Green Day

support New Found Glory
author PP date 27/01/05 venue Nottingham Arena, Nottingham, UK

It was perhaps the worst kept secret ever that New Found Glory would be the support band for Green Day's UK tour. The promoters wouldn't reveal it until the first day of the tour as New Found Glory were also doing a headlining tour at the same time in the UK. Cheeky, greedy bastards! I seriously doubt the Florida-based New Found Glory would do support tours for anyone else than Green Day. After all, they are huge in punk rock. Their album "Nothing Gold Can Stay" has slowly evolved into a punk rock classic.

The venue itself is huge. With about 4,000-5,000 standing tickets and 10,000 seats it can easily be considered an Arena. And that means you will never get close enough to the band to actually see them playing properly. Tonight, as anyone with any thinking capabilities would expect, it was completely sold out. After all, who wouldn't wanna see "Basket Case", the song that everyone in the western world knows, played live?

New Found Glory

New Found Glory were awesome tonight. They started off with "Understatement" and showed some really good energy live on stage. The guitarists kept jumping off the elevated parts of the stage while the singer kept running and jumping around, taking advantage of the catwalk as well as the fences protecting the band from the crowd. They did a great job in warming the crowd up. We saw circle pits, general moshing and jumping around all around the standing area. They played a set that lasted around 35-40 minutes. It contained classics like "Hit Or Miss" and "Tell Tale Heart" among other songs. Great stuff, they were definitely worth watching. This is a band that would rock as a headlining act so go see them!

9

Green Day

Green Day were just as good as you can expect from a band that has had dozens of videos on MTV. They really managed to scare me in the crowd in the beginning. I don't fancy their new album as much as their old classic albums. So when they played 5 songs in a row, exactly in the same order as on "American Idiot" I really started thinking if they are going to pull the same stunt as they did on a recent November gig in the states. Here they played the whole concept album in its normal order from start to finish without any of the classic songs like "Basket Case". Luckily this wasn't the case tonight as right after "St. Jimmi" Mike moved up to the catwalk to be closer to the crowd and started the opening bass-line of "Long View", possibly my favorite Green Day track ever. It was the perfect timing to play this song as they were about to lose the crowd in the first five songs, as they clearly aren't as popular as the old classics.

One thing that really kept annoying me was Billie's constant pauses in the music. Song after song they stopped playing and Billie had to have each half of the crowd to shout "wooah" or "woooah-ah-ah" after him. This happened at least 6 times during the concert. Sometimes these scenes lasted for more than 5 minutes. Now that doesn't sound like a long time but imagine you are soaked from sweat and then suddenly you stand still for 5 minutes. You start to feel a bit cold and tired which isn't a good thing in the midst of a gig this big.

The "wooah" stunts weren't the only thing Green Day did in between songs. Before "Holiday" we got the usual Billie's insults about George W. and generally about the US government. Somehwere after "Long View" Billie actually pulled a lucky fan up to the stage and gave him a super soaker water gun and told him to spray the crowd while doing it himself with another gun. Other stunts included dressing up as a king with a crown and the cloak during "King For A Day", and amazingly, creating a band on stage. That's right. Billie asked the crowd: "Who in here knows how to play the drums?" and tonnes of hands rose up in the crowd. He kept asking one of the fans "Do you REALLY know how to play the drums?" to which he nodded, and he was pulled up on stage. Tre Cool then took him under his instruction and taught him the beat he wanted him to play with the drums. Meanwhile, Billie pulled a female bassist and a guitarist up on the stage from the crowd and taught them their parts. I think the song they played was possibly called "Prosthetic Head" or "Worry Rock" although I'm not sure. But it must have been like living a dream to these three fans to be on stage playing Green Day's music with Billie singing over their music in front of 15,000 Green Day fans. Damn I was jealous over those guys. And they did a good job too!

Now onto the other classics. "Basket Case", "She", "When I Come Around" were just as good live as you would have ever imagined them to be. And damn the crowd was loud during the first one! With 15,000 fans who all knew the lyrics we could have easily done the song without Billie singing at all.

One thing I found very negative about their show was that the setlist was exactly the same as in their London show a few days earlier. But I suppose it had to be that way, as the show was pretty much scripted from start to the end, so they couldn't really have played the songs in any other order. It was like experiencing a big musical live. Finally, Green Day finished the gig with "We Are The Champions" and "Good Riddance" while the air was filled with Green Day custom made confetti. A bad finish for the gig, as Good Riddance is quite a slow song. But nevertheless it was definitely a gig worth seeing, although I suspect it would have been a lot better in a smaller, more intimate venue than Nottingham Arena.

7

Setlist:

  • 1. American Idiot
  • 2. Jesus Of Suburbia
  • 3. Holiday
  • 4. Are We The Waiting
  • 5. St. Jimmi
  • 6. Long View
  • 7. Hitchin' A Ride
  • 8. Brainstew
  • 9. Jaded
  • 10. a cover of Operation Ivy - Knowledge
  • 11. Basket Case
  • 12. She
  • 13. King For A Day
  • 14. Wake Me Up When September Ends
  • 15. Minority
  • -- Encore --
  • 16. Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
  • 17. When I Come Around
  • 18. a cover of Queen - We Are The Champions
  • 19. Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)

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