8/28/2012
Green Day's highly anticipated "surprise" set at this past weekend's Reading Festival in England was marked by drama both before it started and as it ended. According to NME, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong didn't reveal which of the festival's stages the band would perform on until 45 minutes before their set, and his announcement on Twitter sent fans into a mad rush that ended up with organizers forced to cut off access to the stage and leave fans outside to watch the show on a video screen.
- Despite reports that the trio would play its breakthrough 1994 album Dookiefrom front to back, they instead aired out five cuts from that disc -- "Welcome To Paradise," "Burnout," "Longview," "Basket Case" and "She" -- along with a few recent favorites like "St. Jimmy" and new songs "Oh Love" and "Stay The Night."
- The drama resurfaced at the end of the band's set, when Green Day and the festival organizers appeared to disagree over how much time the band had.
- Armstrong told the audience, "We're having a little f***ing problem with time," while launching into a shortened version of "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" from American Idiot. The final set clocked in at just over an hour, with 14 songs performed.
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