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The Top Ten (Five?) Most Ass-Kickingly Memorable Green Day Concerts of All Time:

Everybody has their favorite Green Day moments. Ask a fan what the best concert they ever played was, and they will more than likely reply, "The one I was at, bitches!" However, there are a few shows that stand out as having been particularly memorable. Here, then, in roughly chronological order, are some of the most prime buds:

Woodstock 1994
"This isn't love and peace, it's fuckin' anarchy!" Billie Joe Armstrong screamed at the mud-flinging barbarian crowd. After three hours of sitting in the rain, listening to some seriously mellow shit, the Woodstock crowd went insane for Green Day, and Green Day was crazy enough to match them.

A few songs in to the guys' set, the crowd started throwing mud at the stage. Well, actually, one dude threw some mud, and Billie Joe caught it and stuffed it in his mouth, which the rest of the crowd took to be an open invitation.

Green Day played through F.O.D. in the midst of a crazy mud-fight. Billie Joe kept singing even though psychotic hippies were jumping up on stage and attacking him. What are you supposed to do, after all, but scream, "Fuck off and Die!" at the top of your lungs and hope for the best.

Halfway through the last song, "Paper Lanterns," Billie Joe just said fuck it and started throwing mud back at the crowd. Everything went totally insane, but in an awesome way, because the crowd was so seriously into it. Even when things were at the peak of pandemonium, Billie Joe got everybody singing Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take it," and the whole field of people was just screaming.

Finally, with the stage overrun with acidheads and everyone in the band covered from head to toe in muck, Billie Joe screamed that everyone in the crowd should shout, "Shut the fuck up!" if they wanted the band to leave. Caught up in the moment, the crowd that had been chanting "Green Day!" all afternoon yelled "Shut the fuck up!" and the guys dropped their instruments and walked offstage.

Or fought their way offstage. The place was a battlefield. Members of the "Peace Patrol" actually mistook Mike for an out-of-control fan and had to subdue him. He lost three of his front teeth in the chaos. Definitely a concert that Mike will remember forever!

There were a lot of criticisms surrounding Woodstock '94. People said that it failed to live up to the peace and love ideals of the first Woodstock. But peace and love was for the sixties and its hippies. This was a Woodstock for the nineties, for anarchy and insanity and pissed off punk rockers. Kurt Cobain had committed suicide just a few months earlier. The music scene was fucked up and full of hardcore shit. Green Day put on a perfect show to commemorate the time, and it will stand out forever as a piece of music history.

Winnipeg Arena 1995
When the night started out, Green Day probably thought that their show in Winnipeg, Manitoba, was going to be just like any other on the prolonged "Dookie" tour.

They'd play their hits, the crowd would cheer and mosh and sing, and that would be that. Goodnight, you little fuckers.

But the Winnipeg crowd wanted more. They were rowdy, they were disorderly, and they were locked in a battle to the death with the most hard-ass-ed security guards you could even not hope to find at a punk show.

After several fans had been dragged off, kicking and screaming, Billie Joe started to shout to all the people in the stands that they should rush the stage, storm the pit!

They did.

An entire arena full of rowdy punk rockers flowed out of their seats and flooded the arena floor, creating a mosh pit roughly the size of a professional hockey rink.

Unfortunately, Green Day didn't quite know what they were getting into. Billie Joe got hit in the head with a flying shoe, and threatened to end the concert. Then, some kid stage-dove into oblivion and really sustained a head injury worth crying about. And that was the end of THAT Green Day concert.

The 1995 Winnipeg show isn't well-known to Green Day fans, but it was one of those moments in music history that, like the Woodstock show, says something about anarchy, and chaos, and free-range rebellion, that goes beyond the significance of any one single band or concert.

Green Day was in the right place at the right time and they started a riot. It was far and away THE craziest mosh pit any of the long-time concert goers who attended the event had ever experienced, and it goes down in the annals of music history for that alone. However, none other than Green Day incited its transcendental nature, and no other band could have pulled it off with so much fuck-you flair.

Astoria 1998
Even before the opening riff of "Going to Pasalacqua," it was obvious that Green Day were at their snotty best this night. As soon as the "Nimrod" tour started, it had become apparent that the guys had taken things up a notch in terms of their concert performances, but this show in particular went down in the memories of those that went, those that claim to have went, and those that just wish they had been there, as having been one of the greatest Green Day performances anyone has ever seen.

Despite trading jeers and insults with the audience throughout the night, or maybe because of this, Green Day played a mammoth set of over twenty original songs plus a crazy mishmash of covers.

This was one of the band's all-time don't-miss concerts in terms of hearing all kinds of rarities that they never play these days. Maybe the AI tour took some flak for being predictable, but man, in the "Nimrod" / "Warning" days, you never knew what kind of crazy shit those motherfuckers were going to whip out next.

The most historic moment of the night came at the end of the concert when Tre threw himself over his drum set and started trashing the stage during "When I Come Around." Mike kept playing for a while, but then he got into it, too. Mike, Tre, and a miscellaneous rowdy fan set about completely taking apart the stage, despite the feeble protests of roadies and concert organizers.

Things seemed like they were quieting down, until previously noted miscellaneous fan started knocking over speakers, and then that was it, all hell broke loose. Tre and Mike systematically took about their entire stage. It was total mayhem, and Billie Joe just kept giving it on the guitar the whole time like he didn't give one fuck.

The show ended with Billie Joe alone onstage playing "Good Riddance." The whole rowdy crowd took it down a notch and sang along. It was the perfect ending to an intensely memorable evening.

Goat Island 2000
Goat Island is this tiny little pile of rock in the middle of Sydney Harbor. Over the years, it's been used to store explosives and jail convicts, but in October of 2000, Green Day transformed the place its wildest incarnation yet. The guys, touring to promote "Warning," played an intimate afternoon gig to a small crowd that packed the island.

Even though it was a small crowd, they had a ton of energy, and the show was broadcast live, so really, there were tons of fans all over the world rocking out to it. Like Live 8, it was one of those "Green Day fans of the world unite" moments where you knew that somewhere, on the other side of the planet, some motherfucker just like you was going "aw yeah" at the exact same moment you were.

Because it was such a small audience, Green Day did a lot of talking and joking around between and even during songs, which was really cool, although you could just about die of jealously watching the footage if you weren't one of the hundred or so people that were there.

Luckily, there's tons of footage of the Goat Island show all over the Internet for all you Green Day freaks to drool over. Some of the most sweet, sweet-ass highlights are "Hitchin' a Ride," and "2000 Light Years Away." Goat Island was definitive proof to any and all those doubters and haters out there that Green Day could put on a rocking show anywhere in the world.

Goat Island is not just a fan favorite, but a favorite of the band as well. When asked about it in an interview, Tre said that they would all love to go back and rock that pile of rock again any old day.

Milton Keynes 2005
On the 18th and 19th of June, 2005, Green Day played the National Bowl in Milton Keynes to a 65,000 + audience both nights. Not only was it one of the best Green Day concerts of all time, but it was also one of the best concert experiences of all time, according to many long-time concertgoers. Old hippies and bangers that have been going to shows since the 60s brought their kids and were like "Whoa, dude, that was, like, totally amazing."

The weekend of the 18th and 19th was one of the hottest England had seen in a long-ass time. On both days, people started arriving at around ten in the morning, and they waited, and waited, and waited throughout the long hot day while three warm up acts - Hard-fi (replacing Simple Plan), Taking Back Sunday, and Jimmy Eat World - played to VERY mixed reviews.

Some people were like, "Holy shit, Hard-fi unexpectedly rocks." Other people were lying down in the field, trying to stave of dehydration. The days were overwhelmingly hot, a bottle of water could be acquired for the low, low price of your first-born child, and it was so crowded you would have thought the sun might overlook burning your skin in particular, but it didn't. Sweaty sunburn rubbed up against sweaty sunburn as GDers waited out the heat of the day.

However, none of it matter, all the pain-in-the-ass waiting disappeared when the opening strains to YMCA came on and a suspicious beer-swilling character in a bunny suit came out on stage and got the crowd moving.

Both nights, Green Day played an incredible set of classic American Idiot tour material. The mosh pit was psychotic. Teenie boppers that were just there to ogle Billie Joe were scrambling for their lives to get out.

As usual, the guys got the crowd involved, singing and waving and playing along. When "King for a Day / Shout" came out, the crowd went temporarily insane, but everyone managed to settle down for "Wake Me Up When September Ends." Everyone sang quietly and you could feel this vibe of unity and awesomeness rising up from the crowd.

Green Day really put their hearts into this weekend of shows, probably because they were being filmed for the "Bullet in a Bible" DVD. But the crowd didn't know about the DVD at the time, and their energy and wildness is also what made the show great.

Green Day needed to prove that they were a band that could rock any venue of any size anywhere in the world, and they did. Fireworks, confetti, massive screens displaying the action onstage, and an audience that had come from all over Europe made the weekend seem for like a global event than a straight-up rock concert. Twenty years from now, people are going to be saying "Were you there, man?" and more than 100 000 people will reply, "Man, I was there."

Stay tuned for more of the greatest moments in Green Day history…maybe…