Location:
CNE Coliseum in Toronto, Canada
Date:
November 29, 1994
Notes:
Incomplete setlist
sirrichardrichard: "I had just turned 15. Die Toten Hosen opened up for them as well. I point to that moment as a building block to who I am today. Seeing Green Day embrace a homosexual band, inevitably led me to be a more tolerant person throughout the usually intolerant teenage years. Here they were, one of the biggest bands in the country and they bring Pansy Division - friends of theirs - to hockey rinks across the land. It was incredibly ballsy for them to do that, for that reason, despite the rock operas and Broadway shows, I will never consider them sellouts."
Sean McCallum: "We had brutal seats in that hockey arena that doubled as a livestock barn during the Royal Winter Fair, and it became blatantly apparent during the opener’s set (a band called Die Toten Hosen, I think) that there was no way in hell we could ever stay in our seats for this kind of show. Just before Pansy Division took the stage, someone got what turned out for me to be a life-altering idea, deciding that we should rush security, and before I knew what was happening, all nine of us had crashed over the boards and were in the process of blending inconspicuously into the crowd ON THE FLOOR at the FUCKING GREEN DAY SHOW! It was like something out of Detroit Rock City. It was the craziest concert experience of my life to this day, ridiculous moshing and crowd surfing and sweaty dirtbag punk chicks all over the place, Welcome to Paradise nearly took the roof off that shithole rink and I was unequivocally blown away by the fact that only three guys could make that much noise. I was mesmerized by Tre Cool and how it could be humanly possible to smash the drums as furiously and as frenetically as he did for the hour and a half that they played, non-stop energy, more and more fucking ecstatic never-ending energy. By the end of the show not one of us had a shirt on, having stashed them with the sound mixer dude, and we were all drenched in sweat and reeked of adolescent BO but it didn’t matter because the world would never be the same, and even after we got off the train and got back to my parents’ house, we sat around in the kitchen all night, the adrenaline still pumping frantically through our veins in the wee hours of the morning, and we knew that sleep would be impossible and that school could never matter as much as what we’d just done. Up until that Green Day show, I never knew what music was capable of. I never knew that music could be that. Things would never be the same."
Toronto's Arts: "Yeah, yeah, I can say all I want, but that won't change the depressing fact that I missed the Birdlandish 70's punk rock revivalists. The buses must have been running direct from the school yards to the Coliseum. Teenybopper girls, their hair either in stupid pig-tails or decorated by ugly plastic barrettes, milled around in ratty cardigans, stripey scoop-neck t-shirts and ill-fitting jeans. Boys on acid left random puddles of puke around the Coliseum. Thousands of children charged from the stands, over the boards, into the general admission area so they could be much closer to their idols - and crowdsurf. The kids were already in frenzied motion to the Beasties' You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party before Green Day took the stage. It is my moral duty to say this: 'Crowd-surfing must be stopped.' It not only looks thoroughly ridiculous, but it's damned dangerous. I hope scores of children at the show died, and that their friends learned a lesson. Not even during the first wave of punk was there such a despicable display of human behavior (OK, there was, but it derived from different motives). Green Day epitomize, and promote, the rampant adolescent attitude of today that is ruthlessly hateful, purblindly self-centred, and bafflingly self-righteous. After a series of 'fuck, shit, cunt, dick' Billie Joe uttered a string of fuck you's which he then explained were for parents. (This did not appear to bother the woman next to me, who was there with her 8-year-old son. Will she be confused tomorrow when he tells her to fuck off?) It is completely normal to balk at authority and rebel, but every teen should respect his parents. Complete disrespect for everybody is not what punk rock is about - disrespect for the system, yes. For people, no. Punk rock is about thinking for yourself. That's why anarchy, which was a symbol for punk, is supposed to work. Unfortunately, anarchy assumes that people are good and will act responsibly. People, however, are not innately kind; what prevents most people from acting purely evil and selfish is fear of retribution. But when you're with thousands of other idiots, the possibility of retribution becomes negligible (bonus: not only does your anonymity increase, but you are deemed cool for following the herd). Green Day should keep their gobs shut and quit prodding the herd because they are a brilliant live band."
