I scoff at my former ambitions. I laugh in their meager faces. Cause...
GUESS WHO GOT INTO THE SOUNDCHECK AND GOT FRONT BARRIER SPOTS?!?!?!?!? WHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OH HELL YES, PEOPLE. We were so close we got Billie Joe Armstrong SWEAT on us.
We even got pelvic thrusts right over our heads! I can not begin to put into words the awesomeness that was yesterday. Kidlet and I are on the official gdconcerts.com website under the "get pix" tab. First show up is the Seattle on. Click on the down arrow and you will see Sacramento all the way at the bottom. The first shots are the arena and then us lucky soundcheck people at the dinner we got after the sound check up to Picture number 35ish. Right above is Kidlet's graffiti she made on the graffiti wall.
Ok I am going to put down my laminated Soundcheck pass and try to coherently tell the story. Keep in mind I have not slept for more than 2 hours or so since Sunday.
We got to Arco around 11 to get our tickets then head out to park the rental at a nearby mall and cab it back. Arco is freakin weird. You can NOT queue up at the entrance with GA tickets. They were making everyone line their cars up at the parking gate. And those didn't open till 5:30! The doors open at 6:30...not too hard to figure out that driving is NOT the plan. So we cabbed it back to the arena and found the Verizon bus. As you know we had inside info on that and were hoping for soundcheck passes. Now keep in mind their are radio contest winners for those and total number of people at soundchecks is max 30ish. So we knew it was a long shot.
Then a Verizon dude came out and started talking to us. He hung with us for a while waiting for a taxi. He gave us more inside info on the passes and told us to hang out by the bus and he'd fascilitate them. Then his taxi came and we continued chillin with our Cheetos.
Que villain music...Enter stage right, officious khaki clad security guard with a massive chip on his shoulder and a small dick in his pants. He literally stood over us and told us it was not the Verizon peoples arena it was "his building" and we had to get out. Seriously shook his finger and loomed over us. TOTAL FUCKING TOOL.
So we had to go down by the car gate entrance. Pretty harsh bumming of our trip. I mean we pretty much had those passes and this dickhead comes along and pissed in our cheerios.
LUCKILY....we knew the man with the golden passes and when he came down to help out some folks already on his list (assholes kicked them out too) Kidlet ran up and asked him if we could get tickets and told him our sad story of Guards Of Doom. Chris...and that's as much info I am giving out on him ;)...deemed us worthy and told us to get 6 more worthy fans and report to the bus at 4. Wanna know why?
Cause CHRIS IS THE MAN!
There were two girls near us who had an idea of what was going down and we deemed them worthy and brought them into the fold.
We Chosen Ones hung out for an hour and a half in a group. Chris's peeps on the list were being picked up by the original a-hole (who was now patrolling the parking lot) because they were afraid other people would follow them up. Like duh, that was our plan. These guards were tag teaming people walking in the parking lot! Calling each other with coordinates and chasing folks off.
Kidlet and I got a text from our insider (who rocks and has our number to hang out with us should they ever make Portland and whose daughter got to get up on stage and sing Longview) and the two of us took off. Mind you this is like a half mile trek up to the gates and the Verizon bus, right?
Que Jaws Music. I see the white security van several rows over. We start walking faster. As he turns down our aisle I tell Kidlet to book it like a mother to Chris and the Bus and I took off the other direction as a diversion. I zigzaged at the van and then over two dividers and then back over them when I lured him off. Which worked cause the asshole was STUPID.
HA. HA.
Long story short, after running our asses off like psycho ninja's, we made it to the Circle of Chris, filled out our paperwork and became official with our laminated soundcheck passes. Here's Kidlet modeling hers.
Now we get to the golden part. We had to swear up and own our phones would stay in our pockets the whole time and we went into the arena and down to the front row seats off to the side of the stage. And there they were. Billie, Mike, Tre, Jason White, Jason Freese, and Jeff Matika were on stage. Billie is, 1. Skinny 2. Hyper as fuck and 3. Sounds exactly the same live as he does on albums. The band played about 7 songs total and chatted up the soundchecks peeps. They actually played Maria which was fucking awesome as I love that song and they ended up NOT playing it at the actual concert so it was special for us! Tre tossed out sticks to two lucky peeps before that took off.
Then Chris led us all up to the Skybar hospitality suite where they had a buffet and Rock Band out for us. The verizon dude we met early turned out to be Simon the tour photographer who took all the pics on the GDconcert.com site. He was happy to see we made it in. Here's Kidlet grubbin down and our pics from the official website
Here's our two worthy friends we found to bring with us
While we ate we could hear Franz Ferdinand doing their sound check. They rocked pretty damn hard I gotta say. The lead singer Alex sounds eerily like Jim Morrison live.
Around 6:20 or so Chris led us downstairs to the steps to the floor. We had to wait while security pulled the stick out of their asses and made SURE we were not some terrorist cell sneaking in to hurt their lovely building and then we were sprung to run up to the stage barriers. The stage had a runway out into the middle of the floor. If you faced the stage, Kidlet and I were on the left of the runway right up at the barriers. Here's a lovely picture of us taken by our most excellent bouncer. Look at all those people behind us!
Franz came out and played about 30 mins or so. Kidlet and I were so freakin excited. The stage was like 4 feet in front of us! Once the overhead music started playing The Ramones Rock and Roll Radio we knew the time was close and sure enough Song of the Century came blaring out of the speakers and the lights went out and then with bang the lights came on and Green Day kicked off the show with 21st Century Breakdown. Let me just say, hands down this band puts on the best show I have ever seen. Love you Bono but this is a totally different vibe.
Oh. My. Fucking. Lord. They played for ever! Highlight of the show had to be Billie breaking up a fight. Watch the video, it's freakin hysterical. You can see our hands too! We were right where Billie was when he calls the guy a POS. Best line of the night, "No no no no no, Fuck YOU, Motherfucker." You gotta watch.
Billie Joe Armstrong is made of more fucking win than anyone has to right to be. Plus he's an Aquarian. Nah nah :P
Billie said we were the craziest crowd of the tour. I believe it. We were smashed at the barrier and some fuckhead kept trying to muscle in between Kidlet and I. I told him it wasn't gonna happen and he just kept diggin elbows in my ribs. So I made a nice little fist and punched the fuck out of his 'nads. Not surprisingly, he left the floor all together. Kidlet and I are covered in bruises and it was SO FUCKING WORTH IT!
During Longview he called up three peeps to sing. The second girl up was the daughter of the wonderful woman who helped us get in. Last guy up was hysterical. He told Billie he would totally go gay for him and kissed him full on the mouth. Billie informed us that the kid kicked all of our asses. He was awesome too.
Some douche over in the seats we had been in for soundcheck wouldn't stand up so Billie gave her shit and asked if she needed a foot rub.
For Jesus of Suburbia he saw a kid with a sign that said "I came all the way from Israel to play guitar with Green Day" and after giving him some shit and making him swear to God he could play, Billie pulled the guy up on stage. The kid fuckin shredded it!
Here's a clip of Holiday with the Pyro show in full effect. Have I mentioned we had a better view than any of these? Hee!!
A bit of Are We The Waiting where you can hear how loud the crowd was singing:
This is an overall great clip of highlights.
HUGE Set List. Billie called us the most awesome crowd of the tour so far and that setlist is WAY longer than anyone else has gotten. They played for nearly 3 hours! Here's our setlist :
1. Song of the Century
2. 21st Century Breakdown
3. Know Your Enemy
4. East Jesus Nowhere
5. Holiday
6. Are We The Waiting
7. St. Jimmy (Pelvic Thrust and Billie Sweat, oh my!)
8. The Static Age
9. Murder City
10. Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
11. 2000 Light Years Away
12. Only Of You
13. Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?
14. J.A.R. (Fan Request)
15. Brain Stew
16. Jaded
17. Longview
18. Misery -tease
19. Hitchin' A Ride
20. Welcome To Paradise
21. Basket Case
22. She
23. Iron Man / Rock You Like A Hurricane/You Really Got Me/Eruption/
I Can't Get No)Satisfaction/Hot Blooded/Earth Angel- Tease/cover
24. No Pride-tease
25. When I Come Around
26. The Ballad Of Wilhelm Fink- Performed half of the song here,
then finished during Shout
27. King For A Day
28. Shout (The Isley Brothers cover)
29. 21 Guns
30. American Eulogy
31. Encore:
31. American Idiot
32. Jesus Of Suburbiaw/ guest guitarist from the crowd
33. Minority
34. Encore 2:
34. Tell Me When It's Time To Say I Love You
35. Last Night -Acoustic
36. Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)
37. Encore 3:
37. Going To Pasalacqua
The bouncers were awesome about pouring water in our mouths which saved us cause I have never ever been so hot and sweaty in my life. We were so close that every time the flame throwers went off it cooked the sweat dry on our faces. As you can see Billie just didn't want to leave the stage.
Post show we hit the 24 hour truck stop diner The Silver Skillet - totally awesome vibe I might add, and then slept in the rental for two hours. Dropped the car off back at the rental place at 5am and then headed to the Sacramento airport where we hung out until 7 last night when we flew home. I am know having coffee and moving like a very very VERY old woman :P With that I leave you to go look at more YouTube clips. Still wearing our wristbands by the way!
Oh and GOOD NEWS! The band is coming back to the states for a second N American tour in early 2010. Since they skipped Portland on the first leg, I am crossing my fingers they hit here in Jan or Feb. Whoo hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I leave you with vid of Billie singing Good Riddance.
