The last big stadium Rock concert of the year that I’ll be attending (not counting the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert we’ll see at the Moda Center next month when our son comes to town for Thanksgiving), and the official end of 2024’s Summer of Rock, occurred this past Wednesday at Providence Park, a stadium with a storied 98-year history, when 30,000 fans came out to hear the alt Rock band The Smashing Pumpkins and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band, Green Day play.
The stadium is in the Goose Hollow NW portion of Portland where parking is a nightmare. I live about 2 1/2 miles SE of the stadium, and I was at first going to take a Lyft, but when the app said it was $30 one way, I decided I’d just hop in the car and take my chances on finding parking. An hour later I finally found a spot about a mile north of the stadium and still ended up taking a Lyft from there for $10 to within a couple stoplights of the stadium where I jumped out and walked the rest of the way faster than the traffic jam blocking all the streets.
Getting into the stadium was surprisingly fast despite all the negative comments I had read on Reddit about the security screening inefficiencies during the normal soccer season and how it takes 45 minutes just to enter the park. On this day, within about 10 minutes of arriving I was in my seat in the nosebleed section of the stadium.
Within about 5 minutes of sitting down, the co-headliner Smashing Pumpkins opened their set.
Even though Green Day was really the main event, I was there to see The Smashing Pumpkins. This popular band was one of my favorites during a pivotal part of my post-college life in the early-to-mid ‘90s. When their second album Siamese Dream came out in 1993 I had just graduated, and their album held a frequent spot in my CD player.
Smashing Pumpkins was so important to me during that time period that I’m going to take a small detour here for a moment to reminisce… When that album came out, I was living rent free at the very historic White Sulphur Springs Resort just outside St Helena, Ca right in the middle of the Napa Valley. I was helping guests as the Night Manager in exchange for rent and I remember vividly listening to the psychedelic power ballad Soma on many occasions on my Walkman under the lofty redwoods. This place had a very storied past and during my time there in the early ‘90s it was basically a clothing-optional healing retreat for hippies. I learned during the research for this article that the resort all but burned down during the 2020 Glass Fire. Such a shame. The sulphur pool pictured in that story was the source of many interesting guest parties.
The White Sulphur Springs Resort was under the same new ownership as the Mount View Hotel, Spa and Restaurant in Calistoga, California and a year later in 1994 I had worked my way up to being the General Manager of the historic property. I was still listening to their album, a lot, and I distinctly remember an experience during the last month of my time working there when we were having the hotel remodeled and for some reason, I decided to stay over one night. I woke up very early the next morning, January 17th, 1994 on the floor of the room. I thought that was very odd and couldn’t figure out what had happened. I turned on my CD player to start the day, and the first song, Cherub Rock, from the Siamese Dream album was playing when I then turned on the television and I suddenly saw Los Angeles on fire. It was just one of those few moments in time where the experience and everything about it is indelibly marked like a photograph on your brain like the loss of the space shuttles Challenger, and then Columbia, 911 or the January 6th desecration of the Capitol.
That morning at 0430 the Northridge quake had struck LA, but the fault lines in California are not isolated, running north and south up and down the state. Having experienced quakes before from the Napa Valley (The day of the Loma Prieta quake on Oct 17th, 1989, was our college’s school picnic in San Francisco, a story for another day) I knew that when a quake was imminent the local Old Faithful Geyser in Calistoga would get knocked off its periodic schedule (Olga was NOT the only one).
In addition to the geyser in Calistoga, there are two others in Yellowstone and New Zealand and scientists are learning more about how each operates on their fairly fixed schedules and how earthquakes can impact them.
Ok, detour over. In the words of Pink Floyd, “How can you have any pudding, if you don’t eat your meat?”. You’ve had your history and geology lessons, now let’s get back to the music.
The band’s setlist included 14 songs, and at one point in the concert members of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) were onstage fighting as the rain that had subsided earlier in the day started back up. Chino Moreno of the Sacramento metal band Deftones also joined the band onstage. The set ran about an hour then they cleared the stage for the headliner, taking about 20 minutes to set up.
At 820 pm the lights went down, and a medley of Queen songs came on, with the audience of 30,000 joining in the singing and getting riled up. Green Day arrived onstage to much fanfare and proceeded to play every song from both their 1994 album Dookie as well as their 2004 album American Idiot and more, 37 songs in total.
It seemed like most of the audience either wasn’t born, or was still in diapers, when the first album came out, so it was a bit surprising to see how engaged they were. It felt like an audience watching the Beetles in the early 60’s. Green Day put on a fantastic show, they were highly engaging with the audience (At one point having a female fan with a tattoo of the lead singer up on stage to sing with them.) and the production value was top notch with lights, smoke, fire, fireworks and more.
Truly an impressive concert, but seating up where I was at entailed 15 inches of a wooden bench and after 2 1/2 hours my backside was feeling it. Normally I wear tennis shoes to these shows because I’m standing the whole time, but this time I was sitting the whole time, and it took its toll. So, at 845 pm I decided to get a jump start on the crowds and skip out on the last 2-3 songs. As I was walking the mile or so back to my car I could still hear the concert the whole time.
This concert was a complete blast. It’s been the talk of the town for some time and it was well produced, well performed, and highly memorable. It was also, as I mentioned up top, my last of the season. It’s been quite an introduction to the Portland music scene and I can’t wait until next year (I already have my ticket for the March concert of Heart and Cheap Trick at the Moda Center). Until next time…