Concerts Review

         Green Day, Gathering of the Vibes Festival:

                                   Packing Tons Of Tunes Into One Weekend

By John Voket

In the nearly 30 years I’ve been traveling to rock concerts, either for my own selfish musical fulfillment or for work, I’ve never packed the quantity of music into one weekend like I did last weekend. Friday was particularly interesting having taken in a couple of sets at the Gathering of the Vibes at Bridgeport’s Seaside Park, before hopping in the car and heading to the cavernous XL Center in Hartford to check out Green Day.

Supporting the release of 21st Century Breakdown, Green Day failed to deliver the visceral energy they managed to generate the last time they played the region, despite packing 32 songs and three additional musicians into a nearly three-hour package.

On the band’s previous tour, the former three-piece power punk trio from the San Francisco Bay area was complimented during much of their Hartford set by guitarist Jason White, who mostly hung in a darkened background corner of the stage. But on the current tour, White was right out there along with Jason Freese, a full time keyboard and sax player, and a third guitarist and back-up singer Jeff Matika.

Unfortunately, Green Day could not muster even a five-piece configuration to outdo their own performance on the American Idiot tour. Granted Billy Joe Armstrong could still get the audience to echo back one of the dozens of “Day-o” shout outs, and he can still personally engage the audience by dragging members onto the stage to perform or play act against his own over-the-top clowning.

But what was once a unique novelty is now a tired routine, further deflated by repetition. Instead of having an audience member come up and play guitar, or come up and dance around, or come up and sing, or come up and spray the audience with a Super-Soaker water gun, Armstrong brings them all on during various points in the set.

The only fresh and entertaining few moments came when someone held up a banner that read “Let Tre Sing,” referring to the band’s whirling dervish drummer Tre Cool. Trading places with Armstrong and strapping on a mint green Stratocaster, Cool’s take on “Dominated Love Slave” was as much a visual treat ­as seeing Billy Joe flailing away on the drums.

All told, Green Day’s nearly three-hour set encompassed two-thirds of the new album, with its first single (“Know Your Enemy”), “Before the Lobotomy” and “21 Guns” among the standouts. The balance of the set was sprinkled with hits including “F.O.D.” played by request, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “Basket Case,” and the singalong show closer “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” which had kids and their tagalong parents singing along in unison as they headed for the doors.

Vibin’ With Daria

Besides the headliners performing on the two main stages, a more intimate Gathering of the Vibes venue provided an opportunity for Newtown’s own Daria Musk to explore the jam band side of what are normally pretty cut and dried three and four minute arrangements.

Ms Musk Told The Newtown Bee that she got to perform a rare 75-minute set on the “Green Vibes Stage” last Sunday afternoon, after concert organizers reached out to her with an offer to gig. The Newtowner said she was pleased that her first-ever festival appearance gave her ample space to play “a variety of material representing each stage of my evolution as an artist.”

Opening the set with a jammy, vamped out version of “Just Like a Star,” the single and title track from her latest project, Daria was joined by mom Wendy, a local educator, flute virtuoso and recording artist in her own right.

Her set continued, mixing acoustic and electric numbers with loads of extra time beyond the normal 45-minute showcase gigs she is accustomed to opening up solo spaces in a lot of numbers that would normally be limited to just a few minutes.

“We had been working so hard trying to get things tight showcasing new material, that loosening the screws on a bunch of the songs for this extended set really felt good,” Daria said. “I think the reaction was positive – a great crowd. A hot day and a little early in the day – but an amazing event. It really didn’t hit me until I was standing up there on the stage.”

She even managed to throw in a Jackson 5 cover of “I Want You Back.”

Main Stage Action

On the main stages, some of the highpoints included a rain-soaked and flooded-out Grateful Dead tribute Thursday night with Dark Star Orchestra, which was followed up by an equally well-received late-night (read: early morning) Pink Floyd cover set from The Machine. Friday’s line-up included a rollicking turn by New Orleans-based JJ Grey, and the spacey noodleings of Keller Williams.

Saturday offered more tasty cajun-flavored concoctions from Levon Helm, who mixed some big hits from his days drumming for The Band with a jazzy take on the Grateful Dead’s “Tennesee Jed.” The latter featured the Dead’s own Bob Weir lending vocals, perhaps as a warm-up to his own band’s set which followed.

That 90-minute trip incorporated a melodious envelope with “Bird Song,” giving way to “Bertha,” “Sylvio” weaving Dylan’s verses together with a funky “Tequila,” “Scarlet Begonias,” Weir’s “Ashes and Glass,” “Iko Iko,” and an extended jam back into “Bird Song.”

Sunday’s finale on the main stage showcased an expanded and almost completely reinvented Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. The recent replacement of Potter’s bass player with Catherine Popper (formerly of Ryan Adams’s lineup) and adding second guitarist Benny Yurco, is giving this Vermont jam band a better shot at some crossover appeal.

The new fuller and heavier arrangements may sound strange to longtime fans, but a lot of Vibes-goers who were experiencing The Nocturnals for their first time were buzzing about Potter’s set long after she and her band exited the stage.

Original Woodstock vets Crosby, Stills & Nash wrapped up the festival with a lackluster set sprinkled with not one, not two, but three non-CSN covers. The addition of those tunes, plus losing 15-minutes of their set to a sudden thunderstorm, robbed the expectant audience of what might have otherwise been an opportunity to enjoy some deeper exploration of the trio’s catalog.

Despite the shortcomings, “Guinevere,” and Nash’s “Winchester Cathedral,” both brought chills as the harmonies of David Crosby hit the mark with expert vocal precision.