Green Day, Milton Keynes Bowl
Billie-Joe proclaimed that playing to 130,000 people in two days resulted in these two dates in Milton Keynes being their biggest shows ever in GREEN DAY’s 16 year history. The usual arguments of “they’re not as good as they were” or “the new album is crap compared to Dookie” aren’t really relevant when you look at just how massive this band are and how they’ve held so much attention and respect since they burst into international stardom some eleven years ago. 130,000 people; that’s an entire city’s population! I don’t think any punk band ever could really pull off such a feat and it just goes to show how important GREEN DAY really are.
I missed the openers, HARD-FI, completely but arrived just before TAKING BACK SUNDAY went on stage. Now I struggle to even appreciate this lot on CD but how this band have become so popular is beyond me when they’re live show is as shoddy as this, with all respect other reviews I’ve read have pretty much stated the same. TBS have an incredibly irritating front-man, perhaps this is where their problem starts; his overly camp mannerisms and mic-swinging antics were frustrating and tedious especially as he appeared to be struggling to get the words out. The rest of the band didn’t seem up to scratch either and I wondered if they were as fed up of playing as I was of watching, they did look it at some points, maybe this is why they sounded so scrappy. Granted TBS have their fans and they seemed to be enjoying themselves but as objective bystander I really can’t see what all the fuss is about as this was a very poor effort. (3)
Thankfully JIMMY EAT WORLD proved themselves to be in an entirely different league to TBS. Within thirty seconds of their set beginning you could tell they’re a class act; tight and as energetic as you can be without looking foolish – it’s certainly a winning formula. They just seemed to convey their songs much better than TBS did, from the heavier ‘Bleed American’ (I know they had to change the name of the song after 9/11 but I still call it that as I had the album before then, so swivel you pedants) to the mellower and more atmospheric numbers in their repertoire. They covered a lot of material in their forty-five minutes on stage and it showed just why they have become one of the biggest names on the scene, hearing a few thousand people singing the ‘whoas’ back to the band in ‘Sweetness’ was a definite example. ‘Praise Chorus’ was lacking impact but other than that it was a solid set which got me back in the mood despite the intense heat and humidity of the day. (7)
When the first half an hour of GREEN DAY’s set was comprised of songs from ‘American Idiot’ I was getting slightly worried, especially as one of them was a mini-rock opus lasting about ten minutes which is when I noticed Billie-Joe was wearing a large amount of eye-liner; what had happened to the pioneers of the three minute pop-punk song? Fortunately things turned around with ‘Longview’ followed by the usual classics which came out the bag (Basket Case, She, Brain Stew, Hitchin’ a Ride, Knowledge, etc). By and large though it was a fairly disappointing set list; nothing off Kerplunk at all which was gutting. If anyone has seen GD before they’ll know about the extended songs the mandatory “heeeeeeyyoooooo” section, now don’t get me wrong no-other band can come close to GD where crowd interaction is concerned but surely it would have been better to cut down on this and play an extra five or six songs instead, especially when you have seven albums worth to choose from?
Quite a negative review so far, but with the above criticisms aside it was a highly entertaining set which was certainly worth the ticket-price. GD love their pyrotechnics and tonight we had flames and fireworks all over the place, which although was predictable definitely added something more to the night. You also cannot fault GD as musicians, even though there was an extra guitarist off stage, Billie, Mike and Tre never fuck up and are always tight, something which cannot be said about some of their recently split-up rivals. GREEN DAY simply put on a great show, if you’ve seen them in the past you wouldn’t have missed anything new tonight other than some tracks of AI, but what they do is done so well and so entertainingly it never really disappoints. This is the third time I’ve seen GREEN DAY and I’m positive I’ll be saying the same after I see them another three times. (8.5)
-Mike
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