unforth | Warped Tour 2008

Yesterday,

mistress_sin and I met up in Scranton PA (about 2.5 hours away for me, just under an hour away for her) to go to Warped Tour!

However, first, this seems like a good opportunity to post about the Alkaline Trio concert I went to a couple of weeks ago, promised a longer post about, but never actually wrote about.

I saw Alkaline Trio once before live, at Warped Tour last year. They are, hands down, my favorite band. It's unusual for me to like bands instead of just songs - for me to say I like a band, I have to like 50% or more of their music - enough that I'd consider buying their albums - and the list is shockingly short of groups that actually fall into this category (others include the Beatles, Zebrahead, Eminem, Kiroro, Motion City Soundtrack (who I've just discovered will be on tour in September, it looks like I'll have to drive to Allentown, NJ!) and few others). Anyway, Alkaline Trio falls into the 90% or so range - I LOVE their music, and I don't even know why, though last night, on the drive home, I had an insight when the Beatles "And Your Bird Can Sing" came on and was followed immediately by a Trio song, and I noticed that really they're not as vastly different as you might think, there are distinct musical commonalities, so I guess my taste hasn't changed as much as I thought (I loved the Beatles when I was in 6th grade more than 15 years ago, and have steadily liked them less ever since).

Anyway, I was really looking forward to this concert. A band I'd never heard of named "The Fashion" opened, and I thought that they were pretty good and have been meaning to remember to look them up and find out a bit more about them. They were followed by American Steel, which I have heard of, and which didn't interest me much. Finally, the main event. I had staked out a very fine location, front of the balcony at the Fillmore, and from there I watched the whole thing, and could enjoy the audience on the dance floor getting way into it (including one point at which they played ring around the rosey, which was hilarious and inexplicable and prompted the band to comment that they'd never quite seen something like that before. ;) ). The people on the balcony were kind of a downer, though, which was a pity - most were relatively inert. I, on the other, was anything but inert, and was well rewarded for my effort - the girl next to me said one of the nicest things to me I've ever been told by a stranger, commenting that my enthusiasm was awesome and contagious, and the two of us joined forces to get way in to it, and it was a lot of fun - she really made my night more enjoyable, and I did the same for her, and it was the really neat, we bonded as much as one can in a crowded noisy room, and hugged at the end. No, there was nothing lesbian about this, by the by, she was there with her boyfriend. ;)

I had only one song I really, really wanted to hear - my favorite song of theirs, Warbrain. And I was rewarded - it was the 4th song they played. Not many of my secondary choices made the set list, but I didn't care - they have enough songs that I didn't want to worry about it that much, and I heard "the one!"

What really made the night was how in to it the audience was. There were probably around 500 people there, maybe less, but everyone was there because they loved AT, and the energy was AMAZING. Like, everyone was singing along, everyone was moving, everyone was in to it (okay, not everyone, but close enough for me). People sang along (including me!) so loudly that if the microphone missed a word, you could hardly tell because the audience filled it in. Everyone waved their arms in time to the beats and gestured emphatically at the key moments, because we all knew those moments. The only exceptions to this were the songs from their new album, out only two weeks before - of the five they played, I only knew two of them well, and it was easy to pick out which members of the audience (maybe a third in all) had the new album and had listened to it like crazy already. :)

I was so hyped up afterwards that the walk home was a breeze, and it's left a lingering happy mood and good taste ever since. I'm so glad I went.

Set List:
Calling All Skeletons - one of my favorites from the new album.
Nose Over Tail - oh man, I was SO happy they played this song, it's a relatively recent personal favorite.
I Lied My Face Off - I don't like this song as much as I used to, but it's one of the first songs of theirs I really liked.
Private Eye - Ditto the previous.
Blue Carolina - Another favorite.
In Vein - One of the new songs I didn't know as well.
I Found Away - Another of the new songs.
Warbrain - my absolute favorite song of theirs, I was so excited that they played it!
Armageddon - the first song of theirs I ever heard, off of the 2002 Warped Tour mix which I got way back in the day. I really liked it, and have become a fan as a result of hearing it.
Old School Reasons - one of theirs I rather like and was not expecting to hear.
Mercy Me - An older favorite.
Do You Wanna Know? - Another new one.
Dead and Broken - Another old favorite, I still think of this as the "Pirates of the Caribbean" song because of the lyrics and when I first heard it.
Help Me - The single off the new album.
Crawl - Another one I really like, I won!
For Your Lungs Only - One of the ones they played I don't like as much, and hence didn't know as well.
Goodbye Forever - Another I don't like as much.
This Could Be Love - A song I like so much that I belt out the weird and vaguely disgusting lyrics anyway. I don't know why. They did a fun call/response thing with it too, got all interactive with it.
Bleeder - One of the few old ones that I didn't know all the words too.
Radio - Okay, so my understanding is that they never play Radio live anymore, even though I can attest to the way that the audience always calls for it. Well, they played it. The audience sang along SO LOUD it was AWESOME.

In short, the band was in to it, the people were in to it, and I'm SO GLAD I went cause it was an amazing experience

Yesterday was a study in how lots of little things can go wrong, but despite that, I had a very nice day. First of all, I think that Warped Tour is a anti-camera zone. Last year, my camera was stolen from the bathroom after I accidentally left it there. This year, I forgot to put my good battery in the phone, and ended up using the bad one, which turned out to be dead anyway - I got four photos - and

mistress_sin's was drowned by the rain storm.

The trip to Scranton proved to be a long one. I took an 8:30 bus to Scranton, and we arrived quite late at 11:30, and then it took better than an hour to get to the venue due to traffic. The traffic was kind of fun, though, because people were all bored and excited and acting stupid.

There weren't that many bands that I wanted to see - I had noticed on the list before hand that I would be interested in Bouncing Souls and Reel Big Fish. While listening to the CD of the tour before hand, I found a few others I wanted to hear - Oreskaband, a Japanese ska band, and I was reminded about All Time Low, who I rather like. Upon arrival, we investigated the board of folks who were playing, and found that Reel Big Fish and All Time Low were playing at the same time. We wandered off to see Oreskaband, but wound up at the wrong stage and heard Pierce the Veil instead, who were alright.

Bands we Heard:
Street Dogs: A rather old school band. I thought they were alright. Turns out they sing a song I rather like, though they didn't play it while we were listening.
Pierce the Veil: Relatively hard core punk band. They were alright.
All Time Low: We heard part of one song, but then hustled off to hear Reel Big Fish. It's a pity, they were one of the main two bands I would have liked to see.
Reel Big Fish: Awesome in person. They played Beer and Take On Me, and Suburban Rhythm, which they had fun with, playing in a bunch of different styles, including country western and metal. They were really good showmen, which made it extra fun.
The Academy Is... : Not as good as the shrieking fan girls seemed to think.
Relient K: I rather liked them. I may have to try to find more of their music.

Anyway, the real adventure yesterday was the rain. While driving to the venue, we hit a storm, but it didn't reach the concert and we thought we'd be safe. Then, right after Reel Big Fish finished - right at 3 PM, a massive storm rolled in. Dark clouds, driving rain, lightning, thunder, even hail which smacked me and

mistress_sin in the head. It was really something - the walkways all flooded and everything. We were worried about our stuff, but there was no staying dry, and it was fascinating to watch the ways in which people reacted. Some where noble, such as the two teenagers who were escorting a child through the thick crowds; others were less so, shoving. Most of the girls, and many of the guys, shrieked and hid as fast as they could. Amazingly, almost no one seemed to have our reaction which was, simply put... "we're gonna get wet anyway, let's have fun!" We hid from it less than pretty much anyone else I saw, since we were already soaked to skin, and we played in puddles and such. The lightning was a little scary, but by the time we got to anywhere vaguely "safe" it was past. The only part of it that was really dangerous was a point where the crowd was really thick and barely moving before anyone figured out where to go. It was claustrophobically close and people were pushing without thinking. I was worried someone would fall and get crushed, but it doesn't seem to have happened - though there was at least one medical emergency, which I encountered when I went to use the bathroom. It rained for about 45 minutes over all, and all of the sets afterwards were shortened in an effort to get the show back on the right schedule.

So I spent the entire rest of the day drying off - my shoes are still wet - and for the most part this wasn't that unpleasant, except at Ruby Tuesdays, where we went for dinner. I ended up with a few pins and a CD, plus dinner (which was green light except for a couple bites of baked potato and a single french fry) and a small yogurt. It was nice, though, I was wearing a tank top and my bra showed really bad, and I got checked out a bit, which was rather flattering. :)

I had remembered what it was like, to go to Warped Tour, it's fun, but there's a distinct division between the audience and the crowd, because so many of the people who attend each artist are only vaguely fans or acquainted with the music only a little, which keeps the over all energy level down. This was much starker when contrasted with the AT show a couple of weeks ago, where the energy level was so high and everyone AND the band were way in to it. I noticed this again yesterday more starkly, when I was one of those tangential folks for the most part. There's not much more to it than that, really, just something I noticed. Makes me want to go to more smaller shows. I need to start seeing more live music.
But for now? I've got a grant to write, due in less than two weeks (zomg stress!), and writing to catch up on (the first time in ages when I might not hit weekly quotient!), and other work to do to! So I'm off!

Oh! I wanted to mention, apropos of very little, that the TV show "The Closer" pleased me immensely by having the main character suffer from PCOS, which I have. It blows my mind that a condition that 5 to 10% of women have is known by so few people, and it's great to see it in the media, spreading awareness.