Great great concert last night and a real boost to the spirit. Green Day doesn’t quite fit the genre categories. Punkish, pop-like, flowing/sharp – I wasn’t sure what to expect from the live performance – or the crowd. In short, it was the best concert that I’ve been to in at least ten years. In fact, it is tied with 2 or 3 others at the top for lifetime concert experiences. I was surprised at how moving it was to be there.

The energy of the place was electric, almost a thing in itself, and the pace and sequence were nearly perfect. For much of the time, the entire stadium was up, waving, singing along, shouting, roaring. A screen, set up to move out of the way when not needed, unfurled behind the band and displayed graphics, video, and other effects from time to time – and there were pyrotechnics, loud bands of emphasis – all kinds of fun.

The warmup band (Jimmy Eat World) was fine and under other circumstances wouldn’t have paled so much by comparision.

Billie Joe Armstrong’s stage presence is charismatic and very fun – more quirky and jester-like than I would have thought. His voice was in top form; a couple of times I was in awe at how long he could hold a note. Now I know that I also love his speaking voice, which is very different from his singing voice – it has an appealing piercing quality to me. “That’s how we do it in Georgia, baby.”

The band also has more of a sense of humor than I realized. During one song, there was a wizard puppet on stage swinging to the music, and Billie Joe even played the guitar with his face.

And there were some sweet touches, like replacing everyone on the band with kids from the audience. “Can you play the guitar? Do you swear to God you can? How old are you? 13? Come up here.” The kid on the drums was clearly comfortable there, the bass player did fine with the three-note assignment – and the 13-year old guitar player got to keep the guitar. Imagine him going to school next day – “Yeah, I played guitar onstage at Green Day and they gave me Billie Joe’s guitar.” Yeah, right.

Billie Joe talked about how long they have been doing this, how at the beginning, no-one really gave a $h^t – but they just came back, and came back, and came back…and came back. He threw kisses out, and said “thank you, and thank you, and you, and thank you….” pointing at specific locations all over the audience.

He knows how to work a crowd, that’s for sure. I suppose that after 16 years or so, you know what people want. Here and there, the audience participation crowd-pleasers were a little too repetitious for me, a bit like a Saturday Night Live routine that goes on too long – but they seemed to work very well nonetheless.

Billie Joe introduced everyone in the band, and then said, “And me? I’m George W. Bush” – the whole place erupted into booing. “No, no, no,” he said, “I’m A&&h@le.” (I’m trying not to swear). At one point he urged everyone in the audience to “remember that no matter who is in power, you are the leaders.” That’s about as specific as the political talking went. But it was pretty clear that most of the crowd were center to left – at least those who cared one way or another.

They performed some unexpected covers – “We are the Champions,” and “Shout,” and a bit of “Stand By Me.” Maybe it was just me, but – almost impossibly considering the songs – they resonated with the political situation as well. The way he sang “just as long as you stand by me”, “we’ll keep on fighting to the end” and his urging each and every person in the audience to “stand up, stand up – that’s what it’s going to take” – all contributed to the feeling of attending a really really really cool pep rally for the left.

A fair bit of the punk rock opera “American Idiot” was exuberantly performed, with response from the crowd approaching what I’ve really only seen before in films of the Beatles. “American Idiot”, “Holiday”, “We are the Waiting”, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” were the ones elicited the greatest response (they are all on the top charts). The crowd also enjoyed “Jesus of Surburbia” and “St. Jimmy.” Among the less recent songs, “Minority” and “King for a Day” seemed to go over best. I was disappointed that they didn’t play “Give me Novacaine”, but you can’t always get what you want.

The audience pretty much looked like middle America – more white than black, more young than old, but some of everyone – except perhaps hardcore rightwingers. I really didn’t see any punk rockers in the old (violent angry) sense. There were kids playing with green paint in their hair and so on, but it felt more like a celebratory festival than anything else. And I was touched to see quite a number of parents there with youngish teens or preteens.

Minor complaints: Whoever was on the lights seemed to be off synch at the beginning – it was hard to see Tre Cool, and Billie Joe Armstrong regularly outran and outjumped his light during the first couple of songs.

More important, the venue wasn’t at all ideal for listening to the music – especially when the crowd was going crazy. Philips Arena is beautiful, but I thought it was just a little too big for the acoustics to work well.

Could the Green Day demigods just come over to our house? Free beer and pizza – how ’bout it guys?