Green Day at USANA

Last night I saw Green Day at the USANA Amphitheatre and it was a great concert.  As you may know, I love attending outdoor performances and it was certainly a perfect summer evening.  Green Day got the crowd on their feet by starting out with one of their biggest hits: "Know Your Enemy." They played quite a few songs from their latest album, Revolution Radio, including "Bang Bang," "Revolution Radio," "Youngblood," "Still Breathing" and "Forever Now."  In between the new songs, they proceeded to play their hits for over two hours starting with a rousing rendition of "Holiday" and then "Letterbomb," a poignant performance of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," "Longview," "2000 Light Years Away," "Hitchin' A Ride," "When I Come Around," "Welcome to Paradise," "Minority," "Are We the Waiting," "St. Jimmy," "Knowledge," "Basket Case," "She," and "King for a Day."  For the first encore they played "American Idiot" and an epic version of "Jesus of Suburbia."  For the second encore Billie Joe came out on stage alone for an amazing acoustic performance of "21 Guns" and "Good Riddance."  Just as the second encore began it started raining and not one person left.  Everyone just started swaying in unison and singing every word.  It was really cool!  Green Day puts on an incredibly entertaining show and I think my favorite moment of the night was "Are We the Waiting" because it is my favorite song from the musical American Idiot!  Billie Joe suffers a bit from Lead Singer Syndrome and sometimes his antics overshadow the performance but I can't deny that he is fun to watch.  He strutted across the stage, rolled around on the stage, and conducted an extended chorus of "Hey Jude" from a prone position on stage.  He mugged for the cameras and, at one point, he sat down on the stage waiting for the crowd to yell loud enough for him to continue.  All through the night he exhorted the audience to get on their feet, put their hands in the air, clap, and sing along to every chorus (I think the audience sang more than he did).  He even pulled members of the audience up to the stage to sing during two different songs and one lucky girl got to keep the guitar she came on stage to play during "Knowledge."  He got in a few political rants (but they were pretty mild) and I lost track of how many times he mentioned Utah.  Billie Joe's antics aside, Green Day can definitely rock and this concert felt like one big party!  

Note:  The opening act was Catfish and the Bottlemen, a band handpicked by Green Day to open for them on this tour.  I really like them and, one day during the last few minutes of class I told the students that I had the song "Seven" stuck in my head.  They wanted me to play it for them, so I did.  After class, one student came up to me and asked me who sang the song because he really liked it.  About a week later he came up to me again and told me that he had downloaded the album because he liked them so much (It's a little service I provide, introducing my students to new music!).  I wonder if he was at the concert?