GREEN Day should be ashamed. AT Madison Square Garden Monday night, the Grammy-winning punk band — famous for leftist politics hitched to mainstream pop — presented what was essentially the same production they did four years ago at a September 2005 Giants Stadium show.
It came rushing back at you like a hot kiss at the end of a wet fist. Just like last time, a guy in a pink bunny suit roused the crowd with mock drunk antics and led the soldout house through a few lame verses of the Village People classic “YMCA.” And yeah, it was as queer (and not in the gay way) on Monday as it was four years ago.
Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong engaged the crowd with call- andresponse, fireworks and flames were “1812 Overture”- style percussion notes and Armstrong even plucked kids out of the crowd to sing and play instruments with the band — all just like last time.
While fun the first time out of the box, it insults the audience when a band, touted as brilliant sociopolitical commentators, doesn’t think we’d notice the recycling.
Not that it’s a bad shtick, but if Green Day really is a punk band (which they aren’t), why rely so heavily on mainstream rock-show gimmicks?
At the Garden the answer was easy: The intergenerational fans (grandparents and parents with sprogs in tow) expect and demand the music to be candy-coated with excessive production, even if it is secondhand production.
Most of the show’s freshness was in an opening set that stayed focused on this year’s album, “21st Century Breakdown.” After starting with that record’s title track, Green Day hit an early high with “Know Your Enemy.”
As he sang “Enemy” lyrics like “violence is an energy,” Armstrong scurried about the stage rallying the house to a hungry fanaticism rarely seen in a concert hall.
With the new stuff out of the way, the set embraced Green Day’s 20-year career, including well-worn tunes from their early songbook such as “Longview” and “Basket Case.” More recent hits highlighted were “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Jesus of Suburbia.”
Armstrong even toyed with a dozen snippets of old pop and rock songs, from George Gershwin’s “Swanee” to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” Of all the cover tunes, the band got its best results delivering the ultimate R&B party song “Shout.”
This was hardly a bad concert, and it definitely was a good time — I just wish it had been the first time.
Green Day should know better.
GREEN DAY