LIVE REVIEW + PHOTOS: Green Day in Boston, MA (08.07.24)

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LIVE REVIEW + PHOTOS: Green Day in Boston, MA (08.07.24)

The album anniversary tour, a significant trend in the concert industry over the last decade, holds great value for fans and bands. It offers fans a nostalgic experience and a chance to hear live renditions of songs not typically part of a band’s standard setlist. For bands, it simplifies the daunting task of selecting songs from a vast catalog that spans decades for a single headline set.

But for a band like Green Day, with fourteen studio albums, several of which are platinum-selling and considered cornerstone records of the entire genre, the challenge becomes picking which album anniversary to celebrate when two fall in the same year. This decision-making process, shared with the fans, is a testament to the band’s enduring relevance and the shared musical journey they have with their audience.

Their 1994 album Dookie is not only significant but perhaps the most influential pop-punk album ever. It didn’t just popularize the genre mainstream; it shaped it and influenced musicians across several genres for decades.

On the other hand, their 2004 release, American Idiot, was a game-changer in its own right. The record is a ‘punk rock opera, a unique concept that merges the raw energy of punk rock with the narrative structure of an opera. It revolves around a fictional antihero character navigating the disillusionment of a tumultuous political climate, a theme that resonates strongly in today’s world.

And if that’s not enough, what did Green Day do this year? They released a brand new album called Saviors. With all these exciting developments, what’s the next move? Well, if you’re Green Day, you do it all.

The punk rock legends have embarked on a stadium tour, performing both Dookie and American Idiot in full while splicing in songs from their most recent album, Saviors. Last night, they arrived in New England for a sold-out show at Boston’s Fenway Park.

On this tour, they’ve brought a diverse lineup of artists, including teenage punk rockers The Linda Lindas, fellow Bay Area punk rockers Rancid, and 90’s alt-rock staple The Smashing Pumpkins. This diversity adds a unique flavor to the tour, making it a must-see for all music enthusiasts.

Always one to support young musicians, Billie Joe Armstrong and Green Day touring guitarist Jason White ran out on stage during The Linda Lindas’ set while they were performing “Nino,” an ode to band member Bela Salazar’s cat. The Los Angeles-based four-piece is an all-female band whose members are all in their teens; their youngest member, drummer Mila de la Garza, is just thirteen years old, while their oldest member, Bela Salazar, was born just four days before the release of American Idiot.

Second to the stage was Rancid, a Berkley, CA-based punk rock band whose early career trajectory closely followed Green Day’s. However, as Green Day grew more commercially successful, Rancid elected to take a more DIY approach and remain roaming the punk rock clubs of America for what is now a thirty-three-year career. Performing as openers, Rancid built their setlist with mainly their biggest hits, five of which were from their 1995 album …And Out Come the Wolves.

Moving away from the punk rock genre, the stage was turned over to The Smashing Pumpkins, who, like Green Day, were heard daily on virtually every alt-rock station in the mid-to-late nineties. With a loyal fan base of their own, the decision to slot them right before Green Day was a good one as the stands were closed to packed already before the Smashing Pumpkins even finished up their set.

If you’ve ever seen Green Day live before, you know the show is about to begin as soon as the opening notes to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” ring out. The song turns whatever venue the band plays into a giant karaoke bar. This gives way to Green Day’s mascot, Punk Bunny, running around the stage in a frenzy, firing up the crowd.

Before getting into either of the two landmark albums, the show kicked off with the lead single from Saviors, a track titled “The American Dream is Killing Me,” a protest song written during Donald Trump’s presidency but not recorded until the sessions for this year’s album. With a pretty straightforward chorus and message, the song reminds us that our current political environment is not that different from the one during which American Idiot was written and released.

The stage production immediately changed to mimic the iconic cover of 1994’s Dookie as the band sped right into the album’s opening salvo, “Burnout.” from there, they ripped right through the record’s first six songs without stopping. It wasn’t until song seven, “Pulling Teeth,” that frontman Billie Joe Armstrong got into the whimsy portion of the night, pulling out a short “Sweet Caroline” tease like most bands who play at Fenway tend to do. That was followed by the night’s first proper singalong, on “Basket Case,” with those now-iconic opening lyrics, “Do you have the time, to listen to me whine about nothing and everything all at once.” A few songs later, during Dookie’s twelfth track, “Coming Clean,” a giant inflatable airplane, a real-life version of the one on the cover of Dookie, appeared overhead and made its way throughout the venue’s turf sections. At one point, the plane even dropped mini balloon “bombs” on the crowd below. Wrapping up the album, drummer Tre Cool took center stage in an extravagant bathrobe while singing “All By Myself,” an ode to masturbation, with a string orchestra track playing to back him.

Before getting into the American Idiot portion of the night, the band played a small mix of hits and new songs. For “Know Your Enemy,” a fan was invited on stage to sing with the band, and “Brain Stew” was introduced with a tease of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” Of the Saviors’ tracks, “One Eyed Bastard” was a standout, a stadium-ready anthem that felt at home on the Fenway stage.

Shifting gears from Dookie’s playful and carefree tone that represented the early nineties to American Idiot’s politically charged tone of rage and love as the band themselves described it, Armstrong updated the title track’s lyrics of “I’m not a part of the redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda.” which drew an emphatic cheer from the Massachusetts crowd. The nine-minute long “Jesus of Suburbia” was next, a song Armstrong once said he wanted to be the “Bohemian Rhapsody” of the future.

The album’s best one-two punch was next, with “Holiday” leading into “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” The former, Armstrong loudly declared an anti-war song, was sung with seemingly the entirety of the stadium holding up their phone flashlights.

The American Idiot portion of the night was very different than the Dookie portion, where Dookie songs featured a loose, carefree vibe with several skits; American Idiot was played with great attention to detail by the band and played out as the punk rock opera it was written as. “She’s A Rebel” is a great punk rock track that stood out during the mid portion of the album. The well-known “Wake Me Up When September Ends” saw the crowd with their phone lights on again, probably starting to drain their batteries.

After concluding the album and playing one more new song from Saviours, a short bisexual anthem called “Bobby Sox.” Armstrong returned with an acoustic guitar for a solo version of “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” during which Dirnt and Cool joined him for the final chorus.

Green Day is a band made for playing stadiums like Fenway Park. As the concert industry booms, many acts have graduated to stadium stages quicker than usually anticipated. But many of those acts play a standard set that happens to be taking place on a stadium stage, where Green Day hand-tailors their show for that kind of audience.

Not many bands out there could pull off what Green Day did on Wednesday, playing two classic albums with such polar opposite tones and capturing both perfectly. The light-heartedness of Dookie and the more rebellious, severe, anger-filled American Idiot still rings true and is as relevant as ever today. Idiot is an album meant to be heard in total, and doing it live is no small task, with two songs that are nearly ten minutes long on said album. All that along with promoting a new album, Green Day is a band who has never been afraid to push the limits and take on a challenge.


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