A stage and a handful of spectators. It’s November 7, 2023 and a thousand people have managed to grab tickets for Green Day’s surprise show at the Magazzini generali. An intimate live. A far cry from the one that took place 222 days later (Sunday 16 June) at the La Maura Hippodrome where the same three (former) boys played in front of over 70 thousand people.
We flew high at the Green Day concert at I-Days where the band “gave” almost two and a quarter hours of pure punk rock made in California. Fast drums, distorted guitars and mellow bass. Sounds that smell of sun, skateboarding and the 2000s, the golden era of this genre that was born on the US West Coast and became big with bands of the caliber of Blink-182, Sum41 and Green Day, to stay on topic.
The concert started with “The American Dream Is Killing Me”, the first single from their latest work (Saviors). Then there was a leap in 1994: one after another the band played all the tracks from Dookie in the original order of their third studio album. Then it was the turn of “Burnout”, “Having a Blast”, “Chump”, “Longview”, “Welcome to Paradise”, “Pulling Teeth”, “Basket Case”, “She”, “Sassafras Roots”, ” When I Come Around”, “Coming Clean”, “Emenius Sleepus”, “In the End”, “FOD (Fuck Off and Die)”, without forgetting the ghost track “All by Myself”. Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool don’t miss a beat. The frontman (52 years old) seems to have made a deal with the devil: he sings, jumps and plays as if he were thirty years younger; he seeks contact with the 70 thousand people at the Hippodrome. He asks everyone to sing, raise their arms to the sky and several times urges and shouts “I wanna see you jumping and going crazy”. The public doesn’t hold back. It’s a party. The scenography helps the show and makes everything more Instagrammablelike when halfway through the first act an inflatable jet appears and flies over the pit and drops some inflatable “bombs” (all of which were immediately snapped up, it goes without saying).
At the halfway point of the concert there is a twist: while the notes of “Know Your Enemy” come out of the speakers, Billie Joe Armstrong calls a fan who was literally close to the barriers to duet with him. Marianna, an excited former teenager who embraces the voice of Green Day and sings in front of a sold-out racecourse, jumps on stage. She never wants to get off the stage again, but the show must go on and continues with other juicy repertoire. Green Day proceeds with “Look Ma, No Brains!”, “One Eyed Bastard” and “Dilemma” from “Saviors”, continues with “Hitchin’ a Ride” which comes directly from “Nimrod” and “Brain Stew” from ” Insomniac”. A mixed fry before the second part of the concert in which practically the entire tracklist of American Idiot, the 2004 album that brought them back to the international spotlight, was played.
Also in this case the set list was religiously respected: “American Idiot”, “Jesus of Suburbia”, “Holiday”, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, “Are We the Waiting”, “St. Jimmy”, “Give Me Novacaine “, “She’s a Rebel”, “Extraordinary Girl”, “Letterbomb”, “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, “Homecoming” and “Whatsername”.
At 11 pm the last song “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” arrived. Then fireworks, lights turned on and applause. No encore, but the clock was already well past 11pm.
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