They were THE band of my youth. Green Day. And they were in Dublin.
Billie Joe Armstrong was an early idol of mine.
I wasn't a punk rocker by any means but I was fascinated by the way he played the guitar, it was unique; fast strumming followed by quick chord changes and I was enthralled.
He and Noel Gallagher were the two main reasons why I decided to pick up a guitar.
I taught myself to play nearly every tune from American Idiot. If you asked me now, I'd probably only remember one or two but back then I had them all off by heart, riffs and all.
Copies of Green Day's older albums were being passed around in school. I was lucky enough to get my hands on them and had one night to burn them all onto a blank CD meaning my knowledge of Green Day grew and grew to the point where I knew songs they had released before I was even born.
Their return to the music scene came at a perfect time when the radio was filled with Westlife, Girls Aloud and all that other makeshift shite, built with the sole purpose of a Christmas No.1 and a panto appearance.
When Billie Joe and his band arrived in Dublin at the end of June 2017 to play a concert in Kilmainham, the front man was devastated to find that the pub they had played their first Irish gig in back in 1991 had now turned into a coffee shop.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVzNl6pDJYq/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BV2VntSjRqs/
When I heard they were playing in Dublin, I knew I had to jump at the chance to go see them. I recently became an adult, finishing college and moving up to Dublin away from my family and friends to start my first proper job.
If I ever needed to be reminded of when I was younger and had no responsibilities, it was now.
When I think of Green Day performing live, I think of them throwing mud on stage at Woodstock, getting into fights with rowdy audience members or the extremely loud Bullet in a Bible, a live album of their concert at Milton Keynes in 2005 where they played to over 130,000 people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw50Ki6slN4
Clip via Green Day
This gig was different, it was quieter.
There were a lot of acoustic versions of songs that ten years ago would have been played with the speaker turned all the way up to 11 (at the start of 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams', someone near me started singing 'Wonderwall').
The sound may have been turned down a bit but the energy of the band remains the same, they spent half the show running around like lunatics demented.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWATk_4j66h/
They may not be setting the music world alight like they were in mid-nineties and mid-noughties but they can still put on one hell of a show when they need to.
Their latest album, Revolution Radio, isn't far off American Idiot. It just seems to be a case of wrong timing for the band. They live in a world now where pop rock bands are no longer welcome in the Top 40.
Green Day pretended to finish up after a three-song encore and as they walked off the stage, the crowd was baying for 'Time Of Your Life'.
They arrived back minutes later and played a song from the new album called 'Ordinary World', the kind of song that would have been No.1 across the globe had it been released 15 or 20 years ago.
It wasn't the last song, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QBQAlHjTyw
Clip via Kevinho0681
