Warped Tour 2010

Yesterday Skyler, his friends Michael and Michael and I drove to Denver to check out Warped Tour 2010. For those of you who aren't as hip as me, Warped Tour is a big traveling music festival featuring lots of punk and hardcore and whatnot bands. 7 stages were set up in the parking lots by Invesco Field, and were surrounded by tens of thousands of teenagers with elaborate hair.

When we got there the first show we went to was Anti-Flag at the main stage. The show was awesome. Chris #2, the bass player, crowd surfed on me, and for the last song of the set Pat set up his drums on the ground in front of the stage, and I got be there right next to him. They played a bunch of my favorite songs, and it was a ton of fun.

After Anti-Flag we had a couple of hours to kill before Dropkick Murphys went on, so we wandered around, saw a few smaller bands, one of which tossed me a t-shirt, and slam danced in a facetious manner. It was crazy hot, and I ended up spending 20 bucks on water. ($4 a bottle...) We caught part of The Casualties' set, and while I'm not really a fan they were entertaining and their hair was cool.

After The Casualties we headed back to the main stage for Dropkick Murphys, and man, it was insane. The band was awesome, they totally ripped. During Buried Alive, one of my favorite DKM tunes, Al Barr, the singer, and I made eye contact for like 6 seconds while we shouted the lyrics at each other. It was magical. The pit was absolutely crazy, though, and was filled with a bunch of drunk, middle aged, overweight bald dudes with goatees who felt that it was their personal duty to piss off everybody around them. I'm not generally a violent person, but I came close to fighting one of them several times. Towards the end of the set a guy next to me boosted me up and I crowd surfed away from the drunk dudes. They took me up to the stage and for a second I was 3 feet away from Ken Casey, the bass player. I thought about jumping up there, but I didn't feel like tangling with security.

During Dropkick Murphys I got separated from Skyler and the Michaels, so I pushed my way back to the stage for Alkaline Trio. They totally rocked, too, and they crowd wasn't a bunch of morons like DKM's was. After their set I found the kids and they all wanted to go home, so I didn't get to see Pennywise or Every Time I Die. Oh well, it was still a blast.

10 days 'till I leave.