Details
Location:
Tsongas Arena in Lowell, MA
Date:
June 22, 2001
Other Acts:
The Living End
Notes:
- nopride84: "I took these pictures on June 22nd, 2001 in Lowell, MA. They are kinda scratchy because they were in a frame but it got smashed and ruined some of them."
- Eric: "First of all, it has to be noted that Green Day is a great live band. Incredible actually. Very tight, very fun to watch, and they get the crowd into it. Very high energy. However, I have several complaints about this particular show. Too predictable of a setlist. I came in hoping to hear some songs I hadn't heard before from previous albums. 86, J.A.R, Uptight, Walking Contradiction... Hearing any of those songs would have made my night. But no, they played essentially the same set from the Chicago show 3 nights before. Heavy on the hits. VERY disappointing to the true Green Day fan who has been with them through the long haul. The encore. The encore should be a rockin' handful of songs that really gets the crowd fired up, perhaps ending in a slower tune. Instead, they basically busted out 4 slow songs with a rockin' tune in between. SUBPAR. Too much screwing around. Between every song, BJ would lead the crowd in chants of 'Hey-oh,' and '1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4,' etc. etc. If you removed all these ridiculous interludes, they could have played 2 more songs. Perhaps 2 more that I really would have like to have heard."
- "The set from Green Day was starting to get put up, so my friends and I went to the floor. There were about 9 of us in a group. We all danced around to the music like idiots so people would give us enough room, but as soon as Green Day came on that room we cleared was gone again. Bodysurfers were everywhere, one kid I saw broke his ribs and hand. He laughed the whole time. People were making big circles and dancing in the middle. There was a real bondage of punks everywhere around us, and if someone fell you'd help them back up and push them back into the crowd or send them up again. The one guy in my group once got really hurt at a local band's mosh pit, so he was looking out for me and my friend, who are small girls. He kept asking us if we were OK when someone body surfed over us. One of my friends got kicked in the head a few times. I got pushed by some kid and ended up punching him back. We all felt lightheaded and dizzy, it was so hot so my friend bought us water and we saw this one girl lying down on the floor next to us, we told her friends not to let her go to sleep or else she'd go unconcious. Some people snuck pot in and were smoking that. One of my friends got her necklace taken away because they thought it could be used as a weapon, but she hid it in a bush and soon got it back at the end."
- Austin O'Connor: "Green Day's latest album is called Warning, but the ferocity of the band's live shows arrives without one. Okay, so there were a few flashing red lights that cut through the Tsongas Arena darkness on Friday night as the Bay Area-based punk trio - singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool - bounded on stage just past 9 p.m. and ripped into Nice Guys Finish Last. But trust me, it takes more than a couple of spinning bulbs to prepare for the type of sensory assault served up by Armstrong and his bandmates, who burst out of the Berkeley, Calif. punk scene and onto the national radar seven years ago on the strength of their hard-driving tunes on their mega-hit major label debut, Dookie.
It sold more than 10 million copies, and the band has faded in and out of the spotlight ever since. But Friday night's 19-song, 105-minute show - which followed a blistering 35-minute opening set from Aussie rockers The Living End - had the kind of epic intensity few rock bands can muster. Much of the credit for that goes to Armstrong, now a family man and nearing the ripe old age of 30. From the opening tune, he directed the crowd like a maestro before his orchestra, raising his arms to the rafters and quivering, whipping the young fans - most of whom turned the Arena floor into a moshing mass of teenage humanity - into a fervor. Despite the crowd surfers and circles of young males pantomiming WWF routines, Armstrong was in total control, stalking the stage from end to end as Cool and Dirnt joined him in turning the Arena into your neighbor's noisy garage, full of snot-nosed kids who revel in playing their instruments too late and too loud. After tearing through a mix of hits, including Longview, Welcome To Paradise and Church on Sunday, the band reached way back into its playbook to dust off 2,000 Light Years Away, from 1992's indie album Kerplunk!. Then, while covering Operation Ivy's Knowledge, they recruited a trio of young concertgoers to take over the instruments - dubbing the makeshift band The Massachusetts Murders. The new kids impressed, ably substituting and drawing roars of approval from the 4,953 screaming fans before stage-diving back into their midst. Meanwhile, Armstrong continued to work the crowd, joining in on a 'Yankees Suck!' chant and playfully admonishing those in the seats for not working as hard as the moshers. There's a little Springsteen in the frontman's stage demeanor (the guys even threw some sax into Church on Sunday) though he hasn't forgotten his punk roots, donning a gorilla mask for Longview and sporting a royal crown for a raucous King For A Day. Even after a schizophrenic five-song encore that began with an Armstrong solo of Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) then jumped to manic, noisy classics When I Come Around and Platypus (I Hate You) before finishing with the melancholy hope of Macy's Day Parade, the image of Armstrong wearing his red velvet crown and directing the crowd from atop a center-stage woofer was the one that lingered. King for a day? If they keep putting on shows like this, Armstrong and Green Day's reign atop their punk kingdom will last much longer than that."
Setlist
1. Nice Guys Finish Last
2. Castaway
3. Church On Sunday
4. Longview
5. Welcome to Paradise
6. Hitchin' A Ride
7. Brain Stew
8. Jaded
9. 2,000 Light Years Away
10. Knowledge (Operation Ivy cover)
11. Basket Case
12. She
13. King For A Day
14. Waiting
15. Minority
16. Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)
Encore
17. Warning
18. Platypus (I Hate You)
19. When I Come Around
20. Macy's Day Parade
Previous Show
