Had it not been for the revival of the Cowboys Fringants concert expected this Monday evening, Green Day would have put a hard-hitting high point at the 2023 edition of the Festival d’été de Québec, with a lot of catchy choruses, catchy covers and pyrotechnic effects. The Californian pop-punk group, which reserved one of its rare performances for fans in the capital this summer, even premiered a new song on the Plains of Abraham, no doubt a foretaste of its 14e album whose release date is not yet known.
Ah yes: a fan was also offered a brand new electric guitar after proving to some 90,000 spectators that she knew how to use it. Alicia Deschênes – we call her since she is a musician and will be releasing her third album next September – was invited to climb on stage to accompany Bille Joe Armstrong and the rest of the band for a few bars of an old hit from the Operation Ivy, an influential Californian band of the 1980s from the ashes of which Rancid was born. Her look, captured by the camera and projected on the giant screens, said everything about the esteem she has for Green Day and the joy of living such a moment. “Hey hey – come back here! asked Billie as she ran backstage. “You can keep the guitar!” »
This brief moment, which occurred at the end of the concert, just before the group released their mega success Basketball Case, sums up the evening spent at the FEQ. It was Christmas for Alicia and for the thousands of fans gathered on the plains thanks to this group who have mastered the art of generosity. Punk is a genre born in contestation, in the refusal of conformity, which through the work of groups like Green Day, has also become a unifying party music.
And to see how these songs have done good to the fans, there is no need to bring up the opposition between authentic and militant punk – that of Bad Religion which preceded Green Day on stage last night – and pop-punk / skate punk. of which Billie Joe Armstrong and his companions (to the original trio, Armstrong, Mike Dirnt on bass, including the drummer Tré Cool integrated after the publication of the first album, joined three other accompanists) could claim the origin, registered in the heady refrains from the classic album Dookie (1994), his third album.
Listening to the drooling and adulescent hymns of this album brings back old memories. There have been Longviewduring which Armstrong apologized for forgetting the lyrics, Welcome to Paradise just after (we were then only a third of the way through the show), Brain Stewthe huge When I Come Around And Basketball Case. Only with these, the old fans were sated.
But there’s more to Green Day than just one good album, and that’s what explains their appeal, with subsequent generations finding happiness in Insomniac (1995), the acclaimed American Idiot (2004, the title track having opened the concert with authority) and the conceptual 21st Century Breakdown (2009), an album certainly bloated, the creation of a group then already experienced in touring the biggest musical arenas in the world, but which, more than a decade later, is part of the duration thanks to this handful of songs which have proven to be hits in concert: the title track, Know Your Enemy and the mighty 21 Guns.
In a humidity to cut with a knife, Green Day cheered up the audience, who sang in chorus its refrains. Cabotin, as always, but rigorous like the old pros of the rock machine that these musicians have become, offering a very well calibrated concert flying over his discography, also throwing in a few sweets (Rock and Roll All Night by KISS, Tequila And Shout from another era) to maximize the pleasure. Simple and effective – festival goers loved it.
Worthy heirs to the juvenile punks of Blink-182 and Green Day, the Acadians of Peanut Butter Sunday, like Alicia, lived a dream moment. Imagine: last spring, the group took part in the Les Francouvertes talent contest. Yesterday, they were called to replace at short notice Meet Me @ The Altar, which was to open the punk evening on the Plains of Abraham. What a joy, what an incredible opportunity for the musicians of Baie-Ste-Marie! Heat up the stage for the legends of Bad Religion!
The veterans put a bit of a spin on punk lovers’ heads with their socially-themed songs, opening their dizzying singing tour with nothing butAmerican Jesusfrom the classic Recipe For Hate (1993), the album that made them famous, as Californian punk took its place on the global rock scene.
Between two happily brainless bands, punk’s conscience screamed deep into the old battlefield, reminding us that battles must still be fought to live in a more egalitarian world: “Well I heard you were looking for a place to fit in / Full of adherent people with the same objective / A family to cling to and call brethren / Come join us”, sang Greg Graffin, the punk figure of the benevolent uncle to whom we know how to turn for good advice. Bad Religion played as many songs as possible during the small hour allocated to it; he made magnificent use of it, with an energy that betrayed the age of the members of this group founded in 1980.
