Rock Concert Leaves Veteran Concert-Goer Feeling Green (Green Day in Pittsburgh, Mellon Arena, 4-23-05)

I’m not exactly what you’d call a novice concert-goer. The list of artists I’ve seen live include Sharon, Lois and Bram (I’m pretty sure that was my first ever), Nichelle Nichols, the Irish Rovers (thrice), Michael Card (thrice), Art Garfunkel (thrice), Simon and Garfunkel, Clay Aiken (twice), Neil Diamond, Gordon Lightfoot, Livingston Taylor and Don McLean, and I’m sure that’s not an exhaustive list. Most of those have been in small venues such as churches and philharmonic halls, but a few were large outdoor gatherings and massive arenas. But even the mayhem of the American Idol concert in Cleveland failed to entirely prepare me for the first concert I’ve attended in which the vast majority of the audience was my age or younger.

Back in the beginning of this school year, less than a month after her arrival in America, our exchange student Cathi got to experience her first American concert. Unfortunately, it was an artist she’d never heard of and whose style did not appeal to her. Based on my set of experiences, a Clay Aiken concert is pretty darn happenin’. But he almost might as well be Perry Como compared to the atmosphere at a concert whose core audience is angsty adolescents. Mom was determined to arrange for tickets to see at least one band Cathi really likes before she returns to Germany, so when the Green Day concert in Pittsburgh made a blip on Mom’s radar, she pounced, unintimidated by the inevitable culture shock that would occur when three tame folkies joined a throng of green-haired Gen-X-ers in a line that began to look like it would rival the parade of pilgrims in Rome three weeks ago. Yes, we decided to make this a family affair, so while Cathi, Nathan and our next-door neighbor awaited the hour with great anticipation, Mom, Dad and I leaned a bit towards trepidation. Just what were we getting ourselves into?

Before we even entered the Mellon Arena, I was struck by the differences between this concert and others I had attended. For one, there was the monster line, which we managed to hit at its longest point before officials finally opened the doors less than an hour before the concert. It wound halfway around the block and was patrolled by scalpers and opportunists selling discount Green Day t-shirts, neither of which I’d ever encountered before. It was actually just after 8:00 by the time we found our seats after a good deal of Mom trying to make sense of the arena map and Cathi urging her to ask for directions in the same agitated tone I’ve used on numerous occasions when I’ve been needlessly afraid that a concert I’d been desperately looking forward to would start without me. After nervously navigating my way to my seat in the dark, I sat down, determined to give the show my best shot. My ears were already under assault.

They haven’t recovered yet, and that’s probably 90 percent due to the efforts of the cover band that began playing as we got settled. I’d never heard of them before, though my hipper companions apparently had. None of us found that they added much to the concert except to make us grateful for the relative silence when they abandoned the stage to allow for half an hour of preparation for the main act. My Chemical Romance was on stage for about half an hour. In that time I understood exactly zero words to any of their songs, but our neighbor later assured me that was probably for the best. I was able to make out what the band leader said well enough to get the impression that, as Forrest Gump said of the flag-adorned protester in D.C., “He liked to say the f-word.” This was another first. I’ve never been to a concert in which that word was uttered once, and here it was flying at me at 200 decibels every 30 seconds. There was an especially worrisome moment when he asked for the attention of the female contingent of the audience and discussed the practice of certain bands asking gals to remove their shirts for a shot at a backstage pass. Before my visions of mass upper body nudity were realized, however, I was relieved to hear him admonish the gals for giving into such unseemly demands. “You’re better than that!” he shouted unexpectedly as I dared to remove my hand from my face.

What followed was an intermission of sorts, with the lights up and the music down, though loud enough to encourage a party atmosphere. The stereo blared such varied fare as Green Day’s own cover of I Fought the Law and Queen’s We Will Rock You while audience members batted around enormous beach ball-style balloons, initiated an impromptu wave that made it around the arena five times, and cheered wildly whenever the sound check man made an appearance. With the advent of YMCA, the audience enthusiasm ratcheted up a whole category, especially after their participation was encouraged by someone on stage in a big pink bunny suit who may or may not have been a member of Green Day. At any rate, this marked the end of the waiting, and soon the audience was roaring its welcome to the band it had come to see.

The show kicked off with American Idiot and Holiday before the band continued with a repertoire consisting mainly of songs I’d either never heard before or had but didn’t recognize. Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong did most of the talking, pumping up the audience - often from a runway that took him out among the large group of people standing on the arena floor - by frequently encouraging our participation in the concert, if only to do the wave or shout “heyyyy-o.” I’ve seen him on television before and found him slightly ominous, with his dark make-up and his manner of barking out each syllable as though it were a separate word. I’d never heard him speak before but I found his banter with the audience – profanity and vulgarity aside – enjoyable. He clearly enjoys interacting with his fans and seems to appreciate their role in his rise to musical success.

While there was no jumbotron at this concert to help those in the nosebleeds see what was going on, I managed to get a pretty good idea of what was happening. While we were probably closer to the stage at the Simon and Garfunkel concert, our visibility with Green Day was better, as we were in the third row up from the balcony railing, dead center. Between that and our pair of mini binoculars, we were set. The most visual aspect of the show was something we would have experienced no matter where we were sitting. The lights on the stage played a large role in setting the mood for each song and sometimes flashed in time to the music on more raucous numbers. There were also a few explosions of flame that would have made me very nervous had I been on stage; as it was, the first of these made me jump. I could feel the heat from the flames all the way up in the balcony.

Though most of the music was pretty rowdy, it still retained a certain melodic quality that was notably absent during the set from My Chemical Romance. Songs that slowed and quieted it down a bit demonstrated the band members’ prowess as musicians, and performances such as Wake Me Up When September Ends became especially moving when half the audience brandished their cell phones, lighters and glow sticks to create the mood of a vigil. One of my favorite moments was when, after entertainingly introducing the members of Green Day (bassist Mike Dirnt, drummer Tre Cool and several assisting members whose names I didn’t catch), Billie Joe drew three eager volunteers from the audience to form an impromptu band that would play a brief song on stage. I’ve seen singers and dancers recruited a couple times, but never instrumentalists. It was a kick to see three ordinary guys out there on the stage getting one of the thrills of their lives, and I found it particularly touching that the young man chosen as the guitarist got to keep the guitar.

It wasn’t until the end of the concert that most of the songs I recognized emerged. Aside from a mid-concert performance of Basketcase, it was mostly unfamiliar fare for me until Minority, which if I recall correctly closed out the concert until their return for an encore of rather generous length. First Maria, then one of the two songs I was really waiting for: Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It’s a very poignant song, starting with the poetic title, and it calls to mind Robert Frost and his road less traveled (in spite of assurances by academia that that poem has been grossly misinterpreted ever since its publication). At any rate, this is a forlorn anthem, mingling solitary misery with defiant independence. It was one of the quieter songs of the evening, though nothing in that arena approached anything I would truly consider “quiet” – a hazard of such vast venues. You have to crank up the volume even when it doesn’t really suit the music.

The band seems to have a particular affection for Queen, and the encore’s grand send-off was a rousing We Are the Champions, complete with lights flashing the words so the audience could sing along (though I suspect that was superfluous) and giant machines spewing gobs of confetti. It was quite an impressive effect. The concert officially ended with just Billie Joe and his guitar in the song that, judging from the reaction, seemed to be the audience favorite. Perhaps that’s because just about everybody, no matter what their level of familiarity with the band, has heard it. I think of it as the Seinfeld finale song; my brother said he thinks of it the song played at every single graduation ceremony. In any case, the abrasive title of Good Riddance is unsuccessful in masking the song’s sentimentality. It’s a very tender tune and certainly a perfect pick to conclude the evening, both in terms of its subject matter and popularity. I was struck by how many people in the audience responded when asked if this was their first concert. I suspect that, particularly if they were die-hard Green Day fans, they had, indeed, “had the time of [their] life.” I started out the evening playing along with a bit of perfunctory applause, but by the encore I didn’t have to pretend anymore. They managed to draw out some genuine enthusiasm.

As I said, this was an interesting experience for me. It was extraordinarily loud, to the detriment not only of my ears but of my nerves as the bass and the enthusiastic audience rumbled together with a force that shook our seats up in the balcony. As I watched three especially enthusiastic teens try to mosh against the balcony railing and I fought off visions of one of them flipping over, I worried whether the whole structure might collapse underneath us. My concern was not too serious, but I worried nonetheless. This is not the sort of concert I am used to. Nonetheless, I enjoyed a great deal of the concert, and when I wasn’t blushing from the words coming out of Billie Joe’s mouth, I was usually applauding them. I get the feeling ultimately that he’s a pretty decent guy, a notion strengthened when I went to the band’s web site and saw that they were encouraging fans to bring nonperishable food donations to their concerts to be distributed through USA Harvest. I confess I left the concert with a touch of exhilaration, brought on partly by the thrill of being in such a vast and enthusiastic crowd but partly because the band wasn’t too hard to take after all. Ultimately, though Green may not be my cup of tea, a sip or two won’t do me any harm.