Fifteen years ago it was common to see parents standing outside Green Day concerts, likely oblivious to the mosh pits their little horrors were stirring up inside as they patiently waited to drive them home afterwards. These days, plenty of parents can be found inside the venues, excitedly dragging along their possibly embarrassed tykes for what may be their first concert.

And those rabid youngsters who propelled the punk-rock trio to their first brush with massive success? They still form Green Day’s core fan base. But the mosh pits and crowd-surfing are largely a thing of the past. After all, the scratches and bruises might be hard to explain to your workmates at the downtown accounting firm the next day.

Green Day don’t seem to have aged too much since they achieved mainstream fame with their 1994 album “Dookie.” Sure, singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt, both 37, no longer lob gobs of spit into each other’s mouths, and 36-year-old drummer Tre Cool has become quite rotund. But their energy level never flagged during a 2-3/4-hour concert at the Forum in Los Angeles on Tuesday, the final North American stop of their world tour.

“This is a rock ‘n’ roll show, not a f—in’ tea party,” Armstrong exhorted the sold-out crowd at one point. “You listen to Coldplay on your own f—in’ time.”

Green Day, supplemented by three touring musicians, are on the road through 2010 to promote “21st Century Breakdown,” a concept album that topped the charts in the United States and many other countries upon its release in May. The occasionally leaden disc follows a young couple through the minefield of contemporary life, offering up old punk canards about distrusting authority and consumerism.

During the show, Armstrong railed against modern trinkets like computers and cell phones — “We’ve got this moment, right now” — but such tirades likely fell on deaf ears while being immortalized on the hundreds of smartphones and digital cameras that illuminated the arena. His demand for the ouster of Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger received a warmer reception.

Crowd participation is traditionally a big part of the Green Day concert experience. A steady stream of fans were invited onto the stage to sing, play guitar or just dance, and Armstrong ventured deep into the loge seats early on while performing the single “Know Your Enemy.” The set list initially focused on tracks from the new album, and a mid-set string of golden oldies such as “Welcome to Paradise” and “Basket Case” generated a few rudimentary mosh pits. While it was Green Day’s last show on U.S. soil for some time, the band opted not to roll out too many rarities or surprises, disappointing some aficionados. Deep cuts included “Disappearing Boy” from their 1990 indie debut album “39/Smooth,” and “2000 Light Years Away,” from the 1992 follow-up “Kerplunk.” But both have been played throughout the tour. The acoustic “Macy’s Day Parade,” from the under-rated 2000 album “Warning” was a welcome addition, though.

Green Day will take a month off before launching the European leg in Lisbon on Sept. 28. Before then, a musical version of “American Idiot,” the band’s 2006 Grammy-winning smash, will premiere at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California on Sept. 4, and the threesome will perform at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York on Sept. 13.

Yes, you read it right.

Coldplay have made a short film to accompany their single “Strawberry Swing” that will be shown in UK cinemas from July 22 as a “supporting act” to Sacha Baron Cohen’s mockumentary “Bruno,” as well as to romance “The Proposal” starring Sandra Bullock. In it, frontman Chris Martin, dressed as an old-style superhero, battles a giant squirrel, whch is drawn entirely in chalk.

You can catch a brief trailer now.

The song will be released as a digital download on Sept. 14 and the short film will be “commercially available” on Aug. 3, according to the band’s record label. It has its premiere on July 20 on www.babelgum.com.

The band, which had the world’s biggest selling album in 2008 with “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends”, starts its UK stadium tour on September 12, kicking off in Manchester and hitting London’s Wembley Stadium on the 18 and 19.

Coldplay may have performed one of the greatest ever encores, or so says the charity which benefitted from the English rockers’ largesse last night.

The band performed at a double bill with the Killers late on Wednesday/early on Thursday at a gig following the BRITs music awards in London. While the BRITs was, to put it politely, a somewhat staid affair, the concert was much more rock’n'roll. The Killers stormed through a 45-minute set and the rowdy crowd of 2,000 loved every note. One downer was the nearly hour-long wait for Coldplay, which sucked some of the goodwill out of the air.

They warmed the crowd up again, however, with some older hits including “Yellow”, and then came the interesting bit.

First Coldplay provided the music for Take That’s Gary Barlow as he sang love ballad “Back for Good”, with Martin, one of the world’s biggest rock stars at the moment, on backing vocals. The humble gesture went down a treat. Then to round it all off, Coldplay were joined on stage by Barlow, The Killers, and none other than Bono to sing the finale (The Killers’ All These Things That I’ve Done).

The gig was held to raise money for War Child, a charity aiding child victims of war all over the world. On it’s Website, the charity is daring to suggest it may have been the “the greatest encore ever”.

Just one year after a skeletel and skittish Amy Winehouse was the main Grammys attraction (via satellite after getting out of rehab), Adele showed a cleaner, healthier and more confident side of British female pop singers at this year’s awards.

The 20-year-old with a big voice and a plus-size figure to match won the coveted Best New Artist, beating out fellow Brit girl Duffy and American teen heartthrobs Jonas Brothers. “Duffy, I love you, I think you are amazing,” Adele said in her acceptance speech. And then she nervously giggled as she said ”Jonas Brothers, I love you as well. ”

With country duo Sugarland, the London native performed her hit single “Chasing Pavements,” for which she won another Grammy for best female pop vocal performance. But she lost out on Record of the Year for that same tune from her debut album “19″ as fellow Brits Coldplay won for “Viva La Vida.” 

Duffy, the Welsh newcomer who sings in a 60s-soul style, missed on Best Artist, but did manage to take home Best Pop Vocal Album for “Rockferry.”

(Reuters photo of Adele with her Grammys by Mario Anzuoni)

Coldplay, Foo Fighters and Jennifer Hudson were among the pop stars paying tribute to Neil Diamond Friday night in Los Angeles to kick off Grammy weekend charity event, MusicCares Person of the Year.

The celebrity-studded gathering of 2,200 people at the L.A. Convention Center honored Diamond, 68, for his philanthropy, including large donations to relief efforts for Texas areas ravaged by Hurricane Ike.

Diamond thanked his children and grandchildren who forgave him for often leaving home to tour and work on “my little musical creations.” The singer-songwriter also thanked his mother for setting him on his musical path, getting him a guitar as a kid in Brooklyn

“When the Brooklyn Dodgers left Brooklyn, I was so depressed, my parents bought a guitar and paid it off $1 a week, for 10 weeks. It was a good investment, Mom. You made a life for me,” he said.

Hudson’s moving rendition of “Holly Holy” and Coldplay’s smooth version of Diamond’s “I’m A Believer,” made famous by the Monkees were among the highlighted performances showcasing Diamond’s 50-year body of work. The Jonas Brothers kicked off the show with “Forever in Blue Jeans.”

Diamond, himself, slow-danced with Faith Hill during their duet on “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” and then roused the crowd with “America” and his finale of “Sweet Caroline.”

Host Jimmy Kimmel called Diamond “one of the few Jews who looks good in sequins” riffing on Diamond’s penchant for sparkly clothes during the 1970s.

Recording Academy president Neil Portnow said he told Diamond, “welcome to your bar mitzvah” upon greeting him on Friday night and then wound up buying the singer/songwriter’s donated 1956 Thunderbird convertible at a live auction with a bid of $75,000. Portnow and Diamond said they planned to take a ride together.

OK, they may not be Prince in terms of their importance and popularity, but youthful band McFly are a pretty big deal in Britain, boasting seven number one singles and two chart-topping albums. So when they announce they will be giving their new album away for free with a Sunday newspaper, perhaps they should not be ignored.

The band is following Prince’s lead to the letter. The U.S. star also issued an album free with the Mail on Sunday last year in a move that enraged retailers and record labels, for obvious reasons, but which was seen as a commercial success when the tour he was promoting sold well.

McFly will release “Radio:ACTIVE” with the same newspaper on July 20 in order to lure more people to their live shows. It underlines the trend in pop music towards giving your music away for free, or at least selling it for a song, in order to make money through live performances, merchandising and advertising.

Prince has done it, Radiohead has done it with their “pay-as-much-as-you-want” scheme, Coldplay gave away a single from their latest album online — the list gets longer and longer. The reason? Selling music does not make enough money, due to online piracy and the popularity of other forms of entertainment like video games.

Artists are convinced they will be the winners in the long term as revenues from touring go on rising. Record labels are going to end up among the losers if the trend continues. But there is another potential loser. The music fan.

Industry executives, perhaps unsurprisingly, argue that the more music is given away for free, the less money music labels make, and the less money labels make, the less money they spend on discovering new talent.

Do you buy that argument? And will the trend towards cheaper music continue to the point where some or even all of it is free?

The little-known Creaky Boards just became a little less little known thanks to an accusation of copying against mega-band Coldplay via a Youtube posting.

The video cuts snippets from the Boards’ song “The Songs I Didn’t Write” (oh, the glorious irony of it all) with clips from Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”, the title track from the group’s new album which is selling fast in the UK. The posting even claims the band thought they spotted Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin in the crowd at a gig last year when they performed the song, hence making the link between the two.

The allegation prompted Coldplay to issue a blunt denial, saying that “Viva La Vida” was actually written seven months before the night in question.

The blogosphere has been busy with reactions to the accusations, with what seems to be a slight majority accusing the Boards of a cheap publicity stunt. Still, it may have worked. More than 320,000 visits have been made to the Youtube posting to date, about 1,000 times the number of clicks on other Creaky Boards’ contributions.

Chris Martin seems like the antithesis of a rock ‘n’ roll superstar, and therein lies his charm. On stage and in interviews, well some at least, he comes across as a thoroughly nice chap, self-depricating about his and his band’s achievements. Even when he walks out of interviews, it is more of a quiet strop than a storm of swear words and flying instruments.

Coldplay’s lead singer, more famous than he otherwise would be due to his marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow, is ultra-sensitive about how he, his band and their music are viewed, although on the strength of the reviews of their warm-up tour gig at Brixton Academy in London on Monday night, he need not worry.

“From the response here, Martin can stop reading his own press and relax. Coldplay are going to be okay,” wrote the Evening Standard’s David Smyth in a three-out-of-five star review. The band, promoting its new and some would say pompously-titled new album “Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends”, is now on the road, kicking off the tour in Barcelona on Tuesday.