21st Century Breakdown - show review

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Green Day remains a very entertaining group to watch, and we had a great time.

After a dinner at the traditional Seattle eatery 13 coins, we headed over the the Key for the show. Got there fairly early, and headed to the West side to buy some Merch (far less crowded than the east side), and the found our seats and waited.

Opening group was "The Bravery". I cut opening bands a lot of slack because it's a hard crowd and the sound usually doesn't work well for you, but it wasn't to my taste. The vocals were muddy, and the songs sounded all the same to me. Happy they didn't play for very long.

After a bunch of listening, 21st Century Breakdown hasn't caught on for me the way that American Idiot did, so I was hoping that they would play a lot of other stuff besides the new album. Which they did - opened with a few cuts of the new album, then a few off of idiot, then some old stuff (Dookie and newer, so not old old), some more new stuff, etc. Nice variety, and you can tell from the crowd reaction that they like the old stuff quite a bit.

Billie Joe played a lot less lead guitar than in the idiot show, concentrating more on vocals and rhythm guitar, especially on the new stuff. It seemed to work pretty well and the mix between his guitar and the backup guy was pretty good.

A few issues since this was the first show. Crew isn't quite used to how things work yet (leading to a pretty funny 2-minute segment when the guitar tech keeps trying to hand Billie Joe his guitar and Billie Joe keeps singing), and a notably disappointing t-shirt gun, which despite several attempts couldn't launch the t-shirt more than about 30'.

They played for just a bit over two hours, with only perhaps a 1 minute break before the encore. Billie Joe spends the whole two hours running around and singing, and it's pretty impressive.

Great show.

Partial setlist:

Dookie:

  • Longview
  • Basket Case

Nimrod:

  • Hitchin' a ride
  • King for a day
  • Good riddance (time of your life) (closing song, acoustical)

Warning:

  • Minority

American idiot:

  • American Idiot
  • Jesus of suburbia
  • Boulevard of broken dreams
  • Holiday
  • Are we the waiting
  • St. Jimmy
  • Homecoming

21st Century Breakdown:

  • Song of the Century
  • 21st Century breakdown
  • Know your enemy
  • Before the lobotomy
  • 21 guns
  • (think I missed a couple here...)