I saw Green Day in East Rutherford, NJ last night and it was fucking amazing. Easily the best concert I've seen in years. Now, I'm not a big Green Day fan at all...I liked their hits in the early 90's, such as "Longview" and "Basket Case," but I found them to be a bit too derivative of 70's punk to be very interesting. They didn't seem all that innovative or original. Now, one of their more recent songs, "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" seemed a bit more introspective, and touched me, but I still felt no need to buy any of their albums. My cousin had an extra ticket and invited me to go to the concert with her last night, and because I needed to get my ass out of the house, and had no real distaste for Green Day, I agreed. Holy shit, was I not prepared for what happened. Their new material is truly, truly brilliant. The band is electrifying live. I never got the sex appeal of the lead singer, Billy Joe, but now I do...he simulated masturbation on stage (actually unbuckling his belt, slipping his hand down his pants, while moaning and gasping aloud), wiggled those teeny hips, charmed the crowd until we worshipped him as our king, and was sexy as all get-out. He was hilarious, sweet, charismatic, bitchy, rowdy, vulnerable, and openly political (about needing to get Bush the fuck out of the White House). The band was obviously having a blast, and so were we. I didn't even mind that my cousin, her friends, and I were much older than the teenage kids clad in pseudo-punk gear surrounding us, who pumped their little fists to each song. I felt my heart swell when they began to play the song "Wake Me Up When September Ends" off of their new album, and fell in love with it (I bought American Idiot and have listened to this song at least ten times today, without tiring). I danced like a maniac to "Longview" and shouted at the top of my lungs, "when masturbation's lost its fun you're fucking moving!" For one of their songs, they asked for a drummer, a bass player, and a lead guitarist from the crowd to take their places on stage...and it was so fucking incredible. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for those kids to get on stage and see an enormous crowd of people cheering for them. They looked scared shitless and orgasmically euphoric at the same time...and they actually did a pretty good job! Particularly the bass player. I had never seen a band do something like that before for their fans...it was very, very special. And when they ended with "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)"...yeah, I admit it. Tears pricked my eyes. I'm still pretty emotional over what happened last week, so of course those words would have an effect on me.

Some things which happened before the concert:

1) My cousin asked a gentleman (obviously a parent of one of the teenage kids) to take our picture with her camera. He reminded me a bit of Peter Falk with his slightly overgrown gray hair, easy going smile, and seen-it-all expression. Between sets, there was 80's music blasting from the speakers (perhaps to make things a little easier on us old folks), and when Devo's "Whip It" started to play, this gentlemen wiggled his hips suggestively to the opening chords. I was vaguely horrified.

2) We laughed until we cried at the TV ads for "Disney on Ice--Finding Nemo!" Who the hell designed those costumes so that the enormous white eye globes are placed in front of the skaters' breasts? They looked obscene.

3) There were a couple of young boys (dressed in all black, with their hair dyed black) to my right who acted like they were in a mosh pit, bouncing around and crashing into my side multiple times during the course of the evening. I had gotten some glow sticks from the guy at the Mobil gas station (for the kids to see in the dark on Halloween, he explained), and gave a stick to one of the boys. He looked pretty grateful, maybe because earlier when he tried to slap me five, I stared at him stonily and didn't lift my arm. My cousin whispered to me, "He's only fourteen at the most...You probably gave that boy his first glowstick." Which sounded a little dirty in a Mary Kay LeTourneau sort of way, but of course I was just trying to get rid of an extra stick...nothing more, nothing less.