Warped Tour 2010

Scattered showers, smeared makeup, ear to ear smiles and grown men splashing in puddles. These were sights all too common at this year’s Warped Tour in San Antonio, Texas. People of every kind, size, ethnicity, style and age, gathered together to witness the bands whose lyrics they live by.

Upon arriving, my sister and I followed our ears and went straight to the Altec Lansing stage, where Breathe Carolina was playing a song off of their newest album, Hello Fascination. We didn’t dare try getting towards the front, for fear of getting trampled by any obsessed tweens and/or their parents (No offense, Breathe Carolina). It didn’t seem worth it anyways, and we decided to wait until a later crowd to risk that. After they finished their set, we wandered around in the big misty mess of people, stages and tents, until we stopped at the Truth bus where we played simon says and won some free shirts. We had only come to see Alkaline Trio, Eyes Set To Kill and Of Mice & Men, who were all three playing later in the day, so we continued the wandering, meeting new people and grabbing some other free trinkets along the way.

Much like many of the other people attending, we didn’t let the humidity and on and off condensation bother us one bit. The rest of the attendees, who were either unprepared or just not big enough fans to risk getting their hair a little wet, took shelter indoors whenever the rain decided to come down. It may have just been us, but my sister and I were more than accepting of the spontaneous showers. Rain, or one hundred and ten degree humidity? I’d chose rain every year. I can’t say the same for Of Mice & Men frontman, Jerry Roush, who encouraged the whole crowd to flip their birds at the sky while cursing mother nature, for giving us such “shitty” weather. This is the crowd where grown men were splashing around in the mud puddles, I might add. At a typical Warped experience, one would expect bikini tops and sunglasses to be as far as the eye can see, but this year, due to the hurricane on the coast, those were exchanged for umbrellas and plastic ponchos. Indoors, I even saw a man holding a tattered black umbrella in his fist as he ferociously charged towards the wall of death in the Bring Me The Horizon crowd. If that’s not brutal, I don’t know what is. After this set ended, Alkaline Trio came on, and the thousands of people who filled the stadium flooded out, leaving a small, cozy, intimate crowd. You could tell that every single person in there was a die-hard fan. Though there were obviously less than a hundred people, we all squished hard against the barricades as if it were a hundred thousand and we were the luckiest In the stadium. They played mostly new songs, but mixed in a couple classics like Sadie, Clavicle and Radio. This was the last show of the day, and it was the best I could have ever asked for. My sister caught frontman Matt Skiba’s glow in the dark dream catcher pick, and we exited triumphantly.

With the surprise showers, friendly faces and beautiful, mud-soaked crowds, I’d say that this was my best Warped Tour Experience yet. By the end of the day, my clothes were clean and sweat free (supposedly) from the rain, my feet were sore and my shoes were sloshing. My makeup was all washed away, much like many of the other girls (and boys) who stood strong up until the very end of the day. With new memories fresh in our minds and my new favorite band tees tied to my bag, we exited the grounds and drove home, only to wait another year.

Story time.

Picture this: It's well over one hundred degrees outside, you're surrounded by thousands of sweaty human beings from age five to what could be visually presumed as twenty times that. You drove three hours to get here, through the long Texas countryside, and you've finally made it. You're ten feet from the stage, and Circa Survive frontman Anthony Green walks out onto the massive, elaborate platform. The crowd erupts, and once In Fear And Faith begins, his fluid movements drive you to question if it is really him, or some mystical non-mortal being up there. You're finally here, Warped Tour '07, San Antonio, Texas.

If this was you, you must have been one of the hundreds of people like myself waiting to become a part of the religious experience that is seeing Circa Survive live. The movement of the audience was more like being in an ocean current than a typical concert crowd, and the fact that this was probably one of the most excruciatingly high-temperatured days i've seen didn't bother me one bit. The combination of the echoes of sound from all different stages with one of my favorite bands on stage right infront of me shot a quick thought through my head, this is what I want to my life to consist of. I have to be a part of this, somehow, whether i'm on stage, behind it, infront of it, it doesn't matter. This one hour set seemed to last for an eternity, and this performance landed a top spot in my mental hall of fame.

I've always been interested in people's most memorable concerts, and what factors etched them into their brains so thoroughly. It could be for good reasons or for bad, but whenever I get asked what my favorite concert was, this one always comes to mind. So I suppose I was lucky enough to have a good experience be my most memorable. I'm not saying that I've never been to a bad concert, but that's a whole other story entirely.