August 3, 2009 Earworm

It's been obvious for sometime that Billie Joe Armstrong is enjoying being a rock star. As Green Day has morphed into whatever it is that Green Day now is, their television appearances have captured a band leader in full swing and control of his audience. Fortunately, none of that Bono smug smudged him when both bands came together to herald the arrival of the saints.

After seeing them jump start my August last Saturday, it became clear that Billie Joe's idea of "one" is more about the audience than it is about him or his band. Considering the personalities the trio have shown, both individually and collectively, that is no small achievement. Arena sized acts rarely include audience participation and I can't think of another that polls the audience for anyone who can play a particular song on guitar and then give hand guitar duties for said song to a lucky musician to be. And, while it is not unusual for an arena sized act to allow the audience to take the chorus on a song, I'm unaware of one giving up the microphone for one of their biggest songs - in this case, "Longview" - to one audience member per verse. To be clear, these were not "let me jump in the audience and point the mic" moments, these people were brought on stage and unleashed and, in the case of the not so novice guest guitarist, an energy that matched Billie Joe's was set loose, keeping perfect manic pace with the leader of the band's cheerleader on black beauties antics.

Still, the moment my heart briefly stopped was when "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" stopped being the (first) cell phone waving moment and opportunity for the crowd to fill in the "I walk alone, I walk alone" lyric. Going into the second chorus, Billie Joe didn't bother coming in at all, and allowed a surprised audience to take it all the way home. And they did. They struggled a bit with the first two lines but nailed "Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me" and upon completing "'Til then I walk alone" you could see the surprise in everyone's face that they weren't, in fact, walking alone at all. And if you think I was being a sentimental fool imagining things but I've talked with many attendees of this tour, including my bro-date for the evening, and they all saw it, too. The kids were alright and, for a few moments, no one was alone. For the sake of brevity, I won't even go into the "21 Guns" moment except to say that I knew he'd never be able to hit that note night after night and that it really didn't matter at all.

I'm glad to see Billie Joe's rock and roll dreams come true because I think that right now we need a rock star who still has snot on his nose and isn't afraid to let his audience be offended by the things he stands for or against and who will let an obviously intoxicated six foot pink bunny warm up the crowd by leading them on the "YMCA" dance. And, all for the low, low price of fifty-bucks. Regardless of where you sat.