An other shade of green....

We went to see Jimmy Eat World and Greenday in the Memorial Coliseum, Portland, last night. And well, it was not what I hoped for. Before I start complaining, let me point that I think Greenday has written a bunch of very catchy songs with sometimes funny an lately nice and critical lyrics. I liked them in the early and mid-nineties when I was discovering punk-rock bit by bit. It's just that....

Apparently Greenday is HUGE in the USA which in part might explain why we we're watching the Billie Joe Armstrong show, with the only need for the crowd to go crazy was for him to be there.... Unfortunately his crowd participation thing heavily relied on shouting "hey Portland!" or "hey-hooo!" with which he unfortunately was assured of thousands of people responding loud with brilliant responses such as "yeah" and "hey-hoo". Don't get me wrong, that's okay if you do it once or twice but every f*****g 5 minutes??!! The in-between-songs were awful, with BJA taking any pose whatsoever for god knows how long and the crowd going crazy with their annoying high pitched children voices. Maybe I'm getting old but I always think something is wrong when the audience is filled with kids that brought their parents for guardiance. Just like I start to worry if I see too many Blink182 t-shirts, women in high heels, girls dressed like Avril and guys wearing make-up. They were all there....

We just saw a little bit of Jimmy Eat World, which wasn't impressive but not bad either. The music preceeding Greendays show gave me hope. I heard the ramones, the clash, less than jake, bu then something awful happened... Y.M.C.A.... I guess in the USA this song doesn't have the "gay" image it has in the Netherlands or I was surrounded bij thousands of queers. Just to make clear, I don't have a problem with homosexuals, I have a problem with an enormous mass of people doing the arm movements to form the Y.MC.A. letters. Greenday played tight and the lights and firework were great but the crowd and the hey-ho's drove me nuts. And I don't mind it if there are one or two sensitive songs, I can even deal with the occasional ligter in the air but that much and that often? Give me a break! Apparently the lighter has been overtaken by the now hugely popular act of putting your mobile phone in the air, wow, al those lit displays really set a wonderful atmosphere.....NOT!!

Then greenday did this Operation Ivy cover "Knowledge". I love OpIvy, and Greenday covered this song nicely on their 1991 album "smoothed out slappy hours", but they played it not very well now and they thought it necessary to form a band out of people from the audience and let them play. Great for those people, a shame for the song. The first half an hour I thought we were listening to the cd-presentation of "american idiot", since no song older than two years was played. They made up for that later in the show by playing some classics though.

To summarize; Greenday was thight, but predictable, annoying and boring in-between songs. The audience was, well how will put it, "not my kind of audience"... They would have fitted well at a bitney spears concert with their hysterical teenage shouting.

Why was this show such a disappointment, I ask myself. Well I can think of a couple of reasons. Apparently I was wrong thinking Greenday has even a bit of Punkrock spirit left. They obviously have turned into this mega-pop-rock-punky sensation. The stuff MTV feeds the kids like geese in French foie gras farm. And apparently they're okay with it since the interaction between band and crowd wouldn't misfit a backstreet boys concert. Are we talking "american idiot" or "american idols"? An other thing is the location; until about ten years ago the Memorial Coliseum was the home of the Portland Trail Blazers and NBA games were played there. I don't like big venues and I don't seats during a (punk)rock concert. Another minor thing was the fact that the strongest drinks inside the hall where strawberry lemonades. Sure there was beer, but no way you can have a beer and watch the band at the same time. The idea alone; ridiculous!

To conclude; luckily there's no audience or attitude on the albums, so I really think this is the best way to enjoy greenday these days. I'm sorry if I sound like a negative, critical, old asshole. Cause maybe that's just what I am when it comes to music. I don't say everything used to be better, but I sure liked greenday better when the were an other shade of green....


*Maybe it was a cultural thing as well. This might just be totally american, but I don't think (and hope) so.

**something completely different; can any of you dutch people come up with a proper dutch word for ignorance? "onwetendheid" misses something, I'm just wondering if we even have a word like that....