Coulda, woulda, shoulda been the “Energizer” bunny that opened the show rather than the oversized drunken pink rabbit wandering about. Manic, nonstop action was the name of the game at the Green Day concert—for better or worse.

Jimmy Eat World played its melodic pop hits for half an hour (I don’t know why, but “The Middle” never seems to get old). I remember thinking 30 minutes seemed too short for such a well-established band. But…after seeing other recent concerts, I had to hand it to Green Day—this “get the main act on stage by 8:00 stuff was great!” At shows later in the month, it became evident that sitting through two set changes and listening to unknown opening acts could get old fast.

Thus, early Monday night, members of Green Day bounded on the Pepsi Center stage to a thumping “American Idiot,” and the race was on. Armstrong and crew can clown it up, brat it up, sex it up, politic it up, and ramp up the audience participation antics, but in the end the music triumphs all.

Which leads to a small complaint about the show—surely most in the audience would have been more than happy to have had more (many more?) songs and fewer audience participation hijinks. A relatively minor complaint, I suppose.

The band played most of the songs from American Idiot including the title cut, “Jesus of Suburbia,” “St. Jimmy,” “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” and “Holiday.” The latter song was introduced by Billie Joe Armstrong as a big “f**k you to George Bush.” Speaking of Bush, a friend inquired the day after the show if there was much “Bush-bashing” during the performance. Hmmm. Not really, I said. There was the aforementioned quote, a plea to “not give up your civil liberties,’ and a demand to sing one song loud enough so that “every redneck in America can hear you.” Not really Bush-bashing stuff, but then, the American Idiot album takes care of that in spades.

Included in the night’s stage props were booming pyrotechnics punctuating song endings, oversized hoses and squirt guns turned on the audience (Armstrong even pulled two young fans onstage to “work” the hoses for awhile drenching some folks near the front), and tons of confetti to close out the show.

A fairly long routine had Armstrong pulling three audience members on stage to play drums, guitar, and bass. He noted that he wanted to “put together a new band” to play one song. The kids did all right, one earning the right to keep the guitar she had played, and another being urged to get a running start and take a stage dive (mission accomplished).

Armstrong didn’t stop to speak much but did talk about how the band had been playing the Denver area for more than 15 years. He also pointed out that during one of the earliest shows, the group had played in a dancehall to “maybe 10 people.”

Other songs of note during the show included singles from Dookie and Nimrod such as “Longview,” “Basket Case,” and “Brain Stew,” as well as “Maria,” from the “International Superhits” and a cover of the Isley Brothers “Shout.” Armstrong has professed admiration for Freddie Mercury as a frontman and hammed it up, wearing a cloak and crown, during a rendition of Queen’s “We are the Champions.” The encore included a current sentimental favorite, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” (the song’s name having been taken from a James Dean photo) and finished with “Good Riddance.” The latter song, as overplayed and overused as it is, is still affecting, and with the entire arena darkened (except for the spotlight on Armstrong) the melancholy plaintiveness of the words was especially searing.

Green Day brought its “A” game and A-list punk-pop material to Colorado, and though the boys have, as Rolling Stone noted, “grown up,” they’re still passionate, aggressive and, even more importantly, relevant. Billie Joe Armstrong has said that rock ‘n’ roll can “move mountains.” Green Day poked and provoked Monday night. The rest is up to us.

Mountain West Music 2005