Oct
30
Thu • 1997
Set 1:
-
#2 Longview
Show Notes
Incomplete setlist. Audio recording exists.
Profound Punks
Punk-pop trio Green Day proves it is as entertaining as it is viable
By MALCOLM MAYHEW
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
DALLAS — No one stays on top forever, something pop-punk trio Green Day realized but shrugged off Thursday night as it kicked off its latest U.S. tour at Deep Ellum Live in Dallas.
In its rise to fame, Green Day has made as many fans as it has enemies: The Berkeley, Calif., trio released its major label debut, Dookie, when kids were burned on Nirvana and Pearl Jam and looking for something new. Green Day came along at the perfect time, offering them defiant fun, a combination of up-yours attitude and let's-rock ferociousness. As a result, the group soon found itself all over MTV, touring arenas and making tons of money.
Punk rock purists, on the other hand, scoffed, slamming the threesome for being posers, giving punk a bad name and influencing a generation of kids to go out and dye their hair red and get their eyebrows pierced. Such purists are surely smiling now, since Green Day's popularity has slowly waned over the past few years and a good chunk of the band's following has moved on to ska and electronica and whatever else MTV says is cool.
But Green Day has never depended on popularity, just as they've never aligned themselves with punk pioneers like the Sex Pistols. Fugazi, or Big Black. Green Day's music is more catchy than confrontational and singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool don’t hide the fact that their stuff owes as much to the Ramones as it does to ’80s pop groups like Devo. They reinstated that Thursday as the pre-show house music blasted a mix of Ramones tunes with Devo’s Whip It.
Dwindling interest may have forced the band to play a smaller venue but it was to the fans’ benefit. This is a group that belongs in a skanky, smoky club, a place where Armstrong is within spitting distance (literally) of a chaotic mosh pit. Hovering above Thursday’s crowd, he was a cross between a sneer and a smile, violently bolting across the stage, leaving a stream of spit in his path, then returning to the microphone to tell a joke.
“This song’s by Hootie & the Blowfish,” Armstrong said before they plowed into Nice Guys Finish Last, a track from the band’s latest release, Nimrod. Later, as both an act of kindness and humor, he pulled a young female fan out of the crowd to play guitar.
The lingering image, however, came halfway in the show, when the band tore through its first hit, Longview. As the kids sang the MTV hit's "Take me away to paradise" chorus to each other, nothing else mattered — not the tests they had to take the next day at school, not their parents waiting for them in the parking lot, not the twisted world waiting for them outside. For that slice of time nothing else existed. Green Day still matters.
Profound Punks
Punk-pop trio Green Day proves it is as entertaining as it is viable
By MALCOLM MAYHEW
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
DALLAS — No one stays on top forever, something pop-punk trio Green Day realized but shrugged off Thursday night as it kicked off its latest U.S. tour at Deep Ellum Live in Dallas.
In its rise to fame, Green Day has made as many fans as it has enemies: The Berkeley, Calif., trio released its major label debut, Dookie, when kids were burned on Nirvana and Pearl Jam and looking for something new. Green Day came along at the perfect time, offering them defiant fun, a combination of up-yours attitude and let's-rock ferociousness. As a result, the group soon found itself all over MTV, touring arenas and making tons of money.
Punk rock purists, on the other hand, scoffed, slamming the threesome for being posers, giving punk a bad name and influencing a generation of kids to go out and dye their hair red and get their eyebrows pierced. Such purists are surely smiling now, since Green Day's popularity has slowly waned over the past few years and a good chunk of the band's following has moved on to ska and electronica and whatever else MTV says is cool.
But Green Day has never depended on popularity, just as they've never aligned themselves with punk pioneers like the Sex Pistols. Fugazi, or Big Black. Green Day's music is more catchy than confrontational and singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool don’t hide the fact that their stuff owes as much to the Ramones as it does to ’80s pop groups like Devo. They reinstated that Thursday as the pre-show house music blasted a mix of Ramones tunes with Devo’s Whip It.
Dwindling interest may have forced the band to play a smaller venue but it was to the fans’ benefit. This is a group that belongs in a skanky, smoky club, a place where Armstrong is within spitting distance (literally) of a chaotic mosh pit. Hovering above Thursday’s crowd, he was a cross between a sneer and a smile, violently bolting across the stage, leaving a stream of spit in his path, then returning to the microphone to tell a joke.
“This song’s by Hootie & the Blowfish,” Armstrong said before they plowed into Nice Guys Finish Last, a track from the band’s latest release, Nimrod. Later, as both an act of kindness and humor, he pulled a young female fan out of the crowd to play guitar.
The lingering image, however, came halfway in the show, when the band tore through its first hit, Longview. As the kids sang the MTV hit's "Take me away to paradise" chorus to each other, nothing else mattered — not the tests they had to take the next day at school, not their parents waiting for them in the parking lot, not the twisted world waiting for them outside. For that slice of time nothing else existed. Green Day still matters.