Green Day brought their Saviors Tour to Petco Park on September 28th, 2024. The show is a celebration of two milestones for the band: the thirtieth anniversary of their album Dookie and the twentieth anniversary of American Idiot. The show had opening support from The Linda Lindas, Rancid, and The Smashing Pumpkins.
Throughout this tour, The Linda Lindas have been engaged in a prank war with Green Day, which is why it was confusing to everyone, including the Linda Lindas, that their walkout song was the 877-Kars4Kids jingle. Their six-song, twenty-minute set was pretty evenly split between songs from Growing Up, their first album, and their new album, No Obligation, consisting of “Too Many Things,” “Growing Up,” “Yo Me Estreso,” “No Obligation,” and “Oh!” As per usual, the band closed their set with “Racist Sexist Boy,” which they seem to have tweaked a bit, making the verses a little slower and heavier.
It’s a shame they only gave Rancid thirty minutes to play. They probably had the most energetic set of the night with an …And Out Come the Wolves heavy set. Right out the gate, they played “Maxwell Murder,” “Roots Radical,” and “Journey to the End of the East Bay.” Partway through, Lars reminded the crowd the album celebrates its thirtieth anniversary next year. The band hit songs from most of their albums, including “Tomorrow Never Comes,” the title track off their latest release, and “Something in the World Today” from 1998’s Life Won’t Wait. Rancid mostly played punk songs, with “Time Bomb” being the only ska song they played, which I think was a great call. It was a gauntlet of a set that a band with this much tenure was able to pull off despite deserving more time. Rancid has only gotten better with age, and this set shows they have no intention of slowing down.
One of these things is not like the others, and it’s the Smashing Pumpkins. When this tour was announced, I thought it was strange. That being said, it’s hard to gauge their set fairly because I have not really followed them too closely. I’d like to say the set sounded good to me, but it didn’t. While I recognized a few songs, mostly the hits off of “Siamese Dream” and “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” their seventy-five minutes did nothing for me. More power to you if it evoked something in you, but this was always a weird and confusing addition to this tour.
When the lights went out for Green Day’s set, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” played over the loudspeaker, prompting all in attendance to sing along. At the end, we got sort of a live commercial for Green Day’s new coffee company, Punk Bunny. A disheveled-looking pink bunny came out and jumped around to the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop,” with the crowd again singing along. Green Day comes on after a short video intro and plays “The American Dream Is Killing Me.” Without missing a beat, they jump into “Burnout” and continue to play the rest of Dookie. Dookie was one of the first albums that I clung to as a kid. This tour marked the first time I got to see Green Day play live. They did a hell of a job playing. Before the band played “F.O.D.,” Billie Joe sang a few lines from John Mellencamp’s “Life Goes On.” A full play-through of this album is not complete without “All By Myself.” Tre Cool came out and sang the song with an orchestra backtrack wearing a leopard-skin robe and flashing the crowd at the end. The next part of the show was mostly songs from “Saviors” and other random songs from the past. Touching on songs like “Know Your Enemy,” “Minority,” and “Brain Stew” was a nice touch, but there are so many better songs from those albums that could have been swapped out. Green Day played for a total of about two and a half hours. With a little over an hour left, they started on American Idiot, but what was amazing was how much energy they still had this far into the set. I run hot and cold on most of the songs off that album, but they killed it.
If you’ve been on the fence about seeing Green Day, it makes complete sense. Stadium shows suck. Between the cost of parking, food, and merch. Also, that you are so far away from the stage you’re mostly watching the big screens anyway, it’s not always worth it. I can count on one hand how many stadium shows I’ve been to, and this was one of the better ones. It was cool to see Green Day play both of these albums in full, but I think I would only see them again if the set had more variety from all of the other albums. Overall, this was a good time.
