EPTSo I just woke up this afternoon (and I have work in 2 and a half hours.. lovely) after a long sleep after going to Warped Tour in Scranton, PA yesterday.
Let me say this: even with all the shitty emo bands that littered the smaller stages, Warped Tour was well fucking worth the money. $40 got me in to see Anti-Flag, Less Than Jake, NOFX, Flogging Molly, Streetlight Manifesto and Bad Religion, along with I got to check out about 7 other bands. Not bad if you ask me.
The day started at 8 AM getting up. We got their at about 10:30, and by the time we shuttled over to the venue from the parking lot, it was pushing 10:45. They let us in rather quickly and we killed time for about an hour until Devil Wears Prada came onto the main stage. I stayed for about half their set then went to find food. $11 for a cheeseburger and 16 oz. Arizona later, I made my way back, and Chiodos was wrapping up their set. This is where the fun began.
My friend is a huge Chiodos fan, and had been moshing. I've been to a few punk concerts before, but never moshed or any of that shit. My friend comes over to me and says, "Come with me, fucker" and brings me to the one empty spot in the place where a circle pit had been earlier. All of the sudden he taps two big dudes on the shoulders and they turn around. He points to me and points up. They nod. Mind you, I don't know what exactly is going on yet. He turns to me.
"You're going crowd surfing. Good luck."
So they hoist me up and away I go. I should probably mention that this is my first time crowd surfing and I was trying to put on a bravado by not asking anything. Well.. I didn't jump. At all. So I just toppled face first into the crowd and smacked my face on the back of some dudes head. I get back up, another guy looks at me and is like "You wanna go back up?"
At this point I'm like "That was awesome, lets see if I can do this right now." so I'm just like "Fuck yeah!" Well.. I jumped, and these two dudes fucking LAUNCHED me. I actually didn't surf, I flew to the security guys who barely caught me before I hit the ground in front of the stage.
I get back to where my other friends are, and my friend was back there after himself surfing. He taps me on the shoulder and was like "Dude... you were supposed to jump!" while all my other friends are like "Dude.. we saw you FLYING!"
Chiodos wrapped up and I chilled a bit for Anti-Flag while they went to go see some other bands like Saosin. Anti-Flag I decided not to surf or mosh, just because it's more fun when you and a couple friends are there, not just you. But Anti-Flag rocked. Except for the wall of hugs shit. That was lame. But they had a SHITTON of people there. Probably the largest crowd there.
After Anti-Flag was 3O3 and Underoath, which I had no desire to see, so I wandered. The only thing I wanted to see off the main stage for a while was Alana Grace (<3) performing, so I caught that entire set (front and center the entire time), and got some signed stuff afterwords (CDs, sticker, guitar pick). After she wrapped up there was still about an hour for Less Than Jake, so I went to the pavillion and chilled out of the sun (at this point I had already gotten some wicked sunburn). I saw a bit of There For Tomorrow, who were meh, and then caught the very beginning of Millionaires set - god they SUCKED.
Less Than Jake was awesome. They played their good old shit and not the new poppy shit that they've put out. They also had a DILF-off between two older dudes (40s-50s) on stage. It was actually pretty funny. Less Than Jake also really kicked off the night sets well. They had a lot of people moving and pits and shit.
After that was NOFX, who weren't at their best. Don't get me wrong, I liked their set, but there were better sets that night. I crowdsurfed a bit again during NOFX (doing it RIGHT this time) and continued to make my sunburn worse.
Flogging Molly followed them, and I have to say, they had THE BEST show of the night. Anti-Flag probably had the most people, but Flogging Molly played all the right songs at all the right times, and the crowd energy was amazing. The circle pit was quite vicious. Also, while trying to surf during Flogging Molly, I got dropped onto the blacktop. That was surprisingly.. fun lol. Anyways, when they finished up, they were the first band I heard people chanting "ONE MORE SONG!" for all day.
Streetlight was off on a smaller stage before Bad Religion, and I decided to catch all of their set and then the end of Bad Religion's. Streetlight actually played a lot of their songs that I don't know, and the set was really short, so I was disappointed. Bad Religion also wasn't as good as I had hoped. The crowd was fairly dead, but probably because most of the kids there didn't know who they were and the other half of the crowd was like people in their 30s and 40s. Haha. Oh well.
Overall, I had a great time. I'll definitely go again next year if they have a lineup like this year and I'm around for it.
The singer/guitarist hurt his wrist the night before so he couldn't play the guitar at all. They bring someone else to play but he didn't know the songs (he had the sheets and the singer was hitting the pedal for him lol) so they only played the songs with the easiest riffs. That lead to a short show with only 3 songs from the latest album (which is the best ska album ever produced). I left that show disappointed that it was this short (they played maybe 30min instead of the usual 45min-1hour) but really eager to see a real streetlight show. Next time they are coming in Quebec I'm buying tickets for sure
