Last night...

...while walking from the Roxy's Tracy Chapman show to Metal Skool at the Key Club, I walked by the Rainbow Room. It smelled like marijuana. I looked over and saw B-Real from Cypress Hill entertaining a table with the biggest joint ever.

Aah, Sunset Strip.

Tonight, I was an American Idiot

Whoa.

I mean, whoa.

Who thought Green Day would ever be the biggest band in the world, let alone the best? Yet tonight at Home Depot center, there was no doubt that they were both. Ask the 8-year-olds waiting in line to buy their ties. Or the fifty-something couple digging the cover of "Stand By Me" (yes, the punk rockers sang along.) Ask the workers who texed the big-screen before the show. Ask Jimmy Eat World, destined for at least arena-stardom after proving their ground here. Or, well, ask us: me, Jenn, and Samantha, all three of us competely struck for their entire two-hour sweaty marathon of singalongs and clap alongs and songs our children (and their children) will, and should know.

Spectacle? Yes. But not in a gaudy, KISS way, though there was plenty of fire, or an ironic Weezer stadium tour, though there was a drum riser. Billy Joe just has this way of running all over the stage and leading huge crowd cheers of "oi. Oi. oi. Oi!" with genuine enthusiasm, reminding the audience that, yes, he loves his job; he's no rock-star wannabe or pretentious indie asshole. He loves playing to 40,000 people, and they all adore him, they are hitting the balconys to prove it and screaming through the 9-10-11 minute songs, they are onstage with squirt guns and playing in Billy's band and learning Op Iv songs and being called out for being a 19-year old virgin (hey! I was once a 19-year old virgin!). And he's the best Feet First employee rock star Feet First never had; I could learn some tricks from this guy, running across the football-field-sized stage but still seeming, somehow, like the guy playing the toilet bar at Molly Malones on a tuesday.

Did this make sense? No. The setlist is inconsequential: a bunch of songs from 'American Idiot,' surely our generation's 'Who's Next' if not it's 'Revolver,' and it could be that; the Op Iv cover, 'Shout' and 'Stand By Me,' Longview, Basketcase, She, Minority, Time Of Your Life, Maria, JAR, whoa.
Whoa.

You know what? Read Ben's review. It's really good. http://blogs.ocregister.com/poplife/archives/2005/10/punk_of_epic_pr.html#more

All I have to add is that I leaned over to Jenn and whispered: "I know we've got Wilco and Pearl Jam. But, objectively, I have to ask -- Is Green Day the best band in the world?"

That was two songs in. Now, I don't even need to ask.

I know.