bookstore, which is so droolable to a bibliophile.
It’s beautiful. All of which was followed by another twelve
freaking hours in the car, minus the sleep this time. I got to
bed around 5 Monday morning and
managed 5 hours of sleep before I had to work at 12:30.
Between the trips to Tim’s for tea on my breaks and the fact
that yes, I was still hyper and giddy, I made it through the day just fine. :D Honestly, I think the absolute worst part
about such marathon drives? Between
daytime activities beforehand and the drive itself, it would have to be
spending more than twenty-four hours strapped into a freaking bra. LOL.
The imprints on my skin might be permanent.
I thought about writing a cool, professional report like
Linzee’s lovely Something to Be
review, but fuck it—if you’re not looking for extreme fangirliness, buh
bye. I’ve been much too excited to calm
down now! And I completely and totally
owe midwest_punk for listening to me whine about wanting to go and then telling
me to find a way and go already! (I’m
sure there was more profanity involved but I don’t remember the exact phrasing
now. ;-) ) So major hugs to m_p for the
kick in the ass when I needed it, because I had the BEST damn weekend and I
might not have without the push.
*Smooches* to Anne too, for pointing me at craigslist where I did
eventually find a rational adult with an extra ticket!
Boys should not be fangirls
Before I go into the details and the good stuff: the
complaints. In front of us at the Rob
Thomas concert were six 18-21 year-olds, in 3 permanently-spooned couples. I only include the 21 upper limit because 2
of them had “I can drink!” bracelets, meaning the other 4 did not. They all had bottled water, and engaged in
frequent PDAs. Enough to nauseate a
person, right? Oh, but it just gets
better.
The male of the middle couple, the ones right in front of me
who occasionally blocked my view of Rob by liplocking, was a fangirl. I kid you not. Skinny guy, just shy of 6 feet tall, dark
hair cut in Rob’s old style (which I miss on Rob, but…), wearing a matchbox
twenty concert T-shirt. Mel started to
snicker when we noticed the tee, saying that he would so have gotten trashed at
her high school. Now, I love MB20 (and
Rob), but there’s a reason the band is classified as Pop-Rock/Adult
Contemporary and not plain old rock: they’re pretty touchy-feely. Not the sort of thing most teenage boys would
necessarily want to admit that they love.
However, there it was, all out in the open. He knew all the words to all the songs (so
did I, lol), and then there was the kicker: they started to play Dear Joan, and Fangirlboy bounced. Not even the words, just the opening tinkle
of the music, and this kid bounced up on his toes and whispered excitedly to
his friends that this was a Tabitha’s Secret song, Rob’s band from before MB20. I *love* Dear
Joan, and it’s such a strange, sad song, but I was trying desperately not
to laugh my ass off at this guy bouncing.
Particularly when Mel leaned over and said that his girlfriend was going
to be so devastated in a few months when he left her for a James or a Derek. Frankly, I’m still puzzled that he has a
girlfriend, much less one who’s willing to be openly affectionate. Maybe the other two guys protect him,
lol. *shakes head* We discussed later over ice cream just how
fucked up the boys growing up with metrosexuality are going to be ten-twenty
years down the road.
But other than the stifling temperature in the Avalon, which
is normal for a dance club packed with people, Fangirlboy and his PDAing
friends were my only problem with the Rob concert. So overall, it’s kind of an amusing little
anecdote to add to the memory.
My biggest problem with the Green Day concert, and the one
thing that I do somewhat regret, is that I completely missed the opening act,
My Chemical Romance. I know some of
their stuff and like it okay, and I would really have liked to see how they
played live. However, we were late
getting back from the city so I was late leaving, and I’d forgotten just how
badly organised university-held events tend to be. I was in line for ages to park, and then
there was a HUGE lineup outside the arena for entrance. I’ll be honest, I thought it was the line for
the floors section, and I waltzed up to the front. Imagine my surprise to find that no, it was
actually for the proper seats ticketholders.
I could tell you that I was a good girl and went to the back of the
line…but I so did not. I slipped in
behind a gaggle of teenage girls and went right in. Hee.
Not at all something I normally do, but I found out later from the women
I sat with that they had waited in line for 45 minutes and had also missed MCR,
despite having actually been there in enough time. And did I mention that it was pouring
rain??? Oh yeah, I totally butted into
the line! Where they confiscated all
umbrellas, of all the fucked up things.
Hello? But that turned out okay,
because mine was on its last legs and when it wasn’t there at the end of the
concert, well, I just took someone else’s.
They confiscated cameras too, but obviously missed mine. I didn’t take any pix; hadn’t meant to bring
it at all, actually, but I’m just glad it didn’t get taken because they tossed
them into the same bin with the wet umbrellas.
Oh, and USA Harvest was collecting canned food—they’ve been doing this
for the entirety of GD’s US tour dates—and there was also an Amnesty
International table set up, in addition to the usual concert/band memorabilia
stand.
On to the actual events!
Be warned, there’s more detail than any sane person might want to know,
LOL. I put the kind of overall
impression/summary paragraphs for each concert in bold red font so if you wanna
skim, be my guest!
Rob Thomas at the Avalon
I’d thought that I might be uncomfortable at this one,
because Mel was going into it completely blind (deaf?) not having heard any of
Rob’s new stuff, and I’d been listening to it nonstop for the past 2 weeks and
knew it pretty much off by heart by this time.
But I totally wasn’t. Some of
that was making fun of Fangirlboy, lol, and some of it was just that the whole
night had the feel of a folk concert more than anything else. Beth Hart opened, with a totally acoustic
set—just her and another guitarist, while Rob’s band’s stuff remained draped in
black behind them. It was so informal,
which I hadn’t expected. And Mel was
excited because she’d seen Beth once before by accident and actually had her
album, whereas I knew one song. It was
all reversed, lol. Then Rob came out and
any thoughts of caring if I made a fool of myself disappeared.
He opened with Something
to Be, complete with the shades.
Which he wore for the first 2 or 3 songs then ditched, to cheering. God that man has vividly coloured eyes! I could see that they were blue from most of
the way across the dance floor. The
thing that struck me the most all night was just how incredibly comfortable Rob
is on stage. I knew about his habit of
relating little anecdotes about the songs before he sings them—not all of them,
but a handful, often the more popular ones.
But he told them like we were all sitting around having coffee, a bunch
of friends out for the night. And I knew
that he would do cover songs too—something MB20 does, and he does on his own
also. Then during one of them, Baby I Love Your Way, he totally forgot
the words in the middle. It was
hilarious. He kind of hummed a verse,
clearly thinking about it, then gestured to the band and they just skipped
ahead to the chorus, LOL. And when the
song ended, he got up from the keyboard and the props manager took it away, and
Rob said something to the effect of, “I don’t fucking care if I forgot the
words, I’m not ashamed of it.” Then he
said that the next song was one of his own, so he could guarantee that he knew
all of it. Hee.
Y’all have to remember, I have somehow managed to frigging
MISS seeing matchbox twenty in concert so far.
I was a latecomer to Mad Season,
much like I was to GD’s American Idiot,
so of course everything was long sold out before I was interested in buying
tickets. Sarah went to Buffalo to see
them, with Lifehouse opening, and had fifth row seats. I wanted to hurt her, lol. And then with the MTYTYA tour, I had some other commitment during the Toronto date,
which I can’t even remember what it was now.
Then they played Halifax for their first time ever, but it was less than
a week after I *moved* here! Plus it was
only a couple of days after the hurricane, which completely flabbergasted them
because of course there wasn’t much US news coverage. I was beyond broke from the move and I simply
couldn’t justify trying to go. Which
I’ve been kicking myself for ever since, and that provided the final impetus I
needed to decide to marathon drive down to Mel’s and *do* this all in the first
place.
Rob opened with StB,
as I said, and closed the (pre-encore) concert with Streetcorner Symphony. Which
I have to admit, the very first time I heard it I was almost cringing, because
it sounds kind of wannabe, for lack of a better word. But live??
He can totally make it rock!! It
was awesome. Mel said more than once
during the concert that his music is clearly heavily 70s-influenced, and I have
to agree. I remember reading one review
of MTYTYA when it first came out and
the reviewer dissed it for being on such an epic scale, which pissed me off
because that’s one of the things I loved most about it. And about Rob’s music in general. It *is* epic, because it’s so flooded with feeling,
unlike the emotionless crap that defines most of what’s out there these days.
Anyway, in between StB
and Streetcorner Symphony, he played
(in no particular order, I suck at that) Problem
Girl, I Am An Illusion, Fallin’ to Pieces, Not Just a Woman, Dear Joan,
When the Heartache Ends, plus
others. Right before Ever the Same, someone held up a sign
that it was her bachelorette party, and he immediately jumped down and hugged
the girl. Then when he told the little
story about EtS, which started off as
only the person you love most in the world can give you homicidal maniac urges
LOL, and then said that when you get through to the other side of that, EtS is what remains—the person you want
to be with all the time, because you love them so damn much. And he pointed at the bride-to-be during all
this and said that she needed to know all this right now before she got
married, lol. It was cute.
The story for Lonely
No More was a single sentence: “This song has no other purpose than to make
you shake your ass.” :D And then the one
for You Know Me was that it was written
about/for the girls in high school who wouldn’t give him the time of day back
then, and that now they weren’t allowed to come to his shows, because “[he’s]
just fucking petty like that.” LOL. This was a bit of a theme for the night,
starting with Beth Hart’s set. My guess
would be that Rob gauged how responsive the audience was to her cheerful
vindictiveness and played along. ;-)
They also did Smooth,
Rob’s song with Carlos Santana, and chose to have the long guitar solo in the
middle replaced with a piano solo. Smart
move, IMO, because there aren’t many people who play like Santana. The song was also slowed and kind of more of
a funk style than the radio version, with some snippets of another song
interspersed that I can only assume was also a Santana song—the only bit I
really remember is the line about kissing all over his face and body and the
cheer that went up from the crowd, LOL.
Toward the end of it, though, Rob and the guitarist had a little six-string
duel and that was just plain fun!
And, of course, there were the covers, the rest of which he
did know all the words to, lol. There
was Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone,
and pieces of Steve Miller Band’s The
Joker and Fly Like an Eagle. He also did an old Lionel Ritchie one, which
neither Mel nor I could recall the name of.
I think, though, that it’s one of his really early ones, not long after
he split from the Commodores; it’s about finding your own path and not
conforming to everyone’s expectations of you.
That seems to be a huge theme with Rob right now, understandably
so. It did give me a moment of
breathless panic to think about no more MB20 *ever*, but that passed, lol. I so respect what he—and the others—are doing
that it’s difficult to not be on the fence about this one.
After Streetcorner
Symphony, the band left the stage and the crowd cheered and chanted of
course, and Rob came back alone with his acoustic guitar. The first song he sang that way was called Swing, by Jason something or other. I don’t know the song at all, never heard of
it before, but it was lovely. I’ll have
to hunt it down on the message board and see if I can get it by the original
artist. Next, he went into a story about
his first record deal, and how Atlantic had turned him down and he was
depressed and playing in this little bar somewhere and someone—actually from
Atlantic—heard the band play and wanted to sign them, based on the strength of
that song. It was Push.
He sang it without the band, but certainly didn’t lack for
accompaniment—the hundreds packed into the Avalon sang right along with him,
and it was a wonderful, wholly intimate moment of the type that only smaller
venues can give. *contented sigh*
Afterwards, the rest of the band came back out, and for the
last, final song of the night, they played This
Is How a Heart Breaks. Which I’ve
loved from the first time I heard the very bad radio copy Anne played for me,
and had been getting worried that he wouldn’t play especially with the other
encore songs being slow, but he did and it finished off the night on a superb
high note.
I’ve basically been waiting five years to see Rob in concert
and it completely fulfilled my expectations.
Relaxed atmosphere yet it rocked, with plenty of high points at both
ends of the musical spectrum. Awesome, awesome,
awesome night.
Green Day at the Mullins Center
I jumped through hoops to get to this concert, and it didn’t
seem real that I was going until I had the ticket in my hands on Friday
evening, after the seller and I met up at a prearranged time in Starbucks. Even then, there was kind of this haze of
disbelief that lasted right up until I waved hi to her and plunked my butt down
in Section H, row 17, seat 9. To
discover that not only were she and her 2 friends avid non-teenage fans like me
who I could have hung out with in real life, but the seats were pretty much
what I would have bought if I had been able to get them when they went on
sale. Seat 4, the column just to my
left, was basically even with the front bump-out of the stage—meaning the little
area where the band came over to play to this side of the arena. And since the stage is obviously higher than
the floor, its surface was level with maybe about the 6th row or so. In other words, I had a FANTASTIC view of
EVERYTHING. Especially since the seat
directly in front and slightly to the left of me—towards the stage—was occupied
by a ten-year-old boy. :D Even short me
could see over *him* no problem lol.
The band made its entrance to the 2001: A Space Odyssey
theme music. I’d read about that, so I
was expecting it, but it really does make awesome entrance music lol. Billie Joe (BJ from here on in for
simplicity!) stood at centre front stage with his arms up while the others got
into position, and when they were all ready, the band launched directly into American Idiot.
The very first thing I noticed is that BJ has a real
powerhouse of a voice—much stronger than I would have thought. It’s not showcased to full advantage on
recorded albums, although it’s much closer to the real thing on AI, and I suspect that it’s partially a
case of his voice simply having matured over time. But there’s this rich quality, almost like a
burr or a trill, that comes out live and it really adds something. And Christ on a bicycle the man can hold a
note!!! That revelation came much later,
though.
My one criticism, and it’s pretty half-hearted lol, was that
there was an extreme amount of audience participation and it started right with
the first song. In fact, Wake Me Up When September Ends and Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) were
the only songs that had *no* audience participation whatsoever, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams had only one
line that BJ remained silent on and let the audience sing. Oh and We
Are the Waiting was the same as Blvd,
with a few lines left silent for just audience voices. Otherwise, he was literally running and
jumping around the stage like a maniac and getting everyone to sing “Hey” in a
punk chant, or “Eh-oh” in a sing-song, or for those songs whose lyrics normally
included it (like Hitchin’ a Ride,
one of my personal faves), “1, 2, 3, 4.”
The interruption during Minority,
which I’ll get to later, was actually so long that when he started to sing the
last verse, I was all WTF, why is he starting in the middle? before I
remembered that we *were* in the middle, lol.
However, note that the big, emotional, slow-paced songs are the ones he
left basically untouched, and those are the ones which would have actually been
ruined by antics. For the rest, it
either enhanced the experience or did not detract from it. And, I love audience participation too—it’s
one of my favourite things about rock concerts.
That the band can come out and absolutely *expect* the crowd to just
KNOW every single word and join in on command.
It seems the height of arrogance in abstract, until it *happens* and
it’s magic. LOL, and to *stop* on
command, too—that was hilarious! He’d
get us going in one chant or another and all of a sudden yell, “Stop!” and the
arena would fall silent one beat later, leaving you feeling vaguely naughty
that you were still talking/singing when you weren’t supposed to be. Hee.
I should say right here that this was a full-out,
old-fashioned, in-your-face rock concert, in the best tradition—full of
suggestiveness, over-the-top showmanship and packed with awesome energy and
music. It actually reminded me a little
of a KISS concert, with the screen and later the marquee with the band’s name
and the flashpots with the booming noise and the occasional ring-of-fire
effect. Poor Tré must have been broiling
when those were on, because I could feel the heat in the stands! But where the KISS comparison shatters is
that with Green Day, the music came first, always. I’ve seen KISS with the “trimmings” and
without, and they honestly gave a far better show without all the extras
because they weren’t splitting the focus.
GD didn’t have that problem: it was music, audience, and only then came
the pyrotechnics. Maybe that’s partly
because this tour is probably the first one where they’ve had access to a lot
of the really, really expensive effects, so they do not rely on them at all,
but treat them as nice extras when you can get them. Or maybe it’s just because at heart they are
and have always been an underground kind of band. For whatever reason, it’s a perfect balance
as far as I’m concerned. I can see
fireworks a dozen times a year; when I go to a concert, it’s to see a specific
band play music, and that’s exactly what I got.
Anyway, after American
Idiot was Jesus of Suburbia. Actually, the first five songs were in order
straight off the AI album, only
skipping over Blvd. Which I would have expected, since it’s their
biggest single ever and you just don’t play that fifteen minutes into the
concert. And it amused me too, because
when I first got the CD I used to skip over Blvd
because I already knew it backwards and inside out, but wanted to get to know
the other songs, so it seemed perfectly normal to me to skip it lol. So it went AI, JoS, Holiday, We Are the Waiting, St. Jimmy.
Notable on JoS was
that in the last suite, he changed the lyrics to, “When there ain’t nowhere we
can go / Runnin’ away when we’ve been victimized.” I thought that was an interesting choice,
instead of the recorded second person “you.”
It personalized it.
Ah, Holiday. One of my absolute favourite songs. It started out just like the video, with the
huge pixelated-looking LCD screen at the back of the stage showing the shadowy
shapes of warplanes. BJ made some
commentary to the effect that the song was meant as a big fuck-you to
politicians everywhere and they played it through to the solo section before
the chant part, which is when it got interesting lol. BJ picked up what looked like a huge
flashlight from the side of the stage and went onto the catwalk—the long,
narrow piece of stage jutting out into the floor seats from the centre of the
main stage. He called out, “Lights off!”
and the place went DARK. He flipped on
the searchlight and panned it over the audience, hitting every section of
seats. It was a very pointed
gesture. Then BJ picked out some kid,
maybe 12 years old, from my section and got him up on the stage and handed him
a SuperSoaker watergun, all pumped and ready to spray the floor seats lol. He got himself another one and dragged the
kid with him onto the catwalk in the middle, where they sprayed until they ran
out of water and he held the kid’s arms up like a winning fighter’s to the
crowd cheering. After the kid left the
stage, BJ brought his microphone stand to the catwalk and started the chant
section with, “The representative from Massachusetts has the floor.” :D He mentioned Mass a lot actually, and New
England a couple times, and he also specifically called it Amherst a couple
times too, which is nice. It can’t be
easy to remember where the hell you’re playing every night, especially with the
grueling schedule of this tour. LOL and
yes, there were in fact some “Yankees suck!” chants sprinkled throughout the
night. But the choice to play up the
military aspect, and particularly the fear and paranoia, was interesting and
really well done, IMO.
Mentioning the searchlight/flashlight brings up the props
manager guy. I’m sure he has a proper
roadie name, but since I’ve done the props manager thing for school
productions, that’s what it makes me think of.
He had all the stuff like that, that BJ used during the show. He also switched off BJ’s guitars, and kept
putting his microphone stand back where it was supposed to be, after BJ dragged
it with him somewhere and then ran off to another corner of the stage, or the
catwalk, or up on the drummer’s dais.
LOL. He’s got more energy than
your average four-year-old, I’m telling you.
Anyway, the props manager guy did a great job of making sure whatever
needed to be ready, was ready. I’m sure
those guys are usually super efficient, it’s just that this one was more
noticeable than most because he had to keep chasing the mike stand!
After Holiday was
when BJ introduced the band (might have been after St. Jimmy, actually, but I think it was Holiday). I thought it was
great that he specifically said, “Let me introduce you to Green Day,” and
proceeded to name the guys who were additions to the core three first,
including them that way. Sadly, I can’t
remember the guitarist’s or the trumpeter’s names lol. I do remember the other guy: “Jason Freeze,
on saxophone, trombone, keyboards, and the Internet—but only for porn sites.” That was funny. And then he introduced himself. First as George W. Bush, which got the
expected boos, and then as Asshole.
LOL. Which he never did retract,
nor did he ever actually say his own name later. Amusingness.
Then he said that the next song was St. Jimmy, but they started to play Are We the Waiting. So
obviously they think of it as one unit, too.
AWtW was left mostly alone,
like I said already, although BJ would gesture to the audience when it got to
the line, “and screaming,” before the chorus, as kind of a prompt to sing the
chorus. StJ, however, was considerably more punk than on the album. The pace increased exponentially, and it’s a
pretty fast song to begin with. I’ve
always liked it more for the guitar work than anything else, and that was
soooooooo good live. SO good.
After the run through in order of the first almost half of AI, they moved on to older stuff,
beginning with Longview. Which was fantastic, and really gave Mike a
chance to get out in front and play it up because there’s such an incredible,
strong bass line in that song. BJ began
singing while wearing a headband with little red devil horns, lol. Lines sung by audience only: “I’m sick of all
the same old shit,” and “When masturbation’s lost its fun, you’re fucking
lazy.” It was a definite kick to have
several thousand people singing about masturbation, lol. I was amused.
I’m iffy on the playlist after Longview, until the last handful of songs. I know that they played Basketcase, Brainstew, Hitchin’ a Ride (yay!), She, and one song that I didn’t know. The only songs that I personally love that
they missed were Warning and Blood, Sex & Booze. I didn’t really expect them to play Warning as it’s one of those mid-tempo
songs that may or may not translate well live, and with a huge catalogue to
choose from I figured it would get dropped.
And as for BS&B, my guess
is that the band thought that one serious kink song was enough and King for a Day had better props,
LOL. (More on KfaD later.) Sadly, the
unknown song happened to be the one where they did their trademark move of
making a band from the audience members.
What they do is find a drummer, bass player, and guitarist and drag them
all up onstage, show them the three-chord line/basic rhythm, and have the
audience band play a couple minutes while BJ finishes singing the song. The “band” gets to do the big fluorish at the
end and he sent the guitarist and bassist up onto the drummer’s dais to jump
off, too. Drummer and bassist were both
guys from the floor seats; the guitarist was a woman from my section. All 3 *could* actually play; apparently
there’ve been instances in the past where they couldn’t, of course. The woman was all dazed and confused when she
wasn’t playing and had to be kind of chased off the stage after, lol. I think she was in shock. And then BJ got the bassist to do a stage
dive off the end of the catwalk too. It
was fun, and it was just as cool an idea as I’d thought it was when I first
heard that they did it.
Sometime during the middle songs, there were lots of antics,
lol. At one point, BJ was on the catwalk
and said he thought it was time to get naked.
(Some girl had flashed him earlier, too.) He loosened his tie, adjusted his pants, then
gestured to the audience as if to say, “Come on!” and stepped back with his
arms folded, foot tapping impatiently.
lol. A while after that, he did
in fact lower his pants a little, kind of a half-moon to the audience. Which he happened to do on the corner of the
stage closest to my side, so I can say with some certainty that his ass is
still blindingly white, lol. He played
the harmonica at one point too; no idea what song it was attached to, though. People kept flinging hats onstage—I don’t
know if the band is known to have a thing for baseball caps and the like?—but
BJ would pull one on for about 30 seconds and then throw it to the side of the
stage. Once he put one on while on the
catwalk and announced, “I smell marijuana!”
I didn’t smell any until I was leaving, but I’d hazard that there was
definitely weed somewhere, there always is.
The funniest part about the hat thing, and the real reason I mentioned
it, is that at no time did any of this hat-wearing make one iota of an
impression on his hair. It remained
stubbornly spiked, LOL. I have no idea
what he uses in it but it has to be industrial strength!
And then there was the other blatantly sexual performance. I have no other word for it, LOL. BJ was leading the crowd in singsong
chanting, and instead of “Eh-oh” he said, “Ah.”
Which became “ahhhh,” and was still echoed. And then “ahhhhhhhhh,” with this extra husky
quality to it, and the echoing kind of died off, to cheering and laughter. At that point, he literally went into an
all-out fake orgasm, complete with his left hand in his pants, at the top of
his lungs. It was… I wish I’d known that my cell phone has a
voice recorder function and how to use it, because I would so have recorded
that. And I thought later that I should
have called Anne *then* but I really didn’t think of it until after he was,
well, finished. I don’t know what else
to say about that little performance that I actually want to admit to in
public, lol. Let’s just leave it at, it definitely made an impression. Now I know the story behind the pic I found a
few weeks ago (this one here).
Winding down, they played my favourite song at last: Wake Me Up When September Ends. It was amazing. BJ announced it, and then he actually sang
the little kid chorus from the beginning of Letterbomb
first (“Nobody likes me” etc.) before beginning the guitar fingering for September. Oh, man, it was good—like make you tear up
good. Anne loves this song too, so this
is when I did finally call her, lol. But
I had to wait until after the repeat of the opening verse, when all the
instruments gradually join in and there’s that wicked punch of sound right to
the heart. *sigh* I heard Anne say, “Tas,” so I knew I’d gotten
a live body and not her voice mail, lol, but that was it, I couldn’t hear
anything else. So I just held up the
phone until the song was over and told her I’d talk to her later. Which I did.
In fact I ran up my cell bill quite a bit sitting in the parking lot
after the show, waiting for the plethora of cars to clear enough to bother
trying to leave, lol. But when you’re
that high on an incredible, incredible experience, you just need to share the
joy with someone who understands it, and she so does. The only way it could have been better is if
we’d been able to go together.
Towards the end of the concert came King for a Day, complete with props. Tré had this massive, feathered magenta
grandma hat on. I can’t remember what
Mike had on, lol. The guest guitarist
had a fantastical hat on also. And BJ
had a red velvet and gold lamé crown! So
they did the song, and then the hats were removed, lol, and they segued into Minority.
Like I mentioned earlier, there was stuff in the middle of Minority—that stuff would be the classic
song Shout. Which is always a big crowd-pleaser song,
because it’s so easy to sing along to and just get involved, you know? Well, it got to the part where he’s singing,
“Just a little bit softer now,” and the band members were collapsing onto the
stage and the lights dimmed until it was pretty damn dark. And then, you could see that big
silver-studded belt of BJ’s start to move, up and down, up and down, and
realized that he had ended up face down horizontal on the stage. LOL.
Too funny. The props manager guy
ran out at that point and put the red and gold crown back on BJ’s head, and
draped a cape over him—purple velvet trimmed with zebra fake fur. A continuation of the KfaD theme; crossdressing would certainly qualify as a way to stand
out as a minority, lol.
After Minority was
the crowd-singing where we learned just how damned long BJ can hold a
note. He sang it on and on and on, an
“eh,” and then hushed finally into a low “oh.”
Then got the crowd to follow suit.
Of course, we had thousands of other people to fill in the gaps while we
breathed, lol. And he made an indrawn
circle gesture with both hands to let us know when to switch to the quiet
“oh.” It was neat. And that led into the final song of the
concert proper, which was not a Green Day song at all, but Queen’s We Are the Champions.
That seemed completely fitting to me on several levels. Billie Joe has talked about how part of what
he was trying to do when writing AI
was to write a new Bohemian Rhapsody
in Jesus of Suburbia. And the whole theme of WAtC being that the tititular champions triumphed when they were
least expected to, describes the runaway success of AI perfectly. The band went
into writing and recording the album with no idea of how it would eventually be
received by fans or the public at large, and ended up succeeding so incredibly
highly that it’s almost unbelievable.
But I love that they have done so—that a band considered genre and silly
has just taken the world by storm via scathing honesty in social commentary,
and do it with simply amazing music.
Anyway, the chorus lyrics flashed on the LCD screen behind
the band as they sang, and it ended with an appropriate fluorish. Of course, of COURSE there was an
encore. The marquee with the band’s name
flashed green on first the GREEN and then the DAY, prompting the crowd to chant
along, and finally they came back out.
Can I just say that I love that moment?
When you know, really, that they *are* coming back out but there’s just
the teensiest amount of doubt, enough to keep you screaming your head off in
case the noise makes a difference. Hee.
But come back out they did, and the first song they played
was Maria. I don’t know it that well but it was well
done. Next was their biggest hit, which
you knew they’d play at some point: Boulevard
of Broken Dreams. My favourite part
of that song is the soaring guitar solos near the end, and that was simply
awesome live—the whole song was.
After Blvd, the
rest of the band disappeared and BJ came out onto the catwalk with the mike
stand and his electric guitar, and played Good
Riddance (Time of Your Life) solo.
Just him, the guitar, and a spotlight.
Vivid crowd echo all around, because everyone but everyone knows the
words to that one…pure magic. It was the
utterly perfect ending to one of the best concerts I’ve ever had the privilege
to attend.
In Conclusion
On both nights, the concert ended with a three song encore,
and the two were reversed: Rob began slow and ended on a high energy note,
while Green Day did the opposite. But
the part that fascinates and moves me is that for each, the spiritual high
point of the encore was the well-known, beloved song that was just the man and
the guitar, and what felt like a million voices. That kind of moment just encapsulates what I
love about music, and I was lucky enough to experience it twice in one
weekend. I’ve been on what feels like a
permanent sugar rush since I first found out that Rob was playing in Boston,
two days before the tickets went on sale, and started trying to get a GD ticket
as soon as Mel said that she would be able to play host that weekend. And now it’s come and gone, and I am still
flying high, lol. Beginning to wonder if
I’m ever going to come down, and kind of hoping that I’m not, not really. Because this feels too good not to hold on
to.
drunk
nostalgic
happy
excited