Warped Tour '11 Highlights...

Kevin Lyman discussion!

Warped Tour 2011 was different from any Warped I've been to in the past. Instead of attending the Uniondale show I went to the Hartford CT event, which ended up being much easier to deal with. Let me start off by saying that Hartford has a closed arena stage thats split in half to rotate bands. Thats right.. CLOSED.. no sun beating down on you.. SEATS you can relax in and cool off.. what an amazing concept. Dear Uniondale show, please work on this feature. Besides that I got to listen to Kevin Lyman speak about to music industry and how he got his start. He gave the group of 40+ people great advice on how to get yourself more involved if this is an area you wish to pursue.

 Another great thing about Warped is all the new music you can find. People starting bands are always lurking around trying to sell their CDs for five bucks. Hell, I bought the Bad Rabbits CD for $1! Talk about a bargain. PS. those guys put on a great show.

New Music!

30h3!

 One crowd that never disappoints is the 3oh3! crowd. This crowd gets crazy when those two dudes start singing on stage. I got a pretty great picture with my iPhone of the massive crowd doing the 3oh3! hand symbol.. what is that called anyway?.. I've got no idea.

Later on in the day I saw Simple Plan, Relient K, There for Tomorrow, and Dance Gavin Dance. All of which put on great shows. I saw a couple of band I've never heard of before, which is the beauty of Warped Tour. You spend about 70 bucks for a ticket and you can see over 50 bands in a day..if you see one song from each band. The set is broken down so perfectly that its possible to see all your favorites in one day.

Warped's scheduling coordinator is clever in that they make the more popular bands go on last. This makes people come early in the day and stay late to see those final bands. I am one of those people. Paramore played on select tour dates, which was my main reason for choosing CT over NY. They went on at about 8:00 and played for 45 minutes. The Paramore crowd was huge, and so was the energy in the environment. I could feel the vibrations from the music as I sang along to some of my all time favorite songs. (okay.. I'm a nerd but I embrace it) Front woman Hayley Williams spoke about the bands recent drama. She spoke as if their soap opera story was common knowledge, which in this scene it probably was. Fans cheered as Williams proclaimed she and her band mates Taylor York and Jeremy Davis are in it for the long haul. The band recently wrote and recorded a new song for the Transformers soundtrack, which they performed as the penultimate song of their set.

In the end I thought Warped Tour was a great event. During the discussion with Lyman he mentioned this year is the year to go out and see new bands that you've never seen before. He was admin about picking certain bands that deserve to be on the tour. He was passionate about getting old bands to return to the scene. Mr. Lyman, I must say, you have succeeded beautifully.