WINNIPEG - They may be a little older and wiser but Green Day are still just a bunch of snotty punks at heart.

Green Day's latest album, American Idiot, is a mature, coming-of-age concept album, but in a live setting the trio are a flat-out party band not ashamed to moon a crowd or go for cheap applause with a guy in a pink bunny suit.

The California group took the stage at the MTS Centre shortly after 8 p.m. last night in front of a wildly enthusiastic crowd of 13,000. Vocalist-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool stuck to material off last year's multi-platinum American Idiot for the first portion of the set, setting off a couple of flash bombs to end the nine-minute epic Jesus of Suburbia and unveiling a LCD display with the band's name on it, the only stage prop other than a satellite stage and occasional blasts of pyro.

The band expanded to a six-piece with an extra guitarist and keyboardist for Are We the Waiting before slimming back down for Longview from their 1994 breakthrough Dookie.

Most of their singles from the 1990s followed, with security in front of the stage kept busy pulling crowd surfers over the barricade during Hitching a Ride, Brain Stew, Jaded, Basketcase and She. But there was no repeat of their 1995 concert at the Winnipeg Arena, when the lower-bowl fans overwhelmed the guards and rushed the floor.

Green Day have fallen into the annoying arena-rock habit of slipping the city's name into a song, having different parts of the arena to cheer on cue and asking everyone to get louder.

It sometimes felt like a pep rally, with the loud crowd of teens and 20-somethings screaming for everything and obeying when Armstrong asked them to "sing loud enough for every redneck in America to hear."

One of the highlights of the show was the band's tradition of inviting fans from the floor to play the Operation Ivy song Knowledge. The 15-year-old chosen to play guitar dove off the drum riser and slid on his knees. As a bonus, he got to keep the guitar.

Following an hour-and-a-half main set the band came back for an encore featuring Boulevard of Broken Dreams and an unlikely cover of Queen's We Are the Champions, which turned into a giant sing-along and ended with confetti being shot into the crowd. The night ended quietly, with Armstrong alone on stage to sing the ballad Good Riddance.

New Jersey quintet My Chemical Romance got the crowed riled up for the headliners with a half-hour set of emotionally charged, hard-edged melodic punk from their major label debut Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge.