Green Day, MEN Arena (From Warrington Guardian)

Green Day, MEN Arena

GREEN Day launched an election campaign on Saturday night that should see Billie Joe Armstrong elected president.

Everybody's favourite punk rockers hit Manchester twice at the weekend, in two sell out shows at the evening news arena.

To say that Green Day's star is rising is somewhat misleading. They've been hard at it for more than 15 years and have been living in the shadow of their massive breakthrough album Dookie for the past 10 years.

But all that changed when George W Bush entered the Whitehouse four years ago. All of a sudden Green Day were talking about a concept album; something that would recount the dissolution of the grand old American Dream.

What followed was their magnum opus.

Rage, passion, hate, anger and rebellion - shorthand for everything that punk rock stands for.

The single American Idiot flew in to the charts and the album followed suit. And on Saturday, their passion was there for all to see. They were incredible, outstanding, intense and insane.

At one point they dragged three people out of the crowd to take their places and play live, in front of a packed arena.

It was spine-tingling to see how Billie Joe Armstrong has developed into one of the best frontmen of our time. He conducted the 20,000-strong crowd with flick of his wrist and was at break-neck speed all the way.

And so we were treated to the excellent first movement of American Idiot: Jesus of Suburbia, followed by some genuine classics. Longview, She, Hitchin' A Ride, Basket Case and wild renditions of Jaded, Knowledge, King For A Day (which morphed into Lulu's Shout) and Minority were all well received, as was the second helping of ...Idiot - Homecoming.

They saved Boulevard of Broken Dreams for the incredible encore, which also featured a rendition of Queen's We Are The Champions, and the night ended in style, with a lone Billie Joe thrashing out Time Of Your Life.

An awesome show and one that blew a long-time fan away.

l Green Day announced this week an extra night's mayhem at Milton Keynes on Sunday, June 19.