I'll get to wrtiting about SCMX, but first, proper attention must be paid to Friday, which was itself a cool day.
I mentioned before that I had no intention of going to Warped Tour. I arrived shortly after 11, going the back route via the 905 and thus parking on the south side of the venue. I loaded up my flyers and walked all the way around the perimeter of the main Coors lot and stood near the entrance passing the small city of tour buses.
I've never really had experience "flyering" but I stood there with a smile, listening to my iPod while I tried to convince kids to take my flyers. There were some interesting things I noticed about the crowd going in. First, the youngest of the kids get to shows like that early. Later in the day, the older people came through, but the little kids, I mean even like 8 and 9 year olds, were glowing with enthusiasm and happily took my flyers, thanking me and whatnot. The older tween and teen kids have more attitude so there's a little more finessing that needs to happen when trying to get them to take something. They also have no idea how, though they probably try really hard to be unique, they're all very much the same. I know, I was there one day, too. I started noticing how prone to groupthink they were. If a group of 10 or 15 people passed me by, if the first person passing me took a flyer, everyone took a flyer, even stopping so that I could make sure each one got one. On the other hand, if that first person doesn't take the flyer, not one person behind them would, and by the trail end of the group, people would look away, acting like they couldn't see me or just couldn't be bothered. Anyway, I passed out flyers for an hour and a half or so, but when the ground became littered with them, I decided to call it quits. At that point the groupthink was working where people saw the flyers on the ground so the guilt is removed from them dumping on the ground.
I walked the walk back to my car and passed Tim Pyles. By the time I was at my car, he called and had a ticket for me, so I dropped off the flyers and made my way back around to meet him. We hung out in the "beer garden" for a little bit, which was actually the only activity that utilized any of portion of Coors Amphitheater. We wandered a bit, then made our way to watch Meg and Dia. I have read a lot of buzz about them, every one with some comparison to Tegan and Sara, and I guess I can see that comparison. Meg and Dia are a couple cute chicks from SLC and their crowd loved them. We weren't sure what kind of access our wristbands gave us, but it didn't take long to discover we were allowed in backstage areas, so we made our way and watched the band's set from onstage. When the girls busted out a cover of Blind Melon's "No Rain", they kinda won me over.
After their set, we caught a little bit of the Whiskey Dicks who had won a Battle of the Bands the night before that got them their spot.
After we went to the Marquee Club, which was a bar area that had $5 beers. It's called a "VIP" area, but we found out it was for LiveNation VIP wristbands, not the backstage ones we had, but thankfully some of our HOB guys were working it and gave us the proper credentials. This kinda ended up being the way our day went. Check out a band from backstage or sidestage, head back for a beer. Since I'd not planned on being there, I hadn't had any food before the show, so I was careful with the beer and kept loading up with the pretzels from the vip area.
We made our way to catch Buck-O-Nine and it was clear that they should've been on a larger stage for their home town crowd. They played a great mix of their older tracks, the ones that I grew up on back in the day, as well as some from their new album. Afterward we hung out on their bus for a while, getting a nice break from the sun. Shows like this are fun because so many of the bands are fans of the other bands. In this case, the guys were stoked that their bus was next to Adrian Young of No Doubt, though I still don't know why he was there.
Buck-O-Nine Setlist
After leaving the bus, we made our way to see Fishbone. We managed to get onstage for their performance, too, and they were as good as I always remembered. The crowds throughout the festival never stopped being crazily enthusiastic- crowdsurfing, slamming, moshing, screaming, dancing, what have you.
It was fun being in the backstage area, and were I 15, I probably would've been going nuts, but everyone has that hair, the tats, the band t-shirts, and everyone starts to look alike. Tim introduced me to Tim from As I Lay Dying while Flogging Molly hit the adjacent stage.
It was a day loaded with sun and fun and absolute mayhem. We caught about half the set of As I lay Dying, then wandered some more while Pepper played but by that point I was zonked. Eventually Tim ran into some more friends and headed back on their bus and I called it a day. I was bummed that I didn't stay for Pennywise and Bad Religion, but this old lady needed to get her ass home and some rest for the rest of the night, so I was on my way and home by 7:30. The rest of the night is for another post.
