21/1/2017 | Green Date | Review and Photo by Barry Martin |
'Bouncing off the wall' is track 6 on the new, number one smash-hit G.D. album and that is exactly what the 'Pot punters were doing as they celebrated 30 years of classic,definitive power punk-rock.
The Midlands-based ( mainly magnificent Mansfield ) four-piece were in fab form and had the packed audience in the palms of their hands from note one of 'American Idiot ' -funnily enough just a day after Trumpy was sworn in as leader of the free world- just a coincidence? .. or was it ?!? Having experienced this kick-aas gig though, I would vote for Billie Joe Armstrong, as performed by Joe Sunday, as my preferred president any day.
Joe was a performing phenomenon. More swag than a burglars' convention,more balls than FIFA,more front than Blackpool pleasure beach, J.S. owned it - the stage,the room,the entire venue.
Young Joe was B.J., the Crown President of Punk,ringmaster, Flowerpot faithful choirmaster, conductor and m. c. for the evening. A meta-masterclass in stage-presence and projection. It was by no means a one (super)-man show though with Miles Davis on bass as Mike Dirnt, dirnting ,posing n gurning gloriously for England,the US of A and the entire universe all night long.
Jason White,the oft- forgotten fourth member of the Day team, the mortar in the Green wall of sound, was rightly up front in the Green Date version and was splendidly portrayed by Jacob Brewin who whiddled and twiddled to great effect with some spot-on solos too.
Backing up and sometimes gloriously upstageing the trio of guitar guy front men was biirthday boy(24?) Not So Cool( in fact Lava Hot) who battered and caressed the skins off his drumkit in a 24 carat+ performance as Tre Cool (original name Frank Edwin Wright- I kid you not ! ).I-cone-ic, gravity-defying hairdo lasting unbelievably for all 125 minutes of the gig too. Power to the product !
Girl trouble, teen trouble,troubled times, finger on the pulse, Green party political broadcasts on the state of the States and the world in general from BJA's quirky viewpoint -all the G Day classics were covered crescendonically.
'Basket Case', 'Holiday' and all the stand-out tracks off their twelfth, GD back to their best , studio album, Revolution Radio were the highlights for me in a blast from the past trip to punk paradise.
Encoring out with an ace, acoustified, bouncealong,shout/singalong of Green Day's punchy political manifesto 'Minority', the fab foursome took their bows as a sweating,sated ,afterglowing audience drifted off into the night.
Eleven and a half out of ten.
Cyaz next year,boys.
It's a Date.