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Warped Tour 2007 Pomona 6.29

posted July 6, 2007, 8:34 pm | Log In To Post Comments | view comments (6)
Tags: Warped Tour 2007

I don't go to many concerts. Mostly local ones with the bands forcing a demo into my hands. However, this year, I dedicated an entire day, quite literally to going to a concert and seeing a good majority of my favorite bands and being enticed by the ones I formerly wished would for the love of God just break up. Talking about you, Warped Tour, with your easily taken posters taped to trashcans to Victory Records booths with Bayside sitting signing every Bayside ornament I could push underneath their sharpies to tackling a guy who was walking around offering free hugs (dude, sorry, hope your nose is ok, I think I may have hit you in it) to calling some scenester's skirt some ugly ballerina rag.

Yes, I went there--and aside from missing two acts I really wanted to see (Circa Survive more than Chiodos, if truth be told), it was all-around a good day. Confusing stage names kind of irritated me (Hurley Stage and Hurley.com Stage--yeah, genius Kevin Lyman). We arrive, late, but arrive nonetheless. We catch the end of The Matches playing "Papercut Skin" and I was highly impressed by their live performance. I also caught the beginning of Boys Like Girls before a friend and I ran to worship Anthony Raneri (Bayside). I almost saw a guy get choked out for landing on this other's guy girlfriend while crowd-surfing. The girlfriend's manmeat had this crazy idea of rescuing--making her also crowdsurf into the arms of a security guard ready to feel up any exposed breast like the fat perverts all steroid-using security guards are at these kind of festivals.

After Bayside, my friend and I searched around for Bayside posters (I managed to find one near the security guard area and was lucky to spot a perfectly good copy of Official Warped Tour Program lying on a pile of trash heaped into a cardboard box). Waiting in line until the signing, we discovered that Anthony was sick, but the rest of the band was quite polite and most especially Jack O'shea who has simply the most unique signature ever with a face that looks quite angry. He was a really swell guy. My friend and I then tent hopped around, stopping by the Absolutepunk.net and caught a excellent acoustic performance from Between the Trees (where were you Jon Lally, where?).

Walking through the tents, we managed to stroll by the Takeover Records tent--where we encountered a possibly sarcastic Ben Harper, formerly of Yellowcard. He kept saying that Yellowcard sucked now, which was quite humorous but his "just kidding's" didn't make me a believe. I caught the rerelease of their Where We Stand album and his new band's Hey Mike album. I got them both signed by him and the whole tent was apparently a member of Hey Mike and they signed it as well. We caught The Almost playing as well, which was pretty amazing. I'm not even the biggest fan but they have an amazing live atmosphere. Then we searched around for the stage Coheed and Cambria would be playing on and went into the craziest crowd ever: New Found Glory.

My friend heard them playing so we both rushed over there (for those curious, bring your girlfriends; my friend's made an excellent bagholder) and moved through the crowd and got as close as we could. I was stuck between my friend's elbow and some guy's fat. Just his fat, don't ask me where he was, I have no idea. I got to the point where I was really on the verge of passing out so my solution is to be exponentially badass and leap to the canopy of hands and roll, hop, and be thrown to the very front. Afterwards, we rushed to see Coheed and Cambria. They are very good live but some girl kept getting upset with us as we tried to move through the crowd to the front (we were trying to get a good spot for Paramore who was playing next). She ended up disappearing, I'm assuming she bitched one too many times and the people just stepped her face in (God willing). However, other than her, the crowd was quite dull and moving through was quite easy until we met a Paramore set's worst nightmare: setup.

Apparently, Paramore's road crew is somwhere between shit and a hard place, because they were five minutes late when they finished setting up and angering the fans of Paramore is a mortal sin. When they did start playing, I may have come closer to unconciousness than previous sets (including NFG). A fat girl's elbow annihilated my face and the boys themselves were more fanatical in their singing than the females (I so have no room to talk). However, I was right at the barriers for nearly the entire set. The entire set was cut short because they had a shitty road crew--and the fans--needless to say were seething as they trudged off to catch other sets. We wandered through the tents again and got a variety of things signed: Circa poster signed, Alesana sticker signed, NFG poster signed and a picture with the guitarist , and some Antagen demo signed.

We trekked to catch Scary Kids Scaring Kids live where they feasted us to some of the most powerful keyboards ever and a new song which was quite good. The last song both my friend and I crowd surfed to the front punching the air the entire time. It was a very good performance. What was funny, was afterwards, we stalked the bassist around the fairgrounds and finally caught him and gave the usual "Dude, you were amazing, love me, marry me, etc. me." Where he was modest and called us great (true, but still) and we hugged him (I touched a famous person). We went to the SKSK tent and watched a member Circa armwrestle fans, witnessing him lose and recieve tendonitis, according to him. We eventually caught a member of SKSK got him to sign a poster.

All in all, it was an excellent day and surpisingly I never pissed throughout the day--I drank at least 15 waterbottles. I was drenched in my sweat and about 1000 other people's sweat however. It was a very enjoyable day and I suggest regardless of your beliefs to go to a festival like this; there is just too much talent to be stubborn to miss it.

 

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