Green Day

AsiaWorld Arena, Saturday January 16

If there was any doubt as to Green Day’s stadium-rock credentials, they were dispelled early on in their Hong Kong debut. For two-and-a-half hours, the Californian trio of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool produced the kind of set that, if you’d somehow forgotten, reminded you how big Green Day are, reeling off back to back hits in an epic, unstoppably energetic set.

From his demands (‘stand up everybody!’) as he first hit the stage, Armstrong had the entire arena mimicking his every sound and movement – from graceless one-armed waving and more than occasional ‘woah-oh’s (woah-oh) to unrestrained cries of delirium at the mere mention of Hong Kong – dominating the arena in his now-famed manner. Between faithful recitations of hits from across their seven most recent albums (tracks from 39/Smooth didn’t get a run), Armstrong shot T-Shirts into the crowd, pit the crowd against each other in a sing off, and perhaps most memorably, pulled a volunteer named Gabriel from the crowd to sing Longview, before commanding her to stage-dive with a peer-pressuring “Gabriel, Gabriel” chant that had 10,000 plus joining in.

Only when the trio moved into slightly more bizarre territory did they threaten to lose the audience – particularly when they appeared in pirate get up and then offered up a saxophone solo and a medley of well-known singalong covers from Shout to Hey Jude, with drummer Tre Cool bizarrely finding himself clad in lingerie.

Despite the excessively zealous security, a few old school lighters found their way into the arena, waived around during the downbeat second encore of Wake Me Up When September Ends and Good Riddance (Time of Our Life). Although the gig ended in a surprisingly abrupt fashion – without the fanfare and fireworks of the preceding 150 minutes – few fans would have left disappointed. For most, Green Day live was everything they’d enviously read about.

Mark Tjhung

Set List:

Song of the Century
21st Century Breakdown
Know Your Enemy
East Jesus Nowhere
Holiday
The Static Age
Give Me Novacaine
Are We The Waiting
St. Jimmy
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Burnout
Hitchin' A Ride
Welcome To Paradise
When I Come Around
Iron Man (Riff only) (cover of Black Sabbath)
Paranoid (cover of Black Sabbath)
Highway to Hell (cover of AC/DC)
Brain Stew
Jaded
Longview
Basket Case
She
King For A Day / Shout / Love Me Tender / Satisfaction / Hey Jude
21 Guns
Minority

Encore:
American Idiot
Jesus of Suburbia

Encore 2:
Last Night On Earth
Wake Me Up When September Ends
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)