Review: Green Day, at its best, blasts through Seattle punk-rock marathon

Concert review

The first time Green Day played Seattle — excuse me, Bremerton — was in 1990. Actually, it may not have even performed.

As eternally youthful frontman Billie Joe Armstrong told a packed T-Mobile Park on Monday, the attempted house show was ultimately broken up by the cops, who thankfully got there before the “Nazi skinheads” who had more nefarious intentions.

A lot has changed since Green Day was getting chased out of its shows by cops and skinheads. (Although Bremerton still draws some pretty solid underground punk shows, for the record.) Thirty-four years later, the Bay Area pop-punk giants returned to perform two landmark albums, which have collectively sold a bazillion copies, inside a baseball stadium that could hold the entire city of Bremerton.

Such is the power of the three-chord punk song, a little grunged up for stadium brawn and splattered with some of the smartest, not-too-sweet melodies in modern rock music.

Over the years, album anniversary tours have become fan-pleasing big business, with die-hards and casuals alike forking over their entertainment bucks to see bands perform their most seminal records in full. Even with its new “Saviors” album out this year, Green Day doubled down on the nostalgia factor with the current tour, feting the 30th and 20th anniversaries of “Dookie” and “American Idiot” — two albums that bookend Green Day’s classic period and largely define the band’s career.

The deep dive into the band’s best and most ambitious albums respectively made for a two hour and 20 minute marathon (which is practically four hours in punk time) that blew its perfectly fiery 2021 show at the stadium out of the chilled Puget Sound waters.

“Welcome to the 30-year anniversary of ‘Dookie!’” yelled Armstrong, who hasn’t aged a day since the album came out in 1994, after a quick amuse-bouche of new single “The American Dream is Killing Me” before the main courses.

There’s a decent chance folks across the water in Bremerton could feel Mike Dirnt’s unmistakably chunky bass riff, which kicked off a slightly sped-up “Longview” a few songs later, as the stuck-on-the-couch burnout banger boiled over into its hard-driving chorus.

For generations, punk rock has been the weapon of choice for picked-on misfits with guitars. But Green Day’s beefy riffs hit like a varsity linebacker’s shoulder into a high school locker — a trait that’s served the band well as it evolved from Bremerton house shows to Warped Tour festivals to stadium headliners.

With 30 commercially successful years of hindsight, songs like “When I Come Around” — which lit up the T-Mobile Park crowd like a Cal Raleigh long ball on Monday — seemed destined for stadium shout-alongs.

Monday’s locked-in performance on the back end of Green Day’s current Saviors Tour leg showed they’re one of the best in the stadium rock biz, without going overboard on pyrotechnics or parlor tricks. It was one wham-bam blitz after another, powered by the hammering of drummer Tre Cool, who took a prancing turn on the mic to perform the jokey “All By Myself,” the infamous “secret song” that closes “Dookie.” The core power trio is bolstered on this tour by two more guitarists and a keyboardist, giving their songs extra heft.

Green Day’s major-label debut and commercial breakthrough “Dookie” was released in 1994, two months before Kurt Cobain’s death. In many ways, the album that would hold space in seemingly every CD wallet in America had Green Day picking up the torch in terms of bringing punk to the mainstream. The runaway smash kicked off Green Day’s heyday five-album run, capped by 2004’s politically charged rock opera “American Idiot,” which was later adapted into a Broadway musical.

After romping through several newbies from this year’s “Saviors” LP and a couple of old favorites — including “Minority” and a face-scraping “Brain Stew,” which crunched like a cockroach under a Dr. Martens combat boot — the band lunged into the “American Idiot” portion.

“I’m not part of the MAGA agenda,” Armstrong sneered on the opening title song, updating a Bush-era lyric to fit a more contemporary political doomsday, as he’s done on tour since Donald Trump’s political ascent.

A true “no skips” album of the CD era, when skipping tracks finally got easy, “Dookie” might stand as the band’s finest work. But the sprawling “American Idiot” was easily its most ambitious, refocusing the band with a new sense of purpose.

After nine-minute epic “Jesus of Suburbia” — Green Day’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” — ended with a blustery crescendo, the band slid into walloping anti-war anthem “Holiday.” With flames and firecrackers bursting above the stage, discontent never sounded so mellifluous, the song relevant as ever as calls for a Gaza cease-fire grow louder by the day.

“Tonight, [expletive] politics,” Armstrong later decreed, hyping the crowd before the acoustic start to “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” “It’s not a political party, it’s a celebration.”

Learning to write full-blown rock ballads is one of the best (and most lucrative) tricks the NorCal punks ever learned, making for some of their biggest and most timeless songs. After completing the “American Idiot” run, a solo Armstrong capped the night of nostalgia on a tender note, with the acoustic “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” — a Y2K high school graduation staple that still fits just about any of life’s tear-jerking moments.

Maybe the punks and the country-pickers know best. Three chords and the truth is all you really need.

Green Day weren’t the only ones bringing the throwback vibes on Monday. Between young L.A. punks The Linda Lindas and Berkeley punk vets Rancid opening (not to mention the skate videos playing on the big screens between bands), the front half of the show conjured heyday Warped Tour vibes. At least until ‘90s alt-rock greats The Smashing Pumpkins — who no doubt assisted in filling the stadium — hit the stage.

Now playing with three-quarters of their original lineup (minus bassist D’arcy Wretzky, who left the band decades ago), the Pumpkins pulled little from their two most recent records — last month’s “Aghori Mhori Mei” and 2023’s mammoth triple album “ATUM” — in favor of more crowd-pleasing classics.

Not that there weren’t some latter-year cuts and left-field choices, too. After opening with metallic “The Everlasting Gaze” and “Doomsday Clock,” the Billy Corgan-led crew dove into a wigged-out cover of U2’s “Zoo Station.” The spacey, sorta all over the place rendition had its indulgent highs and lows, creating space for a Jimmy Chamberlin drum solo, which is never a bad idea.

For all the seething on boiling-point, rat-in-a-cage rager “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” and Corgan’s extra snarling on “Zero,” which closed their set, the slower songs might have packed an even bigger punch. With its twinkling lead riff cutting through the shoegazey distortion, a beautifully fuzz-bombed “Today” encapsulated the moodiness of ‘90s alt-rock as well as any song, Seattle company included.

An orchestral “Disarm” and an ever-dramatic “Tonight, Tonight” were just as majestic. “The killer in meeeee is the killer in yoouuuuu,” Corgan wailed with conviction under the night sky during the cinematic highlight off “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” — the band’s magnum opus, which turns 30 in 2025.

Something tells me none of the Gen Xers and rock radio fans on hand Monday night would mind if Corgan and crew took a similar anniversary lap next year.