Unfortunately my 14-year-old daughter and I did not get to Coors Field, where we’ve seen perhaps 100 Rockies game together in Denver over the years, in time to catch The Linda Lindas’ 5:30 p.m. set on Saturday, but after parking in our usual spot for baseball games we did rush into the stadium to catch one of my dearest heroes at her age, Rancid.
Other than thrift-store classic-rock finds, Rancid’s 1994 sophomore album Let’s Go! was my first vinyl purchase, at Eide’s Entertainment in downtown Pittsburgh. I’d begun playing drums in punk bands and was thrilled by singer-guitarist Tim Armstrong’s post-Operation Ivy foray into songs that leaned heavier on swaggering New York Dolls-style rock ‘n’ roll and straight-ahead punk than ska, but retained the streetwise poetry that earned Armstrong the “Bob Dylan of punk” moniker from Epitaph Records visionary Brett Gurewitz.
Rancid took the stage at 6:00 p.m., just as my kid and I walked to our seats at Coors Field, past the roped-off Rockies infield and—not lost on this baseball fan—nestled right on top of what’s usually the outfield. Armstrong and fellow singer-guitarist Lars Frederiksen, known for their sizeable mohawks in the ‘90s, bounced around the big stage, flanked by giant video screens, with their mohawks long gone but Armstrong sporting a shaved head covered in tattoos and Frederiksen displaying several tattoos on his face and a black bat just beneath his chin.
I told my daughter to pay attention to acclaimed Rancid bassist Matt Freeman’s signature bass solo in “Maxwell Murder”, even though she’d heard it dozens of times in the car on school commutes, and when a lot of tattooed men and women my age burst out of their seats to sing along with “Roots Radical”—a single I bought on seven-inch vinyl at Eide’s when it was released just before my 14th birthday in August 1994—my kid looked around at the black t-shirts and tank-tops, looked at me in glasses and a dorky button-down popsicle shirt, and said, “You dressed wrong.”
At least I had the tattoos.
It was not lost on me that Rancid—the pride of Oakland, California along with Saturday’s headliners Green Day—shouted out its hometown several times during an energetic 30-minute set, played at a baseball stadium with the Oakland Athletics’ ongoing game score posted on the right-field wall, and the A’s carpetbagging owner set to move the team to Sacramento and then Las Vegas. Rancid and Green Day have both been outspoken about their love of the A’s over the years, and it was strange knowing the Saviors Tour is the last time these Bay Area bands will play together—mostly in baseball stadiums, no less—while Oakland still has a major-league team.
Armstrong dedicated “Old Friend” to Dead Kennedys legend Jello Biafra, another Bay Area punk icon (and Boulder native) who was standing side-stage in sunglasses by the monitor board. After such an inspired half-hour, ending with the growing crowd singing along to “Ruby Soho”, it was admittedly strange to imagine The Smashing Pumpkins’ indulgent alternative guitar-rock sandwiched between Rancid and Green Day. And it was definitely strange.
Singer-guitarist and infamous ego-maniac Billy Corgan looked like a Magisterium priest from His Dark Materials, with a shaved head and what looked like an ankle-length black liturgical coat with red buttons, and big black boots. With all-world drummer Jimmy Chamberlain essentially manning centerfield for the Pumpkins and powerful guitarist James Iha playing space-age Adrian Belew-esque guitar, at times with a toy space-gun as a slide, the music for the ’90s mainstay’s hour-long set was alternately ferocious, heavy, and sweet.
“It would be better if there was just no singing,” my daughter said to me at one point, but whether you like Corgan or not, it’s impossible to claim that the 30-year-old Siamese Dream classics the Pumpkins peppered in (“Today”, “Tonight, Tonight”, “Disarm”, “Cherub Rock”) aren’t loud-quiet-loud masterpieces, and downright stunning in live performance with Iha and Chamberlain both back in the band.
Iha’s hilarious banter was a highlight of the evening for me, too. Dressed in a western shirt and oversized elf ears poking out of his long black hair, he humbly and quietly mumbled between songs in a way that suggested he’s either the nicest, sweetest rockstar of all time or was enjoying some great weed he’d found on East Colfax before the show.
It’s true, however, that the dichotomy was strange—putting The Smashing Pumpkins in between two East Bay punk bands—especially considering Corgan’s choice to add a third guitarist to play rhythm and headbang in an outfit more apt for a WWE match, and a fourth guitarist who sometimes played acoustic but mostly stalked around in what looked like a witch costume and sang inaudible backup vocals.
Green Day stole the show immediately, however, even if singing along to Rancid favorites was perhaps the most fun I’ve had at a concert since seeing the Pogues in Dublin before Shane McGowan stopped performing. Billy Joe Armstrong and Co. leapt on stage after an intro worthy of Ozzy Osbourne or AC/DC, accompanied by fireworks, a giant pink bunny mascot in a Rockies jersey, and a big stage set celebrating first the 30th anniversary of Dookie and then the 20th anniversary of American Idiot.
Green Day did not keep its love of The Clash a secret, from the outfits and haircuts to aesthetics of Armstrong’s very much Joe Strummer guitar. As the group ran through the beloved pop-punk of Dookie—off of which my eighth-grade band, called Mind Riot, played three songs at our middle school’s talent show a few months after its release—I heard the eponymous first Clash album, and the Descendents’ Milo Goes to College, arise in my head. Green Day wore its influences loudly on Dookie and the underground releases that preceded it, but as the trio (with two additional rhythm guitarists and a keyboardist, all of whom may or may not have been necessary) finished absolutely delighting the Coors Field crowd—which eventually looked like over 40,000 jubilant people—with “Welcome to Paradise”, “Basket Case”, and other unforgettable Dookie singalongs and made its way to exhilarating American Idiot favorites, I had to wonder, Is Green Day the United States’ edition of The Who?
Not only does Green Day rock, it has a whole catalog of rock, and a knack for getting the audience moving by keeping itself moving. And as Green Day got deeper into American Idiot, an album that never landed with me because it came out ten years after my middle-school band discovered pop-punk and covered brand-new tunes from Dookie at talent shows, I was surprised to see my daughter singing along with many of the songs, from “Holiday” to the title track.
Green Day’s own Armstrong changed, “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda,” to, “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda,” at Coors, turning heads and getting some whoops of approval. A month ago, I took my kid to see Foo Fighters just down the road at Mile High Stadium, and while Armstrong’s pleas for the crowd to “fucking shake this stadium” reminded me of Dave Grohl’s repeated exclamations at his own Denver show, Armstrong—who at 52 could pass for 42—was a little more endearing.
When he said, “Let’s put the cellphones away and experience this together,” I thought of the couple next to me that skipped all three of the opening bands and started recording Green Day on their phones the moment they arrived for the headliner’s set.
While Dookie was pop-punk in all its glory, which unfortunately led a lot of bands that followed in Green Day’s footsteps to make some of the worst music I can think of, the second half of Green Day’s set showed that, no, it’s not an exaggeration to call Green Day the United States’ version of The Who. The band raged through American Idiot at Coors like a punk-rock opera of George W. Bush’s America, now hopefully moving on from the illiterate, criminal, and insurrectionist rock-bottom of Donald Trump’s America.
Like Armstrong said, put down your cellphones and experience this together, but also, vote.
Green Day – Coors Field – Denver, CO – 9/7/24
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The Smashing Pumpkins – Coors Field – Denver, CO – 9/7/24
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Rancid – Coors Field – Denver, CO – 9/7/24
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The Linda Lindas – “Growing Up” – 9/7/24
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The Linda Lindas – “Oh!” – 9/7/24
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