Posted by Trevor begged for a ride to Warped Tour 09… and it’s summer… and a lot of my daytime plans fell through a couple weeks ago so I can’t really say i’m busy …
so I went.
Typical big-festival experience:
50% of the 70+ bans suck ass.
30% more are mediocre. Your ears don’t bleed or anything, but you wouldn’t pay to hear them.
15% are solid. No complaints. Not phenomenal, but fine.
5% are actually good and worth the price of your ticket.
Bands I saw & liked live (in order of best showmanship & entertainment value):
Chiodos (fantastic live show; great crowd)
Attack!Attack! (just crazy-nuts-fun)
Senses Fail (famous. well-played)
Streetlight Manifesto (they were ridiculously fun live — sax/trumpet/brass metal. Nuts)
and i caught a couple songs by Devil Wears Prada.
Saw some other stuff that sucked balls.
Best T-shirt slogans of the day:
“Shakespeare Hates Your Emo Poems”
“Fat is the New Black”
Trevor & I were wearing the only BTBAM shirts we saw that day. Sad.
Lori’s Rules for Concert Attendees
(based on an ever-growing pile of experience)
First off, I need to list the cardinal rules I learned from Nate during my early show experiences. They’ve kept me alive… LOL:
–Always wear closed-toed shoes.
–Prepare to be hotter than you’ve ever been before in your life, for a LONG TIME
–Expect to smell horrible, horrible smells.
–Put your wallet in your front pocket and check for it regularly.
–Buy your T-shirt early in the evening … but don’t wear it if it’s a gift for someone else. 
My additions:
1. Expect to be stomped on, spit on, sweated on, smashed, and completely violated during the concert experience. If you can’t handle any of those, you probably shouldn’t go.
2. Girls who weigh more than about 125 pounds shouldn’t crowd surf. Guys can be a little heavier, but not much. Otherwise, we (the crowd) WILL simply let your ass hit the ground because we’re tired of hauling your body weight over our heads during the show.
3. People who crowd-surf from the back should be shot. Or let fall. …..Really, people? The rest of us are facing forward and paying attention to the show. We’re not expecting your 140 pound body to land on our heads, or to get kicked in the neck by your flailing limbs as you lurch forward on your claim to concert fame.
4. Girlfriends who come to concerts only because they wanna be with their boyfriends generally leave the pit area crying and traumatized. The look of fear on their faces is predictable and hilarious. If you don’t like this kind of music, don’t come. Or at least don’t get up front and then freak out that you’re going to die. Your boyfriend really wants to enjoy the band. Yes, he likes the excuse to put his arm around you and feel you up … but in the end, he’d like to be able to listen to the music, not you whining about the experience.
5. Guys, if your girl doesn’t like your music, don’t fool yourself into thinking she’ll have a good time if she comes with you. She won’t. She’ll spend all her energy trying to pretend she’s enjoying this smelly, gross experience… but she isn’t… unless she’s really easy and you spend the whole night sucking face in a corner… which is pretty gross considering what all has probably happened in that same corner over the years. Ewwww. Do that at home. And leave her at home if she’s not a fan of metal/hxc/moshing music.
6. Smoking is a given. If you hate cigarettes, crowd, and loud noises, shows aren’t for you. And cigs smell hella lot better than BO & ass, which are your only other olfactory options at a rock show. Suck it up and drink more water while you’re there. Or pass out cigarettes you like to those around you (I’ve seriously considered doing it).
7. Why do people come to these concerts in flip flops? I haven’t met a pair of flip flops yet that can handle 6 straight hours of standing plus jumping and kicking and getting stomped on and smashing into other people’s feet. We saw bloody body parts at Warped Tour….. plenty of damaged toenails. And a guy who cracked his skull open in a mosh pit and started seizing. … That was scary. Had nothing to do w/ flip flops though.
Notable Sights at Warped Tour 09:
(no particular order)
–too many plus-sized girls in bikinis. Bikinis shouldn’t be produced in anything above a size 8. We don’t want to see your fat. I’m sorry. You can wear something really flattering instead…. Go find it.
–lots of fathers who obviously don’t like the music but came with their kids anyway. They all looked so plumb tired by the end!! lol
–plenty of odd hair colors. And the occasional kick-ass mohawk or other interesting hairstyle
–lots of Tshirts sporting the word f*ck. I’m pretty sure that word has lost its shock value for anyone under the age of 30.
–billions of Devil Wears Prada shirts. I think a lot of WT kids don’t actually like metal or hxc. They like one band; maybe two … and that makes them feel all kickass and scary…. *coughs*
–really, really nice people. For real. Every crowd has its jerks, but I generally like the people who go to shows
–tons of really bad tattoos. “Bad” as in poorly drawn; poorly placed. The 10% that are awesome are REALLY awesome though.
I hope to preserve my concert energy for this fall. Muse/U2 on Oct 6th is gonna be so cool–can’t wait! I’m hopingBTBAM will do their CD release in Charlotte again in late October/early November, hopefully NOT when we’re with the high schoolers in Boston. (That would be so ironically horrific. lol) Thrice releases their album (physical version) on Oct 13th…. would be nice to see them live sometime. And I’d like another round of Opeth– please sir, can I have some more? lol
Just:Words 