On the evening of Aug. 22, I was 15 again. Green Day performed for tens of thousands of excited fans at Great American Ball Park, and I was there to witness it. Every song on “The Saviors Tour” took me back to my high school days blasting Green Day’s Dookie album from my portable CD player.
The concert featured 36 songs taken from two amazing albums — Dookie and American Idiot. What made this concert unique is both albums were played in their entirety. I have been an audience member and/or a photographer at dozens of shows, none of which had this format.
I have been a professional concert photographer for 10 years, and this concert was in my top five most exciting concerts I've photographed. The industry standard is to photograph the first three songs, but for Green Day, we were given two songs. While this is disappointing, I always remember there are 40,000 people standing behind me that would love to have even a single song.
We made our way to the pit to photograph the band. “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, which had the entire crowd singing along, played before the show. The band came out a few minutes later and opened with “The American Dream Is Killing Me.” This medium-speed song was a great warm-up for the rest of the night.
The band moved through the remaining Dookie songs at a blistering pace. I kept expecting the usual concert move of talking to the crowd as a break from performing, but it never came. The intensity with which they performed, I imagine, is the same as 30 years ago. Their performance was unbelievable. I was most excited about hearing “Basket Case” in person. The best way I can describe this particular song is epic. It was the song of my freshman year being performed just for me and as loud as can be.
While I was familiar with “American Idiot” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” I was not as much with the remaining American Idiot songs. One of the best things about this show was that not knowing the songs didn’t matter. The music made me feel something I hadn’t at other artists’ shows. I “felt” the music and felt what the hardcore fans must have been feeling. It was an incredible Cincinnati concert that I will always remember.
Green Day made the switch from one album to the next without much fanfare. During Dookie, the stage had a multi-story set piece mimicking their iconic 1994 album cover. Everyone I knew in 1994 owned this album. As “American Idiot,” the title track of the 2004 album began, a large fist and heart-shaped grenade appeared. Yet again, this mimicked the album artwork. There was almost no discernable musical break between albums, which is indicative of Green Day’s consistent musical style.
Although I didn’t visit every section of the crowd, I noticed most people were in the 35- to 55-year-old demographic. Of course, there were preteens and boomers singing every word to every song. I did notice, as well, that each person I saw seemed to know the entire setlist. Normally at a concert, there are people that I call “people who just want to see a concert tonight.” I couldn’t find anyone who wasn’t a huge Green Day fan, and that was exciting.
Billie Joe Armstrong, Tré Cool, Mike Dirnt, Jason White and Jason Freese are the current members of Green Day. I can’t understate the tightness of their instrumentation. The timing between drums, bass and guitars made the music so much punchier than I had anticipated. This, combined with the excellent sound mixing by the sound engineers made this concert a truly enjoyable audio experience.
Concerts like this at Great American Ball Park are always a great experience. The stages are usually set up in left-center field and rise well above the batter’s eye in center field. Green Day’s stage was approximately 6 feet tall and had what was probably a 20-foot-thrust stage into the audience. Thrusts are exciting because the performers can safely come out into the crowd. Armstrong used this to really fire up the crowd throughout the show.
Green Day’s performance at Great American Ball Park was supported by The Linda Lindas, Rancid and Smashing Pumpkins. There are an additional 25 tour stops still to come on “The Saviors Tour,” with the next few being in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.
