Warped Tour report
Warped Tour was awesome, hilarious, and exhausting. My ears are still ringing a little. Here are my comments on Warped, in text message form:
[12:45 pm] At Warped. Fascinating people-watching. Love the couple with matching green & purple hair. Damn, there's a lot of shitty tattoos on these kids.
[12:50 pm] It's like Where's Waldo got lost at a rave.
[02:00 pm] family force 5 is surprisingly awesome.
[04:00 pm] There is wrestling here for some reason, and one of the wrestlers is seriously wearing a hot pink g-string with a penguin on the front. No lie.
[04:34 pm] Made a positive ID on ex-30stm bassist Matt based on bee tattoos. ...what?
And then I was rocking out too hard to text anymore.
Winner of the Surprisingly Awesome award: Family Force 5. I'll readily admit that I am biased against Christian acts, but unless there was pre-show patter that we missed, the extend of FF5's Christian content was saying "God bless" at the end of their set. They were full-out the loudest act of the day, a bizarre mixture of hip-hop, New Wave-influenced electronica, and fucking THRASH METAL. Crazy-awesome.
Winner of the These Guys Should Break Big Soon award: The Audition. They are hella fun, the lead singer has a ton of charisma, and their songs are incredibly catchy. They were playing one of the small side stages, and their audience was spilling out well past the soundbooth and into the open space of the parking lot. (And OMG, one of their guitarists is a BABY. Seriously, he looks to be about 16. Totally adorable.)
Winner of the Best Set of the Day award: a tie between Motion City Soundtrack and Cobra Starship. MCS's set was, as usual, very tight and highly energetic. They had a good mixture of songs from the first two albums and a few of the peppier songs from the third album. The home town crowd was totally into it. And then there was Cobra Starship, with Gabe's insane amounts of charisma. Seriously, if music doesn't work out for him, Gabe has a bright future as a cult leader. (Kidding! Mostly.) The crowd was even more into it than the MCS set, throwing their fists into the air (and the Cobra handsign without Gabe even having to coach us), jumping up and down, singing along. Definitely the winner for the Getting the Crowd Into It award of the day. :DDD
Honestly, I felt kind of bad for The Academy Is... having to follow that set, because though William Beckett was singing his little heart out, the crowd clearly was just not as into it. Admittedly, I was starting to drag by that point, so that may have influenced my impression of the set as being a little lackluster. We were all pretty exhausted by that point, so we skipped out on Gym Class Heroes and took off for some much-needed real food and sleeeeeeeeeeeep.
[12:45 pm] At Warped. Fascinating people-watching. Love the couple with matching green & purple hair. Damn, there's a lot of shitty tattoos on these kids.
[12:50 pm] It's like Where's Waldo got lost at a rave.
[02:00 pm] family force 5 is surprisingly awesome.
[04:00 pm] There is wrestling here for some reason, and one of the wrestlers is seriously wearing a hot pink g-string with a penguin on the front. No lie.
[04:34 pm] Made a positive ID on ex-30stm bassist Matt based on bee tattoos. ...what?
And then I was rocking out too hard to text anymore.
Winner of the Surprisingly Awesome award: Family Force 5. I'll readily admit that I am biased against Christian acts, but unless there was pre-show patter that we missed, the extend of FF5's Christian content was saying "God bless" at the end of their set. They were full-out the loudest act of the day, a bizarre mixture of hip-hop, New Wave-influenced electronica, and fucking THRASH METAL. Crazy-awesome.
Winner of the These Guys Should Break Big Soon award: The Audition. They are hella fun, the lead singer has a ton of charisma, and their songs are incredibly catchy. They were playing one of the small side stages, and their audience was spilling out well past the soundbooth and into the open space of the parking lot. (And OMG, one of their guitarists is a BABY. Seriously, he looks to be about 16. Totally adorable.)
Winner of the Best Set of the Day award: a tie between Motion City Soundtrack and Cobra Starship. MCS's set was, as usual, very tight and highly energetic. They had a good mixture of songs from the first two albums and a few of the peppier songs from the third album. The home town crowd was totally into it. And then there was Cobra Starship, with Gabe's insane amounts of charisma. Seriously, if music doesn't work out for him, Gabe has a bright future as a cult leader. (Kidding! Mostly.) The crowd was even more into it than the MCS set, throwing their fists into the air (and the Cobra handsign without Gabe even having to coach us), jumping up and down, singing along. Definitely the winner for the Getting the Crowd Into It award of the day. :DDD
Honestly, I felt kind of bad for The Academy Is... having to follow that set, because though William Beckett was singing his little heart out, the crowd clearly was just not as into it. Admittedly, I was starting to drag by that point, so that may have influenced my impression of the set as being a little lackluster. We were all pretty exhausted by that point, so we skipped out on Gym Class Heroes and took off for some much-needed real food and sleeeeeeeeeeeep.