rikibeth

You may have noticed that my inital post-concert check-in was a little short on the actual performances. This is what a day of baking your brains on asphalt will do. And during the week, when I come home from work, I nap.

So. Notes On The Music.

While this was not a performance, it deserves some description, because

eternaleponine and I spent some time working out what CDs we were bringing for the trip, and had agreed to split the time between entertaining

melovechocolate with some of her current favorites (which also happen to be some of

eternaleponine's favorite bands) and giving her an education in the history and roots of the stuff she enjoys now (this part was coming from my music collection).

First up was a Misfits compilation. I have been telling

melovechocolate for some months now that she was NOT getting Misfits shoelaces, glow-in-the-dark skulls or not, until she'd heard a little more of their music than just the My Chemical Romance cover of "Astro Zombies" and the Alkaline Trio cover of "Halloween."

You know what? I think I like the cover versions better. Or perhaps it's just that the Misfits are great as part of a more varied mix, but a whole CD's worth gets tedious.

eternaleponine was also, um, underwhelmed.

So to make everyone happy, the next one was My Chemical Romance's "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge." Much singing along. I think the kid knows the lyrics better than I do at this point.

Back to music education, and also to keeping the old lady doing the driving happy: The Clash's "London Calling."

eternaleponine fussed because it was originally a double album and so the disc was 65 minutes long instead of the more usual 40something, and so I promised her we'd skip some tracks. She declared "Lost in the Supermarket" boring; her reaction to "Rudie Can't Fail" was "Way to rip off "I Fought The Law," guys!" "Well, yeah, they also covered that," I pointed out. She liked the Social Distortion cover of "Death or Glory" better than the original. I don't think she even liked "Train in Vain." No complaints from

melovechocolate, though.

The next one up was Panic! At The Disco's "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out." The kid DEFINITELY knows the lyrics better than I do. I mean, I heard a track or two of theirs on samplers last year, said "hey, not bad," but it didn't grab me enough to chase down further.

eternaleponine put a few MORE of their tracks on mix discs she made, so I'd played them a fair amount, and, again, catchy stuff, but not "hey, give me MORE of this, please." Still, fun listening, and that brought us to my brother's house.

Main Stage Left (which was actually on the right)
The first band we watched was The Academy Is... Now, it is practically an axiom that while Emo Kids are readily identifiable, no band will admit to being an Emo Band. I have entertained myself by trying to determine what the distinguishing marks are of an Emo Band. So far, I think it has something to do with inexplicable, extraneous punctuation in the band name, lengthy song titles that don't always have much to do with the song, and boys wearing girl pants. And if that's the case, The Academy Is... is an emo band. They came on stage to "Afternoon Delight," which amused me a LOT. And they put on a good show. If they come by locally on a tour, I'd go out to see them again.

Volcom Stage (somewhere in the middle ground between the main stages, along with Vagrant and SmartPunk and the invariably terrible pink girl-ghetto stage)
Eighteen Visions was

eternaleponine's pick. I think because

devilmuse, her friend from college, worked on the album. Right. Anyway, I was not coming into it terribly impressed -- one song I'd heard was generic hard-rock-radio product, and another ("Broken Hearted") sounded EXACTLY like Bon Jovi. Two songs into the set,

melovechocolate pulled my head down to speak into my ear (this was the necessary method of communication all day, 'cause we were smart and wore earplugs) and said, "Mom, these guys SUCK." I had to agree. I told her if the next song wasn't "Broken Hearted," we could ditch, and check out a little of Halifax's show before Hellogoodbye started. So we did. Except we didn't get to see Halifax because the crowd was thick and the kid got claustrophobic. Which I think makes the third time I've missed them.

Hurley Stage (way the hell on the outskirts, in Porta Potty Land)
Hellogoodbye was

melovechocolate's favorite band on the tour. They are cute, fluffy pop, with a nice keyboard sound that reminds me of the Cars, and

eternaleponine doesn't like them at all, but I stayed through their entire set, because it made the kiddo happy.

Main Stage Left (where the water truck was)
Motion City Soundtrack was the next band. More of the bouncy pop style. I've been listening to "Everything is Alright" since it turned up on last year's Epitaph sampler (it's also on this year's... guess they don't believe in giving away more than one sample track?) and enjoying it a lot.

eternaleponine will probably threaten me with something dire if I say I have a hard time distinguishing these guys from The Academy Is... or Panic! At The Disco or even sometimes Fall Out Boy. This does not mean they're bad. Not at all. It just means they've very much got That Genre's Sound. I loved it, though, when the singer dedicated a song to Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black. I couldn't figure out WHY... but it was fun.

Main Stage Right (which was really on the left)
Less Than Jake had the distinction of being the only ska band on the full length of Warped Tour. So, since I love ska, I had to see them. Since I had the kiddo with me, there wasn't any chance I'd be in the pit, and it was just too hot for skanking anyway, but horn sections make me happy. So did their patter about "we're gonna SING you a song now. We've noticed that a lot of bands now don't SING... they just start out with a whiny intro about 'you broke my heart/you ****ing ****' and then 'AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!' but we're gonna SING you this next one..." Since that's how I feel about a lot of the stuff out there right now, well, it amused me.

Main Stage Left
It seemed like I spent the entire day shuttling back and forth between Main Stage Right and Main Stage Left. For Thursday? It wasn't worth it.

Main Stage Right
The Bouncing Souls were as good as I remembered them from the Bamboozle last year. I did not actually WATCH their set because I was standing in line to score a free Victory Records t-shirt and could hear them perfectly well from there... and now, reading about Hawthorne Heights' decision to leave that label and why, I'm not sure how much I'll be wearing said free T-shirt... but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Still, the experience of seeing a band from way at the back of the crowd at Warped is not an especially visually rich one, and it was loud enough that I took pity on another guy (older than me, I think) in the T-shirt line who was holding his ears, and tapped him on the arm and handed him my spare, never-worn pair of foam earplugs. "Taking thirty decibels right off the top makes a big difference," I told him. my good deed for the day, I guess.

melovechocolate was waiting patiently in line for the Hellogoodbye signing through the entire set -- also nearby, at the SanDisk tent. I did not ask her what she thought of the music. I am not sure she paid attention.

Volcom Stage
The kiddo hadn't made it to the front of the signing line yet by the end of the Bouncing Souls' set, so I went over to where

eternaleponine was watching Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. They weren't bad. They're supposed to be one of the up-and-coming bands right now, I guess. If that's so, we could do a lot worse.

eternaleponine has their CD. I'll have to see how it holds up on repeated listening. Their set was very, very short. And it finished exactly in time for us to collect the kiddo right after she got her CD signed. So that was good.

Hot Topic Stage (almost out to the Hurley area, right across from Political Punk Row)
This would be probably the fourth or fifth time I've seen High School Football Heroes by now. They were the first band I saw at the Bamboozle, by the simple expedient of "follow your ears to the horn section," and they've opened for other bands at LEAST twice at the Webster. They're a ska band. They're a small ska band. Ska bands have to REALLY suck to make me not like them. These guys do not suck. Therefore I like them. I have one of their CDs. I think they're a bit better live than they are on that CD, but they have a new one out, and I am considering buying it. They're going to be at the Webster on 8/20. If you like ska bands at all, you should go check them out.

By then we had had a long day, the food options were sucky, and the free water truck had run dry, so we didn't stick around for Joan Jett or Rise Against! or NOFX. Given what I have read about Fat Mike's behaviour this year, I'm starting to be glad we didn't catch NOFX, which is sad, because I love their songs, but... great songs with praiseworthy politics don't necessarily mean you're going to be a nice human being. :( Makes me even gladder that the guys from Alkaline Trio were so sweet and gracious at the meet & greet in April.

That was the music at Warped Tour. Next up: reviews of samplers I collected there! And there are a LOT.