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© St. Petersburg Times, published May 20, 2002
Blink-182, Green Day and Jimmy Eat World. Three of today's rising punk scene's most popular artists. They met together on Tuesday at Tampa's Ice Palace as a stop on their Pop Disaster Tour 2002 before an audience of mostly teenage punks and an atmosphere full of anticipation of a great show.
Jimmy Eat World was the first onstage. The group was good, blasting out radio hits The Middle and Bleed American. However, the majority of the crowd stayed seated throughout most of the performance.
After Jimmy Eat World came the excitement and craziness of Billie Joe Armstrong, Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt, a.k.a. Green Day. Their set started with alarms, spotlights and a whole lot of crowd energy. The music was awesome and pretty much everyone in the arena was jumping around at the order of Billie Joe, who acted (and was treated) like king during the whole Green Day performance. The band played old and semi-new hits, including Basket Case, She, Long View, Warning and Minority. During an especially crowd-oriented part of the show, three audience members were dragged up from the mosh pit to play a song together, one on drums, one on bass and one on guitar. Their performance drove the crowd even wilder. At the end of the set, Tre ran through his drum set, Mike smashed his bass and Billie Joe played the popular Good Riddance on an acoustic guitar.
With only one performance left to go, the excitement in the audience was extreme. When Blink-182 (Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker) came onstage, the crowd went wild yet again. (I screamed at Tom, annoying most everyone around me.) They played many familiar songs, most off the CDs Enema of the State and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, and some from the older CDs: What's My Age Again?, Dumpweed, Carousel, Anthem Part Two and Adam's Song. Mark ran around Travis and his drum set most of the show, playing his bass while Tom sang and played guitar. Their musical skills were great, sounding good if not better than a CD. Tom and Mark's jokes and dancing, Tom's acoustic guitar solo, mixed with Travis' spinning drum solo over the mosh pit made Blink-182's performance alone worth the price of admission.
The whole show was one of the best concerts I think I'll ever see, and I definitely can't wait until I see Blink-182, Green Day or Jimmy Eat World again!
-- Adrienne Hundley, 12, is a seventh grader at Southside Fundamental Middle School in St. Petersburg.