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Some bands are natural born performers. Some bands are oozing with stage presence and charisma. Some bands have careers that span generations. Very few bands are all this and more – in fact only a handful of bands can ever be all of this. Green Day themselves say that they have always sought to be the best live band in the world – and they manage it with total ease.
As a writer you see many bands every year. Festival season is a time to see hundreds of bands in a couple of months and the Reading/Leeds Festivals alone result in catching thirty-odd bands. Some are bad, some are good and most are average. Very few bands ever have the ability to grab your attention so much that the sense inside you of why you love music is totally reawakened and rejuvenated. It is bands like this that remind you what a live performance should be.
Walking on stage to their current single, ‘American Idiot’, I’m initially thinking that they’re just average. They’ve not done anything special and how could anybody call them the most amazing band in the world? That’s when it all changed.
How long does an average punk song last? Two minutes? Three at a push. Extending such a song to nearly ten minutes in a way that wins over the whole of Bramham Park is something that only Green Day could do. As they build suspense in the audience, it almost seems that they’re ready to burst – something that the band control thoroughly for the whole of their set.
It continues like that with every song until they pull their trademarked trick out of their hats. Green Day has three band members – but every once in a while they decide to change them around and pick three members of the crowd that Green Day get up on stage to play the last half of one of their songs. The way it's pulled off and the way the fans look by itself justifies this set being crowned the best set of Leeds 2004.
You can’t help but love Green Day. Whether they’re playing a cover of The Clash or if it’s the hugely popular ‘Minority’ that causes the whole crowd to sing along – they’re performance is consistently nothing short of perfect.
Any band whose drummer’s name means “very cool” in Franglish (Tre Cool) is going to be good – but Green Day surpass any other band when it comes to performance. Would calling this the best I’ve ever seen be an exaggeration? Not at all.