The Great American Ball Park was filled to capacity on Thursday as Green Day brought their Saviors Tour to downtown Cincinnati. With a stacked bill that included The Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and The Linda Lindas, the show at times felt like a mini festival harkening back to the decade when alternative music broke through to the mainstream.
Teenage phenoms The Linda Lindas started the show early with a high energy set that was far too brief for their talent. Ranging in age from 14-19 years old, the all-female four-piece showed no lack of confidence and no shortage of joy when performing for a stadium-sized crowd. Although the rest of the lineup could be considered a throwback, The Linda Lindas provided a necessary reminder that the kids are alright and the future is in good hands.
Rancid came next, blasting through a 30-minute set of songs mostly from their seminal album ...And Out Come the Wolves which happened to be celebrating its 29th anniversary that day. The blood between Rancid and Green Day runs thick, with both bands starting from the same scene and sharing credit for popularizing punk rock in the early '90s. Billie Joe Armstrong credits Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong (no relation) as being a major influence on his decision to form a band, and even once considered ending his band to join Rancid instead. The opportunity to see both groups on the same bill provided an irresistible opportunity for many punks of the '90s, and despite having only a fraction of the stage time as Green Day, Rancid was heavily represented by t-shirts in the crowd.
The Smashing Pumpkins provided a brief detour from the punk leanings of the lineup, performing an hour of their signature guitar-heavy rock. The band wore all black, with frontman Billy Corgan dressed in what appeared to be priest robes. Despite their storied history of breakups and reunions, original members James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin seemed to be all smiles while performing their hits. Newcomer Kiki Wong, who just a few months ago beat out over 10,000 applicants in a public search for a new guitarist, brought an added dimension of enthusiasm to the stage. The setlist leaned heavily on their '90s albums and included only one song from their new album Aghori Mhori Mei, released just a few weeks ago. A baseball field in broad daylight may seem like a strange environment to experience these songs, but the band clearly enjoyed themselves and the bustling crowd seemed to freeze in place every time they heard the opening to one of the band's many iconic hits.
Though each of the three supporting acts could have drawn a sizable crowd themselves, only a band as hugely successful as Green Day commands the power to bring them all together and sell out a stadium the size of Great American Ball Park. Instead of leaving any slack for the openers to pick up, Green Day opted to overdeliver with an extremely generous 2.5 hour set of non-stop punk rock adrenaline. The band performed not just one, but two of their biggest albums in full, plus five more songs from their latest album Saviors and a sampler platter of singles from other albums. The band also went above and beyond with their stage production, bringing plenty of pyro, cannon blasts, confetti and screens to make sure every seat in the stadium had a close-up view of the band. Both album sets featured stage design reflective of their respective art, with Dookie being performed in front of a giant mushroom cloud and American Idiot in front of an inflatable hand gripping a bloody heart grenade. At one point an inflatable plane from the cover of Dookie flew out over the crowd and dropped balloon bombs over the audience. Another unique standout from the evening was when Tré Cool stepped out from behind the drum kit and donned a leopard-print bathrobe to sing a solo rendition of the cheeky hidden track “All by Myself.”
It’s clear that decades of headlining major festivals and large venues has honed the band's ability to entertain audiences of any size. The show was punctuated with plenty of crowd-pleasing call-and-responses and familiar rock antics, including bringing a fan onstage to experience what it’s like to sing “Know Your Enemy” in front of a crowd of over 40,000 screaming fans. One might think now that all three members of Green Day have entered their 50s that the band would start to slow down or pull back on their live energy. On the contrary, the band sounds and plays exactly as they did when their anniversary albums were first released, only now somehow playing longer sets than they ever have before. Green Day has proven their cultural longevity time and time again, but this particular tour suggests there may never have been a better time to see them live. If you grew up loving 90s alternative music, or if you’re still growing up with the influence of these alt-rock giants, then this is surely the must-see tour of 2024.
