Green Day

So, in a word - amazing! I went to the Green Day concert last night in The Point and it was one of the best concerts I've ever been at. Not only was the music great, they also put on a really good show. The crowd were really up for it too. When we arrived, the crowd were singing along to the warm up music and laughing at the drunk pink bunny dancing on stage! I've never experienced that before.

Not surprisingly, they started off with American Idiot and the crowd just went mental (as I type, I just got the goosebumps thinking back to last night!) They played quite a number of songs from their new album American Idiot and the crowd were loving it. Even though we were quite a bit from the stage in the main section, and not the pit, the crowd were still going mental. The one great thing about the band is that they were always getting the crowd involved. I've been at Snow Patrol and Bell X1 and they didnt get the crowd in at all. Green Day put on a show that everyone loved, even if you werent the biggest die hard fan.

One of Green Day's trademarks at concerts is getting 3 audience members up on stage to start a band. They got up a drummer and bass guitarist no problem. They both really loved it and could play really well. Then it came to getting a lead guitarist. Some father on the upper balcony was shouting at Billy Joe saying his daughter could play. He agreed, so she came down. But it took so long for her to come down. He was just after starting to look for a new player, but she arrived. After all that waiting, which must have been 2-3 minutes, she froze! She couldnt play it, so they had to get someone else who could. They got another guy up and they all played really well. Then to top it off, Patrick, as he introduced himself, was given Billy Joe's guitar, which must be worth a fortune! What a lucky b*stard! That poor girl must have had nightmares about her screwing up last night! Stupid over-bearing father!


The lads I went with arent huge fans, so they were banking on them playing Basket Case and Time of Your Life. To please the lads, they duly obliged, with Time Of Your Life as the perfect final song. The stage was massive with a large screen at the back and explosions going off every now and then at particular points in songs. To concert ended in a massive explosion of confetti which covered the entire audience. It was absolutely amazing. Billy Joe then came back to sing Time Of Your Life and everyone was holding up lighters and mobile phones! Yes, mobile phones. One of the unintentional affects of the smoking ban, is that hardly anyone has lighters anymore. So everyone was holding up their phones with the lights on. It really looked cool, even if it was a little strange.

Another thing that I was really impressed with was that they stayed on for almost 2 hours including an encore. They barely left the stage, before coming back to do an encore of about 3 songs. And all this for €35! While U2 MIGHT be better in June in Dublin, for sheer value for money Green Day will win hands down. At least with Green Day, you dont have Bono spewing crap in between each song! Dont get me wrong, I love U2 and have seen them twice, but €70 is fairly steep for a ticket.

I could continue on saying how amazing they were forever, but I'm going to leave it at this. If anyone ever gets the chance to go to them, you should grab it with both hands.