greendayvideos.com -- Milton Keynes concert review

What a beautiful day. Really red hot in fact for a place with no shade. It is hard to imagine where Green Day are going to go from here: - their largest UK shows times two, a DVD being filmed of the event and even selling the foam hands associated with Gladiators and Rolling Stones gigs. The venue is great - a huge bowl where everyone - no matter what your height - can see the stage (well with the aid of binoculars or the huge screens). The only problem was to keep the place looking nice the toilets are hidden halfway around the back of the bowl. Imagine 30,000 folk from either side using them!

To tell you the truth I didn't pay much attention to Hard-Fi, and concentrated more on dehydrating myself using all the beer tokens I had hastily bought outside the venue to avoid the queues inside, which didn't exist. After obtaining my photo pass (cheers to Emma at Warner UK for that) I was allowed in the pit for Taking Back Sunday and Jimmy Eat World. Now feeling a little wasted by this point and spending most of the time traipsing back and forth to the loo queues I didn't really watch the latter bands (also I am writing this after returning from Glastonbury straight after going to the MK bowl, so I can't really remember a lot of it!). Waiting in the pit wings for them to start and chatting to the fans down the front, who had queued up since 9am to be the first in to get one of the 3,000 wristbands to allow you to go to the front pit. A good idea to avoid crushing but crap for those of us on National Express coaches and from further afield who arrived after 2pm. The bands didn't start 'til 5.30pm, that makes it a long day.

And here they are. The pink rabbit follows the 'YMCA' and 'Blitzing Bop' tunes and downs plenty of beer. Then first up Mike, followed by Jason, Tré and Billie storm the stage, holding up guitars and sticks and pound into 'American Idiot', followed by pyrotechnics at the end, and raising 'Strawberry' grenade flags to the stage ceiling. This is followed by 'Jesus of Suburbia', my favourite off the new album apart from 'Letterbomb'. My camera ran out of film two minutes in but I pretended to take more photos to stay in the pit closer to my heroes and watched them through my lens. Halfway through the song we were ushered out and it was back to being a normal punter, behind 3,000 lucky front of house fans and time for another beer. Another 'Fuck you' to George W. Bush and 'Holiday' followed, continuing the sing-a-long. Next up some old classics like 'Longview' and 'She' were played for the old school fans like myself, along with 'Brain Stew' and 'Jaded'. After this Billie collected the cutest foot-high kid from the crowd and passed him a supersoaker, which drenched the lucky buggers down front. He then picked the kid up and placed him at the end of the long platform down the centre of the stage and waved his arms in the air (Billie sneaked off and left him to it in front of 60,000 people I wonder if the kid was old enough to understand and remember it?).

Then Green Day Jnr were formed (all young boys for the record) to play Operation Ivy's excellent 'Knowledge'. The guitarist to be fair was shit but still got to keep the guitar, while the drummer did a running jump into the pit and the bassist got nowt. 'Basket Case' followed as if the crowd were not worked up enough. While Billie paraded about the stage singing 'King for a Day' wearing a cloak and crown I was having bother off the security for sitting on my boyfriend's shoulders dressed as a clown (three times and you're out) and couldn't get very close. When the time came at the end to slow it all down 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' carried on the massive sing-a-long followed by 'Time of your Life' and Queen's 'We are the Champions'. A fitting end to the first night of Green Day heaven!