Tour with Green Day, Weezer, Fall Out Boy delivers on the Mega
Fans have the time of their lives at PNC Park
Oh, the magic of Toto. There we were at PNC Park on Thursday night for the Hella Mega Tour, and all Rivers Cuomo had to do was sing “I bless the rains” in “Africa,” and the sky just unloaded on everyone.
Everything went gray for the last few songs of Weezer’s set and, just like “The Wizard of Oz,” it went full color with a rainbow over the city skyline for the arrival of Fall Out Boy.
This kind of big stadium concert magic was a long, long, long time coming.
Fans held their concert tickets in anticipation for two solid years while they watched dozens of other shows cancel, including the other planned PNC Park show featuring Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Poison, and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.
This was the first concert in the ballpark — post-Pirates game Skyblast
shows aside — since Ed Sheeran did his one-man routine there in late September 2018.
“When we were planning this tour two years ago,” Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz said, “our booking agent was like, ‘I don’t know if kids listen to rock anymore.’ This tour was an experiment. Now, being in this sold-out stadium, I’m pretty sure kids
listen to [expletive] rock!”
And it was glorious to see it happen on this scale again.
Before we got to the marquee acts, there was the brief and lively intrusion of The Interrupters, who by a show of hands, was the first band some people have seen in 2021 (and maybe 2020 as well). The LA ska-punk band, led by a smiling leather-clad Aimee Interrupter, made for good re-entry music, bouncing through a set of their own catchy songs — “She’s Kerosene” being a standout — along with a cover of Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” that they beautifully ska-ified.
During the pandemic, Mr. Cuomo, not one of the Cuomo brothers, grew a mullet and hit the leather shop at the mall for a look that shouted “Wayne’s World!” It fits with Weezer going full-on stadiumlevel, hard rock with “Van Weezer,” an album that’s more Halen than Morrison.
Mr. Cuomo, with mustache, Buddy Holly glasses and Flying V, and fellow guitarist Brian Bell delighted in putting extra distortion on the power chords and tossing some Eddiestyle metal squeals.
It’s pretty funny when applied to something as Weezerish as “Undone (The Sweater Song).” We also got soupedup versions of “Hash Pipe,” “Beverly Hills,” “My Name Is Jonas” and other faves to go along with new songs “Hero” and “All the Good Ones” that fit right in.
Weezer just happens to have a song, “El Scorcho,” with a line, “I asked you to go to the Green Day concert,” that brought the set to a screeching halt, for laughter
and cheers.
After donning a Pirates cap and twirling a Terrible Towel, Mr. Cuomo told the crowd, “You might find this hard to believe, me growing up in Connecticut, but the Steelers were my jam, man.”
Soon after that came the rains of “Africa,” which got heavy during the finale of “Say It Ain’t So” and “Buddy Holly,” making the songs a wet and wild celebration.
Side note: It’s a good thing people weren’t having to carry aroundtheir vaccination cards for this one, because there wouldn’t be much left of them. Andthen what?
Holding down the middle slot, Fall Out Boy has long been creating songs for stadiums, and the Chicago band, making its first trip here since 2018,
finally got to play them in a Pittsburgh ballpark.
The band, which missed a few dates on the tour due to
COVID-19, hit the stage with pyro and the bombastic pleasures of “The Phoenix” and “Sugar, We’re Going Down,” launching a high-energy set of rockers turned up to 11 on the shrill meter.
Frontman Patrick Stump, soft-spoken as he is, is not the most nuanced singer to come down the pike. Whereas his big pipes can be downright painful through earbuds, they make sense blaring out of stadium speakers. Hearing “The Munsters” theme that loud, cranked through “Uma Thurman,” was particularly cool.
The band’s soaring sound was matched with a sci-fi space motif, introduced on screen by actor Ron Livingston, that made the set pop visually as well.
The set hit a fever pitch on “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race,” “Centuries” and “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up),” with plumes of fire all around.
For a little pre-set hype, Green Day went with “Bohemian Rhapsody” AND “Blitzkrieg Bop” over the PA, not to mention a pink bunny mascot, before storming out with “American Idiot” in a blaze of red light. The song was an opening statement that the set was gonna be loud, sloppy and raw.
“Oh my God, it’s Pittsburgh, Pa.!” Billie Joe Armstrong hollered mid-song, adding, “Put your cellphones away. We’ve been staring at cellphones for so long through this [expletive] pandemic. Now we have each other!”
Once they blazed through “Holiday,” “Know Your Enemy” and “Pollyanna,” though, those phones were lighting up the stadium for a sing-along on “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”
“This is my Eddie Van
Halen tribute painted guitar,” Mr. Armstrong said during the song. “First person in the world I ever heard play like that, and I never heard anyone play like that again.”
Certainly not Mr. Armstrong, but that’s not exactly his forte.
Instead, he thrashed through the basic barre chords of “Dookie” classics “Longview” and “Welcome to Paradise,” getting the whole stadium to shake.
While they didn’t attempt any Van Halen songs, they did break into Kiss, with Mr. Armstrong pulling off the Gene Simmons growl on “Rock and Roll All Nite.” Like Kiss and Fall Out Boy, Green Day came armed with a massive load of pyro, too.
They also covered old Bay Area scenemates Operation Ivy, whose “Knowledge” they used as a chance to bring up a well-qualified 16-year-old fan, dressed like Billie Joe, to play guitar and then do a hearty stage dive back into the crowd.
They came out of that with more “Dookie” in the form of “Basket Case” and “She,” and a dynamic “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” With the show passing the five-hour mark, they tackled “Jesus of Suburbia” and signed off with “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” a sentiment that rang true.
For the pop-punk faithful, this date was circled as one of the high points of the summer — possibly of the past two years — and the foursome did not disappoint. As Mike Tomlin might say, they unleashed HellaMega on Earth.