After work on Friday (11 Dec) Mat and I had to abandon our newly arrived guests (Squealer and Mally from Stroud) for we had our long-awaited gig to go to – Green Day 
After leaving a little late and then queuing for half an hour to buy t-shirts we missed the support band, Jet, unfortunately. I then queued for another fifteen minutes to buy chips and pies as we hadn’t had any food before leaving and were both pretty hungry. However, it was all timed really well because as we were just finishing the last chips the lights dimmed and the crowd errupted.
The first thing I noticed was, even though the tickets said no photography or filming equipment allowed, there were camera flashes going off left right and centre. I’m glad I had decided to take my camera anyway and I took a few shots and video clips here and there to capture the moment. We had pretty good seats; although they were right at the side of the stage, so the acoustics weren’t as good as they would have been in the centre, we were at the front of the first level above ground so got a really good view of everything.
The whole concert was absolutely fantastic. Billie Joe was a real showman and kept the crowd constantly hyped. They played a lot of songs off their new album, 21st Century Breakdown, at least the same again from American Idiot and a whole heap of other classic old school Green Day tracks. They also did parts of some random covers including ACDC and The Beatles.
As well as the music Billie Joe kept picking random audience members to come up on stage. A couple of them were just got up for the experience, needless to say Billie Joe looked like he was half strangled by one chick who was a bit over enthusiastic (well who wouldn’t be?). Then he got a kiddie up on stage for one of the new songs, East Jesus Nowhere, which envolved absolving him of his sins and ended in big pyrotechnic explosion. I took a video of this but I still haven’t managed to find a way of converting my mov files to avi small enough to upload to youtube without the quality dropping to shit so I’ve pinched someone elses:
He got a couple of people on stage to squirt water from super soakers at the mosh pit and then continued squirting the crowd intermittantly throughout the rest of the night from a hose. He also had a rather funky contraption that had a bog roll and some sort of air gun attachment which launched toilet paper into the crowd in long streams. Then he had a t-shirt gun, like a spud gun but which fired rolled up t-shirts into the audience; about ten lucky people managed to bag one of those. He had a couple of people up on stage to sing with him after making them promise faithfully that they knew all the words. The first guy was bloody good and did the whole dancing about the stage thing at the same time. There was countless numbers of explosions and fire jets that never ceased to make me jump every time. When a couple of the people left the stage he got them to launch themselves into the mosh pit which was pretty cool; it always amazes me how they seem to float along over everybody’s heads without seeming to hurt anyone, especially when they first land.
Here’s one from the beginning of the night “Know Your Enemy”, again, I’ve pinched it from a lovely person that must have been sat somewhere near where we were as the angle is the same:
At one point in between songs Bille Joe left the stage and went out into the middle of the audience to greet random fans (see picture three). The list goes on and on. They didn’t disappoint at the end either; the whole band came back on for several songs after their initial departure and then Billie Joe came back on again after that and finished with some glorious acoustic classics. Here’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”:
All up Green Day played for a solid two and half hours and it was definitely up there at the top with my all time favourite gigs. It took nearly two days for my ears to go back to normal afterwards!
Fantastic night! Thank you Green Day
- photos from green day sydney 2010 (4)
- green day acer arena (3)
- Green Day Sydney 2009 (2)
- green day live in sydney 2009 (2)
- acer arena no photography (2)
- green day sydney 2009 saturday photography (1)
- greenday at acer arena 11th dec 2009 (1)
- green day t-shirts sydney dec (1)
- green day sydney december 11 2009 photos (1)
- green day sydney concert photos (1)
on 
on 
Thanks for the in-depth review you lucky, lucky person.
OK, finally got around to watching the videos. Don’t think that last one is Time of Your Life. Doesn’t sound like it, and the video title is Know Your Enemy…
OK, having now watched the 2nd video as well, I see you just swapped them around. I’ve put them in the right order for you.
btw, not re-tried making your tweet post asides yet? Let me know if you’re stuck at a certain point.
Looks like a great concert. I’m jealous, would loved to have been there. Everyone smuggles in compact cameras – I have never managed to get a full Nikon in yet though, even by taking it apart and distributing body and lenses between friends. But the compacts are so good now it’s not worth the hassle.
Happy Crimble to you and Matt. Off to Northleach for Christmas in the morning. Love John & Carol XXX
@ Chris – Woops, silly me, thank you
Is there a reason why I don’t get email notifiation every time someone comments? I think I get told about new ones but not re-commentors, can’t remember to be honest but I’ve just logged into my dashboard and only just see nyours and John’s.
Re. tweets as asides – I did have a bash at it but that’s when it all went wrong and you had to fix it. The instructions you gave me didn’t correspond directly with what my code said so I left it alone until I could ask you about it in more detail – if you can help I would uch appreciate it
@ John – I took a smallish rucksack in with me and I was expecting to get it checked but nobody bothered. It would probably have been just about big enough for a proper camera. I hope you both had a good crimbo, I’ve been keeping up with your blog. I need to take a leaf out of your book and get a bit more regular
Hi Alex & Matt
I trust that you had a good Crimble too. We are back to the harsh reality of a working week – a very laid back working week in my case. Still, I have a photoshoot today, and a shed full of work to catch up on, but I keep getting distracted by other things on the net.
It’s a real effort to keep my blog going, I sometimes think that I live too boring a life. Anyway, my brain seems to close down in the cold. How the hell Chris manages in the temperatures in Astana is beyond my comprehension!
Anyway, I want to see lots and lots more photos of lovely hot Oz.. Beach babes – or even “Alex Beach Babe” photos particularly required! xxxJohn
@Alex. You could try setting the e-mail address for your profile (on the users page) to your proper e-mail address (blahblahblah@dryadmusings.com). Hotmail sucks a$$. If you change that and you still have problems let me know.
Just grab me on skype and we’ll go through the instructions and your theme’s code together sometime.
@John. It momentarily almost got to 0 today, though has since dropped to -23, with -25 to -30 forecast for tomorrow. The snow is pretty damn deep in areas where they don’t clear it daily, and when it comes to driving, everyone has proper winter tyres on, with the little studs etc., though I’ve heard some people simply don’t drive in the Winter time. Outside of driving, I’ve discovered that having all your ear rings in is a bad idea, unless they’re completely covered by a scarf etc. The metal seems to draw the heat out of your flesh when the wind is blowing hard and is it minus 25. Almost got frostbite on my ear lobes, they hurt for days. Beards are good for keeping some heat it, though not all the women here are capable of that lmao. Beyond that, I tend to wear a shirt as well as the normal t-shirt, and a proper coat, when it gets too cold.
[edit]
@Alex – yep, just double checked that WordPress is set up to contact you whenever someone leaves a comment, be it for moderation or automatically published due to their previous comments being approved. You’re on the same server as me, running the same software, works fine for me, and I dislike hotmail almost as much as excite or affinity. Therefore I’m going to assume the problem lies with your hotmail address, and not bother to research anymore until you set your profile’s e-mail address to a proper POP3 that we control, and can smack around if it misbehaves