Saw Green Day last night - a mixed bag

[At Large]

It was a pretty mixed concert all the way around. Half of the crowd were the new teeny boppers that were at their first concert (or so they claimed when half of the crowd cheered when asked by opener My Chemical Romance's lead singer to cheer if they were at their first concert ever). The other half, of course, was a mixed bag of people in their 20s and 30s.

My Chemical Romance did their best to be rousing, but the horrible Quest Center audio dynamics totally drowned out the vocals to an echo-like mess.

The lead singer of MCR reminded all of the girls that if they're at any other concert and roadies tell them that they'll get a backstage pass if they show their tits, "YOU TELL THOSE STUPID MOTHER FUCKERS TO FUCK OFFFFFFF!!"

Anyway, Green Day hit the stage with command and did some rousing versions of the first several songs of American Idiot (skipping Blvd. of Broken Dreams for the encore) and stopping at the song where St. Jimmy arrives.

This is where it went down hill. They started messing around with way too many audience participation songs with lots of commands for people to yell "Hey!" and "Ho!" at the beginnings, middle and end. I didn't think it was possible to stretch 3 songs that were about 3 minutes apiece into 30 minutes, but I was wrong as "Hitchin' a Ride" seemed to take forever, likewise for "King for a Day". They did a rousing version of the Animal House version of "Shout" but of course extended that. Then came an audience pariticipation song where they pulled 3 kids from the crowd to play drums, bass and guitar. They did pull it off, but it took 10 minutes to get it going.

Songs of note were pretty good versions of "Longview", "She" and "Minority"

The general lack of more songs from American Idiot was disappointing and the audience participation attempts got really old. As I muttered to my brother, "Just sings some fucking songs already!"

I admit they were really good, but the song participation stuff just got really annoying, but then again, I wasn't feeling the hotest since when I got home I found that I had a 100 degree temperature.

[Dinsdale]

My Chemical Romance did their best to be rousing, but the horrible Quest Center audio dynamics totally drowned out the vocals to an echo-like mess.

Pretty much why now that I'm old, if it isn't a less-than-thousand capacity club, or outdoors, I'm not interested.

Rack you for getting out and seeing someone you dig, though. Always cool.