Green Day
High-energy, loud, exciting, and long… just a few words to describe the two-hour Green Day show at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn. on Saturday April 7.
Green Day walked out on stage promptly at 9 p.m., grabbed their instruments and proceeded to rip through two hours of material that included all of their hits and some interesting choices of cover songs. The band opened with 99 Revolutions and had the sold out crowd roaring throughout the night. Billy Joe Armstrong, fresh off his stint in rehab, is as energetic as any front man in music today. He played the crowd on every song, demanding every section in the arena to stand and reminded them, “this is a rock concert, so get off you’re a**”.
Playing close to thirty songs on this night, the band drew from every release they have put out, including at least one from the three records, Uno!, Dos!, Tres!, that were put out in 2012. It also seems that even the younger fans have dipped into the vast catalog of Green Day and were singing along to both new and old songs. Some of the highlights of the first hour included the songs Know Your Enemy, Holiday, Boulevard of Broken Dreams. A rare gem from the 1992 release Kerplunk! was the song 2000 Light Years Away.
The band shifted into high gear, showing their heavy metal side and kicked into Black Sabbath’s Iron Man which then blended into AC/DC’s Highway to Hell. These were great songs to see Green Day perform live and a good intro for some of their rawking classics like Brain Stew, Longview, and Basket Case all of which were played next. After playing a few more songs, the band brought out the covers once again and did an overly long medley of rawk classics Shout, Time is on My Side, I Can’t Get No Satisfaction and Hey Jude. The band did bring a number of fans on stage to help sing along, but all this really did was slow the show down and lose a lot of the momentum/energy they had built earlier. Green Day finished up with Minority before coming out for the obligatory rawk show encore. The three song encore included American Idiot, Jesus of Suburbia and Brutal Love.
A strong start, playing songs from their entire catalog, high energy, a strong finish and giving the fans their money’s worth is why Green Day can sell out any arena in this country. As evidenced by their lack of a stage production, Green Day doesn’t rely on fire, smoke, massive lighting or even jumbo screens to put on a great show. Definitely check them out the next time they come around. They are well worth the price of admission.
Rawk Musings
Kid Rock has announced a concert deal that every artist should consider doing for the sake of giving back to the fans. His new tour is called the “$20 Best Night Ever” and all tickets will be in the twenty dollar range. The tour makes two New England stops, July 10 at Comcast Center in Mansfield, Mass and July 12 at Comcast Theater in Hartford, Conn.
