First, Armstrong and his band mates in Green Day took the risk of making their first album in four years a rock

opera, and sure enough American Idiot became a chart topper.

Now, Green Day is taking American Idiot on the road and mixing it with an equal measure of arena gimmickry for a show that has more to do with the pleasures of pop and classic rock than an adherence to punkroots.

At U.S. Bank Arena Saturday night, Green Day wove cliches like confetti and cover songs and audience call-and-response into blocks of American Idiot material and older three-chord favorites.

When Armstrong conducted the audience in doing "the wave" in the middle of the night's first song, the title track of the new album, it was a sign of things to come - plenty of big-entertainment cheesiness.

But such arena moves didn't take away from following along to American Idiot's storyline whenever Green Day re-introduced it throughout the hour-and-40-minute show. And those moves served to enhance the crowd's excitement during the older, "punkier" hits.

The crowd also fell for covers of the Isley Brothers' "Shout" and Queen's "We Are the Champions," as the band - Tre Cool (drums), Mike Dirnt (bass) and three sidemen juggling guitars, keyboards and brass - flashed their versatility from one song to the next.

Green Day brought along a slice of this year's Warped Tour for show support, Sugarcult and New Found Glory, and each put on an energetic performance.

Sugarcult's 20-minute set was straight forward, satisfying power pop, hitting upon highlights from the Southern California band's new album Palm Trees and Power Lines. New Found Glory played 40 minutes of the type of goofy, whiny pop-punk that divides the punk's old-school fan base from the new school.

The show was the first since a law passed earlier this year reversed Cincinnati's 25-year ban on festival seating in response to 11 deaths at the 1979 Who concert at the then-Riverfront Coliseum. A 2002 Bruce Springsteen concert was granted a one-time exemption to the ban.

About 300 people had lined up at 5 p.m. when the doors opened, and filed in smoothly.

E-mail cv@fuse.net