Green Day vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong delivered some strong advice for ICE agents during the band’s Super Bowl Week show on Friday night in San Francisco.
“Quit that (expletive) job you have,” the Green Day vocalist said. “Because when this is over — and it will be over — Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Donald Trump, they are going to drop you like a bad (expletive) apple.
“Come on this side of the aisle.”
Green Day was headlining the FanDuel Party Powered by Spotify — one of the many corporate-sponsored Super Bowl Week concerts — yet the event also doubled as a warm-up gig for Green Day performing during the pregame festivities at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on Sunday.
Sunday’s performance by the East Bay band — consisting of vocalist-guitarist Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool — celebrates the Super Bowl’s 60th anniversary and will be used as the soundtrack to usher generations of Super Bowl MVPs onto the Levi’s Stadium field.
Green Day sounded pretty strong during the Pier 29 gig, opening its set with “American Idiot” and then blasting through such longtime fan favorites as “Longview,” “Welcome to Paradise” and “Basket Case.”
The Counting Crows, another platinum-selling East Bay act, also were on the bill. Yet, the group’s short 25-minute set was lackluster at best, performed without an ounce of the energy or intensity of what fans would later get from Green Day.
Post Malone review by Kyle Martin
Post Malone, born Austin Richard Post, wasn’t “Saucin’, Saucin’” onstage like “White Iverson” at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Festival Pavilion on Friday. Instead, he shook the Bay waters with his good ol’ Dallas, Texas, roots and the boot-scootin’ country-pop music he’s come to embrace.
The crowd, with cowboy hats and boots abound, cheered him on and danced to the train beats from his 2024 album, “F-1 Trillion,” such as “What Don’t Belong to Me.” And they swayed to the softer stuff, like “Losers,” Bud Light in-hand.
Apart from nine buddies in the band (including a fiddle player), and a pack of Camel Crush cigarettes that Posty smoked through the night, the vocalist was also joined onstage by surprise guests T-Pain, who performed “Buy You a Drank,” and Western Music Hall of Famer Dave Stamey, who performed his acclaimed “Buckaroo Man” as a duet with Malone.
Perhaps Posty — emblazoned with what appeared to be both diamond-studded grills and belt buckle — is “Better Now” in this new, pop/country light sound (and yes, he performed that song, to the crowd’s delight). Concertgoers at Fort Mason on Friday certainly seemed to think so.
Olivia Dean review by Nollyanne Delacruz
Across from the San Francisco Giants’ home base of Oracle Park, the audience swayed to British singer-songwriter Oliva Dean’s R&B-infused serenades at The One Party by Uber at Pier 48.
Her opening act was Nigerian American singer and rapper Collins Chibueze, who is better known by his stage name Shaboozey. The Virginia-born artist warmed up the crowd with heavy drum beats and a string medley of guitars and violins taken straight from a Western film score.
A couple of the stand-out songs were “Amen,” the Grammy award-winning track detailing Shaboozey’s pleads for forgiveness as he tries to escape his darker habits, and a slightly rock-influenced cover of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” He closed his set with his popular song “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” a blowout, a banger, going out in a shower of whiskey that he spat into the air like a fountain.
The exclusive Uber One concert was Dean’s first show since winning Best New Artist at the 68th annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 1. She started her set with “Nice to Each Other,” hyping up the crowd as they harmonized with her iconic line, “I don’t want a boyfriend!”
Dean followed it up with “Lady Lady,” “Close Up” and several other songs from her newest album, “The Art of Loving,” but she briefly called back to her 2023 album “Messy” with “Carmen,” a song that pays tribute to her grandmother’s immigration journey from Guyana to the United Kingdom.
Dean noted the way the crowd sang along enthusiastically to her songs, priming them for her hit singles, “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” and “Man I Need.” Her last song of the night was “Dive,” hailing from her first album, as she sent audiences off with the sentiment of being open to giving and receiving love.