Show Review: Green Day, The Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid, The Linda Lindas.
July 29th, 2024.
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“BALTIMORE! WASHINGTON D.C.! VIRGINIAAAAAAA!” -Billie Joe Armstrong
July 30th, 2024
You ever crawl around the Penn Station 34th St. platform, get lost, wind up on an Amtrak, only to realize and finally scamper off in Washington D.C.? Well, a train is a train, and that happened to us yesterday. Lucky for us we caught a whiff of Green Day, The Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid, and The Linda Lindas playing at Nationals Park. Among the throngs of crowds, rodents were undetectable. We snuck ourselves in and were lucky enough to experience the kick off of this North American tour. Here’s what we experienced.
The Linda Lindas packed sonic punch. Everybody in this band sings. Both guitarists, bass, and drums. We saw them for the first time by dumb luck last year at Boston Calling festival where they caught our ears and had us exclaiming “Who is this?”. Paramore headlined that day and they were so impressed that they took The Linda Lindas on tour with them afterwards. Anyway, they rocked. They bounced around the stage like it was a pinball machine, like they had springs in their shoes. And they were all smiles. Did we mention only one of them is old enough to vote? Their drummer is 13. They are the future of rock. Long live the Linda Lindas.
Next up was Rancid They opened with Tomorrow Never Comes from their 2023 album of the same name. The ASL interpreter was going crazy. And that was it. After one song they had to pause the show and clear out the entire stadium interior for severe weather incoming. We didn’t even have time to get a picture. Suddenly everybody was pushed into the perimeter of the ballpark. This was not a chill situation. Packed like sardines, it was one panic away from a stampede. We crawled up on someones unsuspecting shoulder and snapped this photo.
The rain eventually cleared in time for The Smashing Pumpkins. They did what they do best, scorch the Earth with their guitars. Billy Corgan strikes harmonics like a knife through the eye. James Iha can take a solo into outer space. Jimmy Chamberlin puts the team on his back behind the kit. They opened a contest recently looking for a new guitarist, and after a reported 10,000 applications they picked Kiki Wong. She spent the set earning her stripes. They covered the full Pumpkins spectrum, with the crowd responding the most to hits like Today, Cherub Rock, Zero, 1979, and Tonight, Tonight.
Stadium lights burnt out and stage lights burst to life for Green Day's headlining set. They played the entirety of Dookie, an album celebrating its 30th anniversary. A nice early surprise was a five-star rendition of Minority. At some point Billie played Sabbath’s Iron Man riff to see if the crowd would sing the words. From here they cut to Brain Stew, a half time hangbanger and break from their usual frantic punk. Then they played the entirety of American Idiot, an album celebrating its 20th anniversary. With so many people singing along we were reminded of how much this record was hit after hit after hit. After somewhere around three hours they encored with Good Riddance.
There’s been much discussion as of late about the state of live music, big ticket tours especially. Some of this discussion centers around speculation about large acts' ability to fill seats. This was not an issue last night, we saw almost no empty seats in any part of Nationals Park Stadium. The experience was a shift in scale from the usual local shows we attend and cover, though. It had us thinking a lot. There are quite a few smaller acts we’ve seen that could hold their own at a stadium show. At the same time, we’ve lost count of how many shows we’ve been to where a 200 cap room is not even quarter filled. We’re still thinking so that’s all we’ll say about that right now.
All in all, the Rock and Roll torch is in good hands. Green Day and The Smashing Pumpkins reminded us why they are modern greats and The Linda Lindas assured us that the future is hungry, bright, and loud as ever. Thanks for reading, Rrrat Pack, see you in some other sewer.
