Green Day @ Milton Keynes Bowl
Date: 18th June 2005
Support: Hard-Fi, Taking Back Sunday, Jimmy Eat World
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For anyone who hasn't been to the Milton Keynes Bowl, it is a vast hole in the ground with an enormous stage in the dip, it hosts the world's biggest bands and it holds 65,000 people. On a boiling summer's day in the height of a heat wave, it can get pretty bloody warm too!
Three hours after the gates opened and the sun had been allowed to frazzle people's skin and send others into dehydrated dementia, Hard-Fi took to the stage to warm up the crowd. As if there wasn't enough warmth out there already! Anyway, the west London band played their singles - Tied Up Too Tight, Cash Machine and current mega-radio-airplayed tune Hard To Beat as well as others from their forthcoming album Stars of CCTV and also a cover of the much-coveted White Stripes smash 'Seven Nation Army' which was a tad unnecessary. Frontman Richard Archer swore needlessly but sang well and playing to a sold-out MK Bowl is hardly a bad day's work. He even managed to camcord the crowd to show his unwell mum.
Taking Back Sunday and Jimmy Eat World both wowed the crowds with their pop punk sensibilities and high voltage riffage, the latter's regular appearances on MTV2 clearly familiar to many in the sun-drenched mosh pit crush as they cruised through old and new material with serious aplomb.
By the time Jimmy Eat World had finished rocking the Bowl, the sun wimped out, bade the masses goodnight and cowered behind the horizon in trembling anticipation of the main event - rejuvenated punk rock sensations Green Day. There could not have been a better setting - dusk on a Sunday night in one of the country's best outdoor venues after one of the warmest, soul-satisfying afternoons of the year.
Milliseconds after breaking into the opening riff of album opener 'American Idiot', any feelings of relaxation were discarded as 65,000 people erupted into a fiery punk rock fireball. Singer Billie Joe growled into the mic, reinforced his band's anti-Bush ideology and whipped the crowd into a psychotic frenzy.
Tonight's performance is a gig of two halves, starting off with the album promotion side of things then ditching that and concentrating on the more important aspect of live music - entertainment! Fireworks exploding around the stage; teenagers invited to play along with the band; spraying the crowd with a water pistol; moaning ecstatically with his hands down his trousers; encouraging sections of the crowd to roar at different times - you name it.
It's a surprise to be told that Green Day have been together for 16 years now. Sure, they've had a line-up change or two, but that same underlying notion of punk rock mentality still anchors the band. Billie Joe and fellow founder member Mike Dirnt are well practised in the art of entertainment and as long as Green Day can continue to produce high quality tunes like Holiday, Boulevard of Broken Dreams and new single Wake Me Up When September Ends, and in doing so continue to attract the sizeable early-teen market which dominates the crowd today, there can be no reason for their success to wane.
And if we hadn't been exhilarated enough by the brilliance of Basket Case, Billie Joe stayed on stage at the end of the encore to play solo on Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life). A moment that I will remember not only for experiencing the live performance of one of my favourite ever songs, but the hairs on my arms rigidly standing on end as I was completely overwhelmed.
Utterly outstanding. |
