Hundreds of students holding discounted tickets courtesy of UPAC Concerts packed Albany’s Pepsi Arena Monday, along with thousands from the surrounding area to hear My Chemical Romance and Green Day play their hits in what many called the best concert they had ever been to or would ever go to.
At 7 pm, when the concert was due to start, the arena was about half-full, but it would rise to about full capacity by the time Green Day came on stage. Amid RPI students not used to seeing each other outside classes or campus yelling and screaming at each other, the lights blacked out, and slowly rose to red as My Chemical Romance took the stage to a crowd that suddenly seemed to be full of shrieking teenage girls. The heavy bass and drumming that led into their first song, “Helena,” along with the red lighting covering the entire stage that created a stark contrast with the darkened arena, set the stage for a great set, but unfortunately, many in the audience would be let down.
The lighting continued to be great for the rest of the show, but the sound technicians were not as skilled as the lighting ones. It was difficult to detect any music in the roar of noise, and the lead singer, Gerard Way, was just shrieking into the microphone at times. Throughout the performance, the band could not keep the audience clapping for songs, the vast majority of those in the stands remained seated, and those on the floor just stood still. Even the band recognized this, when they pointed out that “You guys are at a five now, and we need to get you to a 9.5 before Green Day can come out!”
The two high points of their 30-minute set were definitely when, before playing “The Ghost of You,” Way asked the audience to pull out their lighters and cell phones to wave in the air, “Freebird-style.” It was the first time I had seen cell phones used for this, and it created a constellation of technology in the arena. The other high point was their last song, “I’m Not OK,” which is the band’s big hit, and it showed. Both the audience and they were obviously more into it than any other song that had been played.
A half hour later, Green Day’s set was up, and the audience was hungry for more music. Before they came out, however, the job of warming up the crowd fell to a lone man in a pink rabbit costume chugging beer. After staggering on stage and wandering around, he led the audience in The Village People’s “YMCA” and the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop.” As opposed to the opening band, he was quite successful at getting the audience going, and soon Green Day was bounding on stage to rising lights and “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” best known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The band immediately launched into “American Idiot,” and begun a two-hour set that astounded the entire audience, most of WHOM stayed on their feet the entire time.
The set was a mix of tried-and-true hits and their new material from American Idiot. With eight albums now on the shelves, the band has a great deal of material to pick from, and songs from Dookie were intermingled with hits from Warning, Nimrod, and Insomniac. The old songs were played just as well as the new ones, which can be somewhat surprising for bands with such a long history. The majority of songs were off the new album, however, which is to be expected given that this is the publicity tour.
After 16 years as a band, Green Day has perfected the art of audience interaction, and has a phenomenal stage presence. With wireless guitars, they were able to run back and forth on the stage and try to connect with the people on the sides as well as the front of the stage. Billie Joe Armstrong made sure to shout “Albany!” every few minutes, which produced screaming and clapping from the audience every time. At one point, he pulled a kid up out of the audience and the two of them shot super soakers at the crowd. Then later they pulled three audience members up to play drums, bass, and guitar on “Basket Case,” which ended in Armstrong giving the 15-year-old kid his guitar and the drummer probably injuring about a dozen people in a failed stage dive.
Some people claim that lighting makes the show, and in Green Day’s case it definitely helped. There was a wide variety of lighting and pyrotechnics used, from flame spurts to disco balls to LED arrays. There was a wide use of spotlights in the show, and colored lights were used wonderfully on the stage. Cannons were set off at points during the show, usually coinciding with part of the backdrop falling, which elicited cheers and screams from a large part of the audience.
After the traditional cover interlude, which featured “Shout,” the band started to wind down the evening with “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” a cover of “We Are The Champions,” and then closed with “Minority” while confetti cannons fired all through the arena. After a few minutes, the band came back for an encore, and played “Maria,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” and really closed with Armstrong playing “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).”
The reaction from the audience throughout Green Day’s set was overwhelmingly positive. While some left disappointed over not hearing certain songs, everyone enjoyed the show, and some said that it would have been a terrible first concert solely because every show after it would be a letdown in comparison. It was a world-class concert for a world-class band.
