Green Day, Social Distortion and more light up the second day of Florida’s massive rock …
Green Day, Social Distortion and more light up the second day of Florida’s massive rock festival Welcome to Rockville
Dan Slater
May 20, 2025
Live Reviews
Music
Daytona Beach
Florida
Green Day
Welcome to Rockville
Following (very) hot on the heels of its hectic opening day, the second twenty four hours at Welcome to Rockville promised to be a belter. Dan Slater is on ground in Daytona Beach, Florida to bring us the latest from the Green Day-headlined Friday night with this review.
Coming on earlier than their status deserves, Everclear‘s resilient chief singer/songwriter Art Alexakis knows how to keep a festival crowd happy. All but one of today’s cuts comes from their 2nd and 3rd albums, Sparkle and Fade and So Much for the Afterglow respectively. The former is 30 years old in 2025, and the band will be bringing an anniversary tour to Australia before the year is out. Your correspondent remembers missing the 20th anniversary Afterglow tour due to overseas commitments, but apparently the 30th is already around the corner so he needn’t have worried. Sometimes time can be kind as well as cruel.
Bowling for Soup singer Jaret Riddick won over the crowd differently, making up for their lack of recent hits with an entertaining comedy routine, but also giving up the goods in the form of “Girl All the Bad Guys Want”. One side effect of Rockville’s 90s-heavy line-up is that most of the younger attendees will only know a band’s biggest song, which is why most of said bands save it for last. This is true today of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus (“Face Down”), Lit (“My Own Worst Enemy”) and Jimmy Eat World (“The Middle”), although the latter have a very respectable back catalogue and I felt for singer Jim Adkins. He played himself bright red in the face through 2nd tier hits like “Sweetness” and “Bleed American”, but in the end the kids were only in it for “The Middle”.
All the preparation in the world by the festival organisers couldn’t counter such consistently high temperatures. Eight hours of exposure to 30+C on a bed of tarmac, with ear-splitting noise coming from every direction, might seem more like a punishment than a holiday, but not to 50,000 metalheads. Throughout the day, official reactions to the heat included free ice in the campground, and halving the price of water to $2 per bottle, although suddenly all bottles were being sold with the caps removed because someone was injured by a flying full bottle.
So thank God for Dive Bar. The coolest location on site is sponsored by iHeartRadio – an airconditioned oasis running metal karaoke from opening until midnight. In fact, Dive Bar is a fantastic place to hang out between bands, singing along to classic tunes being either butchered or belted, while trying to score one of the precious few stools. It’s so much fun, it’s tempting to stay in there all day, but with such talent lining up outside to play for us, it’d be rude to…
Prize for the most tattooed frontman of the weekend goes to Mike Ness (just edging ahead of Art Alexakis) of Social Distortion. All slicked-back hair, white vest over full tatt sleeves, minimal banter, and the obvious passion shown when reciting lyrics made him the epitome of cool. As the sun sank behind the crowd, Social D belted out the numbers, including their blistering version of “Ring of Fire”, probably the best in existence, and finishing with a rollicking “Dear Lover”. Best performance of the festival yet.
By contrast, Good Charlotte were heavy on the banter, playing up to their TV personalities and sounding surprised to discover there were people in the crowd who hadn’t seen them before. I hadn’t planned on it this time either but they were all over the video screens.
Headliners Green Day filled the Apex stage – not so much with their presence but with all the additional musicians required to achieve their stadium sound. It was incongruous to see the snotty punk trio on such a huge platform, and while Billie Joe Armstrong played the part very well (“When I say 1-2-3-4, I want you guys to go f*cking mad”), it just didn’t seem to become him. I guess they have to expand upon their oeuvre of three-minute, pop-punk gems to fill 90 minutes somehow. Fans lapped it up regardless, but the ground was certainly a lot emptier towards the end of their set than the beginning. But see the photo at the top of the article to see just how packed it was.
Green Day Setlist:
American Idiot
Holiday
Know Your Enemy
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
One Eyed Bastard
Longview
Welcome to Paradise
Hitchin’ a Ride
Brain Stew
St. Jimmy
Dilemma
21 Guns
Minority
Basket Case
She
When I Come Around
Wake Me Up When September Ends
Jesus of Suburbia
Bobby Sox
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
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This was Friday, 16th May – the second day of the four day Welcome to Rockville festival in Daytona Beach, FL. Stay tuned to the AU for more coverage on ground. Visit the official Welcome to Rockville website for more details about the event. Photos provided by Welcome to Rockville.
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