Green Day played at Gillette Stadium last Saturday for the first of two performances, the second of which will be held this Thursday during the NFL season-opening Patriots game. Green Day entered the stage ready to conquer New England with the fanfare of champions, opening with "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Immediately ripping into the title track from American Idiot, Green Day energized the crowd and drew cheers, which were magnified when front-man Billie Joe Armstrong crowned himself with a Red Sox cap borrowed from a fan. The Northeastern love was echoed throughout the night, as Armstrong referenced the region no less than a dozen times.Opening band Rise Against mirrored the Green Day of a decade ago. Like Armstrong and co., Rise Against started on an independent punk label but later signed to major label Geffen. Playing a scratchy pop-punk with occasional flourishes of softness and vulnerability, the band also was full of leftist idealism-several members are part of the no-sex, no-drugs straight-edge movement, and all the band members are vegetarian.

Jimmy Eat World also performed a short set drawing from their new album Futures. Although the crowd was somewhat unresponsive at first, the few songs Jimmy Eat World played from their previous effort Bleed American-especially their summer anthem "The Middle"-managed to energize the audience.

Perhaps the best experience of the concert was seeing the audience. The mix of soccer moms, gutter punks, twelve-year-olds sporting mohawks and other unlikely combinations of people helped hammer home Green Day's career trajectory. There has probably never been a larger collection of people in red ties and eyeliner on the face of the planet.

The audience was not disappointed with the concert, which was as theatric as a band like Green Day could make it. Fiery explosions interrupted songs and jarred those fans not paying attention, Armstrong pretended to masturbate and the band even covered the Isley Brothers' hit "Shout," complete with a collapse on stage and an intensifying crescendo as they stood back up. But the biggest spectacle of the night occurred when the band picked teenagers as replacements, handing over their instruments.

The show was not without political commentary. American Idiot helped position Green Day as one of mainstream music's harshest critics of President Bush, and Billie Joe continued his band's assault during the concert. The singer indirectly mocked the president and encouraged the crowd's youths to change the world, exemplifying Green Day's political bent.

Despite the popularity of American Idiot, the most popular songs of the night were from Dookie, the ten-times platinum album that introduced the band to America. Green Day ended the night with the ballad "Good Riddance," performed to the backdrop of a moving Statue of Liberty, emphasizing the song's newfound role as a 9/11 memorial. The audience's lit up cell phones, combined with the stadium's dimming lights, provided one of the most surreal moments of the night, one that would awe the most jaded rock critic. The song ended with an impressive display of fireworks, which was wasted on an audience struggling to avoid the parking lot traffic.