As Green Day has a TP entry I didn't know about...

[trouserpress.com]

And in light of the full pyrotechnics/fireworks/light display at the baseball stadium I just attended - and quite frankly was wow'd by - are U2 and Green Day the only two Trouser Press-reviewed artists to have such a seriously well-managed and well-produced concert?

Anyone who is giving Green Day a second look after getting off after "Dookie," as lots of folks did after "The Joshua Tree" for U2, it's a little weird that they now think of Green Day as a Queen-level/George Michael-level, Jagger-level arena workhorse - no concept whatsoever that Green Day slept on buddies' floors and bathtubs and played the $5 all-ages circuit back in the day. Is it silly to wonder if their legacy is now starting AFTER Lookout?

(Yes, I'm excluding Roger Waters from consideration because RW-only isn't a TP entry...yet.)

Wouldn't Metallica qualify?

Last week, I got to spend time with of my oldest friends. He had gone to see Green Day the weekend before at Coors Field, along with his teenage daughter. Like me, he's been a big fan since Dookie. As for her, I don't know where she first heard the band -- probably from her dad's music collection, since she was pretty conversant about their earlier albums. But to hear them tell it, the guys have still got it, thirty years after Dookie; they both had a smashing time.

I'd say that Green Day has stayed true enough to its roots to appeal to the younger generation of punks and punk-influenced fans, and to sustain the band's appeal to the fans who've grown up with them, like my friend and me (although we both were in our thirties when we first heard the band -- way too old to be sporting safety pins and dyed hair). The older fans are perfectly happy to cap off a Green Day show with a big fireworks display, while the younger fans probably don't cling to the assertion that a punk band's show is supposed to be stripped down.

Dookie was just certified days ago by the RIAA as 20x platinum. It's incredible how they've sustained their popularity to the point where they're like alternative's commercial equivalent to the Eagles.

Both the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Foo Fighters play stadiums these days. The Peppers definitely paid those dues, sleeping on floors and piling into a van to play dives, before they got their first break. The Foos probably had a leg up, since Dave Grohl must have socked away some money from his days in Nirvana. But he definitely paid the dues in Nirvana's earliest days, not to mention his pre-Nirvana days in the band Scream. (Pat Smear, of course, is a punk elder statesman ... assuming that's not an insult.)

I can't say what kind of production values either band brings to those shows, though. Has anyone here seen either of them in recent years?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2024 10:57AM by Delvin.

I saw Foo Fighters for the first time this summer, mostly just to see the Pretenders who opened with an hour-long set. (The Pretenders were great. Chrissie's voice doesn't sound like it's aged at all and the band was excellent, especially the lead guitarist. Hope they come back to NYC and play the kind of headlining shows they did elsewhere this summer.)

Visuals were pretty good for basic rock band. You can be far from the stage and have plenty to see in the background. They're still kind of a derivative meat-and-potatoes band for me. If you string together their best singles, you have a solid and dependable greatest hits disc, nothing earth-shaking yet wholly enjoyable. But I don't find their individual albums all that interesting.

EDIT: The actual "Greatest Hits" CD they released is okay, but not as good as it could be. Only a dozen actual hits padded out with a one-time B-side revived for an acoustic live album, two underwhelming new songs, and a good but inessential acoustic rendition of their best number. The lesser material makes the omissions seem all the more regrettable - "I'll Stick Around," "Walking After You" (the one recorded for The X-Files movie), "Stacked Actors," "Aurora" and "DOA" all would've been preferable.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2024 08:22PM by belfast.

It depends on the country, and at what point in their career:

-According to the TP review, apparently Simple Minds played stadiums in Europe. Don’t know if that’s still true, but I doubt it..

-The Ramones played stadiums: At the end of their career. In South America. (Don’t think they ever rose above mid-level venues in the US)

-here in LA, Depeche Mode headlined stadium shows, the Cure played 3nites at Hollywood Bowl (those slackers the Beatles only played 2), and recently Sparks (with They Might Be Giants opening) played the Bowl as well.But that might be a local phenomena?

-reunited Misfits played stadiums few years ago, But they certainly didn’t for most of their career..

> If you string together their best singles,
> you have a solid and dependable greatest hits
> disc, nothing earth-shaking yet wholly
> enjoyable. But I don't find their individual
> albums all that interesting.

To me, The Pretenders' self-titled LP is one of the ten best debut albums in all of rock. Definitely all killer, no filler. Whenever I play it, it never even occurs to me to skip a single song. Pretenders II sounds very nearly as good to me, although I admit it might just be because of associations from that time. Learning to Crawl is better than I anticipated, given that half the original band was dead by then. It showed that Chrissie Hynde is a talent built to last. After that album, they get rather hit and miss.

>> If you string together their best singles,
>> you have a solid and dependable greatest hits
>> disc, nothing earth-shaking yet wholly
>> enjoyable. But I don't find their individual
>> albums all that interesting.

>To me, The Pretenders' self-titled LP is one of the ten best debut albums in all of rock. Definitely all killer, no filler. Whenever I play it, it >never even occurs to me to skip a single song. Pretenders II sounds very nearly as good to me, although I admit it might just be because of >associations from that time. Learning to Crawl is better than I anticipated, given that half the original band was dead by then. It showed that >Chrissie Hynde is a talent built to last. After that album, they get rather hit and miss.

Oh, I don't disagree, the Pretenders' debut and Learning to Crawl are two of the greatest albums of the '80s IMHO, especially the debut. My comments there were referring to Foo Fighters.

The Pretenders >>>> Foo Fighters.

Ahhh, gotcha ... my copious apologies, Belfast.

We are missing a Rammstein entry obviously. The ultimate stadium band.

I saw Green Day about 20 years ago. Not my idea - I like them just fine, but not anyone I ever cared about seeing. Anyhow, they spent at least a third of the show urging audience participation - "Okay! This half of the auditorium go yabba yabba yabba and then the other half go doo doo doo, while we vamp endlessly and turn this three minute song into 8 minutes! And then we'll do the same for the next song, except then all the girls go yip yip yip, then all the boys go yap yap yap! Oh! We hear that little Timmy Shitnbricks can play Basket Case! Get up here, Little Timmy! That'll kill a few more minutes without us actually doing anything!"

Some people love that kind of crap, but I loathe it. In general, I don't particularly enjoy even being in the same building as the rest of the audience. I definitely don't want to have to listen to the dopes yelling nonsense syllables for a major chunk of the show's runtime.

I've seen Green Day three times. The first time, they opened for Blink-182. As befits a decent opening act, Green Day was well-focused, getting their songs across without a lot of nonsense. And since they were touring behind their Warning album, they had plenty of good songs in their repertoire by then. (I'll skip my observations about Blink-182.)

By the next time I saw them, they were blowing up extra-large, in the wake of American Idiot. At that second show, they embraced a little of the nonsense that Reno described, but it didn't go overboard. The worst part (indeed, the only bad part) was when Billie Joe invited people up on stage to sing verses of "Longview." None of those effin' people could sing ... and one of them couldn't even get a word out, because she was laughing too much. What a ridiculous waste of time. On the bright side, the young kid he brought up onstage really could play guitar well ... and when they did "the science experiment" (pulling three people out of the audience to play guitar, bass and drums, essentially forming a new band), the newly formed trio did a pretty good job.

The last time I saw them was on the 21st Century Breakdown Tour. I didn't know it at the time, but Billie Joe was spiraling down into a prescription pills addiction. It sure was affecting his focus already, though. Holy jeez, if they could've eliminated all the times he yelled "Denver, Coloraaadooo!!" and "Are you readyyy?!?" they probably could've cut at least 15 minutes out of the set, without missing a thing. (One of my best friends, though, saw them on their recent stadium tour, and said they were great, so hopefully Armstrong has found his way back.)