Green Day Rock Amway!

What an amazing night!

I'm talking of course about the Orlando Green Day performance at the Amway Arena. The night was filled with explosions, lights,lasers and all around a rocking good time.

First off, let me start by saying sorry for the delay in getting this review out to you guys. As you could imagine I had a lot of notes to weed through in order to get the most information out of it. That being said, we first need to start with Kaiser Chiefs.

Although not being that well known here in the United States, they certainly blew everyone away with their energy. The band's lead singer, Ricky Wilson, ran from right to left several times attempting to induce loud cheering. Wilson also ran off the stage into the audience to get them to cheer even louder for Green Day. As he leaned to one of the audience members sitting in our section, he said "I don't think they're ready for Green Day" causing the audience to roar even louder.

The Chiefs kicked off their set with the rocking tune, "I Predict A Riot", also they sang the upbeat dance song, "Ruby". To finish off, they ended things with "Oh My God" before walking off the stage leading us to the next band. Other songs performed included "Everything is Average Nowadays" and "Everyday I Love You Less And Less".

Right before all the chaos started, the drunk pink bunny came out in a Green Day t-shirt with a bottle of beer. The puppet kept lifting up its shirt and also rolling in both sides of the arena. Along with this, he got off the stage and went into the right side of the audience and slid down some stairs backstage again.

After waiting a couple of minutes, Green Day came out to a roaring crowd and began their set with "Song Of The Century" which led into the album's title track, "21st Century Breakdown". After that, they rocked out with the first single off their eighth album, "Know Your Enemy". At one point, Billie Joe called for all the lights to be turned off and used a spotlight to shine down on his audience.

During "East Jesus Nowhere",the screen behind them had colorful religious imagery. The band's frontman called for a volunteer that was "young and not quite ripe yet" to come on stage and be what he called, "saved". After receiving instructions, 10 year old Patrick fell to the floor just as fireworks went off as to show that his sins were forgiven.

From this tune the band played straight into "Holiday", which featured an impressive screen filled with stuff about CNN and war. From there it went to "The Static Age". Before it started, Billie seemed to imply for everyone to put their technical devices away as he said, "To hell with tv, to hell with computers, this is our moment!". This particular song also had one of the back up band members, Jason Freese, playing an amazing saxophone solo!

Billie Joe also told his adoring fans a story about how he and Ricky Wilson got drunk while in their hotel room and how the Kaiser frontman wanted to get a tattoo the night before. To this Billie replied that he can give tattoos, however Wilson was surprised when instead of a tattoo gun, all Armstrong had was a needle and pen ink. When he was done, the trio went on with "Before The Lobotomy". In this song, they stop playing on parts and encouraged crowd participation during some of the verses.

When this song was over, a small disco ball accompanied the screen to coincide with "Are We The Waiting". After performing, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", the group briefly played a little bit of "You Really Got Me". Then, immediately started playing, "Hitching A Ride" from 1997's, "Nimrod". Green Day also did a medley of several heavy metal covers including: Black Sabbath's, "Iron Man", Motley Crue's, "Shout at the devil", The Doors "Break on Through" and Metallica's, "Master of Puppets".

It wasn't all about the music, Armstrong called up a volunteer to spray down the audience with an enormous super soaker. Following this, Billie Joe pulled out a toilet paper reel and a t-shirt canon. He also asked the general admission to start a mosh pit for their next song, "Jaded".

Going way back to their very first hit, Armstrong asked for three volunteers to sing to "Longview" on-stage. Some of which even took a stage dive as directed by Billie!

These Oakland rockers also did another medley to "King For A Day" with everyone on stage wearing a different funky outfit. Freese dressed up like the late Michael Jackson in a red jacket, black wig and did a moonwalk just before they started. This segment included covers of "Shout" and "Free Falling" by Tom Petty.

Just before the evening closed, the encore included older songs "American Idiot" and "Jesus of Suburbia" which included a audience member that played lead guitar. Everyone on stage took a final bow and left Billie Joe by himself as he serenaded the crowd with acoustic versions of "Christie Road", "Waiting" and finally, "Good Riddance".

Overall the show was super impressive and there was never a dull moment, it was even more magical than the 2005 show when Amway Arena was known as the TD Waterhouse Arena. All goes to prove once again, Green Day are the greatest band in the world!

Stay tuned for more information on our continuing coverage of the 21st Century Breakdown tour.

Add to our tour thread here.

See the official Orlando set list here.