Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ARPhotoSF
Oracle Park, home to the San Francisco Giants, historically does not host many concerts outside of the regular baseball season (and certainly not the post-season lately either!). Since 2013, there has been an average of six concerts per year, and a few of them are usually tied to corporations like the annual Genentech Gives Back or convention attendee parties for Salesforce.com’s DreamForce and Oracle’s OpenWorld. In fact, the last concert to be held here was 21 months ago for DreamForce (UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital benefit). Leave it to East Bay’s own Green Day to stage the first Hella Mega sized concert at Oracle Park since the world shut down early last year!
Consisting of Aimee Interrupter and three brothers (two of them identical twins), The Interrupters stormed onto the stage and performed as though the ballpark was at full capacity. Although it was a little early in the evening at 5:30pm, for their opening set, they did have a good crowd up front with the seats in the back being filled in nicely, and covered all three of their albums equally during their 30 minutes. In addition to seven of their own songs, they played a Billie Eilish song that they covered for Netflix’s Umbrella Academy (Season 2, Episode 5).
After a short changeover to what was easily the coolest set piece of the whole evening, Weezer emerged to this six-kick-drum Hella Mega colorful stage. Singer and guitarist Rivers Cuomo apparently spent the long COVID break growing a mullet and a mustache, and he ran out on stage in a studded leather jacket with the most amazing thrash-metal inspired ‘Lightning Crackle’ Jackson Guitar!
After that wild introduction, Weezer’s finest moment in their 60-minute set was a song that is not even one of their own. A few years ago, a fan who really wanted them to cover Africa, Toto‘s hit song from 1982, began communicating with the band on Twitter. Weezer did actually release their version in 2018, and the performance of it was spot-on to the original! Since then, it has become so popular that they may be playing this song long after the members of Toto have retired. The rest of the set was classic songs and radio hits that have become staples of Weezer shows.
Click on any photo below for a slideshow of full-size images of The Interrupters and Weezer.
Much like Weezer, Fall Out Boy had a 60-minute set as well as their own stage production. The stage had what were meant to resemble large trees, and then they made an addition midway for three songs, elevating the drum riser into what looked like a log cabin with a white fence around it. All of this ‘wood’ imagery was kind of ironic, considering bassist Pete Wentz appeared for the first song with a flamethrower attached to his bass, and he was not shy in using it. There was even more fire when singer Patrick Stump performed a song on a burning piano… and after all that, thankfully nothing burned down. He also casually stated later “This may be the first circle pit [for us] of the entire tour!” Just like dancing around the campfire…
Fall Out Boy setlist:
1. The Phoenix
2. Sugar, We’re Goin Down
3. Irresistible
4. Uma Thurman
5. Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy
6. Save Rock and Roll
7. The Last of the Real Ones
8. Dance, Dance
9. A Little Less Sixteen Candles…
10. This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race
11. My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark
12. I Don’t Care
13. Thnks fr th Mmrs
14. Centuries
15. Saturday
After much anticipation, it was finally time for the main event… which was kicked off with a drunk bunny jumping about the stage to get the crowd riled up. They didn’t need much assistance, because once the bunny was gone and the band appeared, the entire 40,000+ in attendance were more than ready to rock out, sing, mosh, and get crazy with Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool, otherwise known as Green Day!
Being the local band that they are, singer and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong repeatedly called out familiar Bay Area cities to see who was attending from where. “San Francisco!” “Oakland!” “San Jose!” “Contra Costa County!” “El Sobrante!”
To continue what The Interrupters and Weezer had started, Green Day did a rousing cover of KISS‘ Rock And Roll All Nite, complete with a Gene Simmons masked character dancing along to the entire song next to and with touring member and backup guitarist Kevin Preston.
Six songs later, Billie Joe brought up a fan from the crowd to play along to yet another cover song, this time Operation Ivy’s Knowledge. It was a little surprising that they did it, with all of the COVID restrictions in place that were set forth both by the promoter and the tour, and with the bands themselves attempting to stay within their ‘bubbles’ (she was wearing a mask though). Fall Out Boy even missed three shows earlier on the tour due to a positive test in their camp! Rise Against did the same thing last week at their show at Masonic Auditorium, although that seemed like a spur-of-the-moment thing to do, whereas Green Day has been doing this for years. A fun time indeed anyway for that female fan who made it up on stage!
Click on any photo below for a slideshow of full-size images of Fall Out Boy and Green Day.
There was a lot of fire and pyro throughout the entire set, with the most triumphant fireworks display this side of the Fourth of July to signify the end of the night!
See more photos of all of your favorite Punk Rock + Metal musicians at Alan Ralph‘s photo portfolio.
