After my experience at the Reel Big Fish/Less Than Jake show, I wasn't too excited about going to Warped Tour this year, though it never failed to be a blast in the past (the rhyme was not intended). In fact, I almost didn't go. The day before the show I was looking at the lineup online and noticed that many of the bands that I wanted to go see weren't even going to come to Virginia Beach. The ones left were Bad Religion, Pennywise, and Coheed and Cambria, and that didn't seem like enough to get my $30 worth. But, I recalled the great times had, and figured that with all the free CDs and Monster energy drinks I'd be drinking, I'd be getting my money's worth.
Thus, I went, and I must say, this show was nothing like the one I went to a little over a week before. The first band that I saw was Tiger Army, and since my eye was caught by the old guy playing punk on an upright bass, and since I had a desire to go ahead and start the day, I went into the pit on the last song. It was really lame. At first I thought it would be good because I saw the people in it moving around in a circle. This was the uniformity, I thought, that the other show was lacking, and it reminded me of my times at previous shows. Going in I realized that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be because it turned out that everyone was just running in a circle. This didn't really discourage me, though, because I figured that the fans were just not that into the moshing, which happened with Reggie and the Full Effect a few years ago (that was actually the worst sight that I had seen at a punk show, seeing that there was a HUGE hole and NO ONE was moshing... poor Reggie).
After that, my friends and I did the walk around and got the normal Warped Tour free merchandise: condoms, Monster, and free CDs. Usually I buy a shirt while I'm there, but since no one had any that were excellent, I settled on going to the Harley Davidson tent and doing a "Strong Man" contest with a hammer and bell, and ended up winning a shirt. To my surprise, it was a Bad Religion shirt with a small Harley logo on the back and no X-ed out crosses! Woohoo! In the end, I bought a couple buttons from a bad called "Angry Penguin" because I was looking for buttons, these were some of the only buttons around, and their logo was excellent:
To make a long review short, I went to Pennywise and Bad Religion and had a genuinely great time. I could mosh and crowd surf to my heart's desire without the guilt. These pits were the ones I had been looking for at the other show with uniform moshing instead of uniform skanking (seeing as these were punk bands, not ska). The participants were running and pushing each other without throwing themselves across the pit slamming into people, which was the case at the other show that really pissed me off. These bands sounded like what you'd expect them to, too without a loss of quality (with, you know, as much quality as you get out of punk music). I remember my friend Tony saying that he didn't expect the singer from Bad Religion to sound very good live, but after the show he recognized that he actually sounded really good, like he was supposed to.
And so we come to the real question and intent of this post: what was it that made these pits so much better than ones at the other concer Was it the fact that the concerts were different in genre? Was it the venue and the allowances by it? Or, was it the age groups involved in the pit? Quickly I'd overrule the first due to the fact that similar moshing techniques are supposed to be used for both genres. The second does have to do a little with it, since we are left to our own thing in the Amphitheatre, unlike the NorVA, which prohibited crowd surfing and anything but minute skanking. The real reason, I believe, that this these bands were successful, though, was that the age groups meshed well. Bad Religion and Pennywise have been around since the 80s, attracting fans from three different decades into their moshpit. This lets the experienced ones from the 80s and 90s lead the way, and then this decade's group has no choice but to follow, or else some big 40-year old bald guy will kick their ass. More people my age and older were in this pit while the high schoolers and pre-teens were off to the side listening, waiting for the tracks off of Guitar Hero to come on. In the end, though, to the ones that did participate, I hope you all learned something about moshing, from technique to manners. I was knocked down once at Pennywise and had my elbow all torn up on the concrete, got helped up immediately, and kept on going until I realized that I was bleeding on people, so I went to get patched up before Bad Religion, and kept on going when they started. That's how it works at these shows. If it were the other one that I started bleeding at, I would have stopped because it wouldn't have been worth it (in fact, I stopped really early during RBF then).
Warped Tour was overall a big success in revitalizing my hopes for the "art" of the punk show. I'm excited to go see more shows with older bands so that more of the veterans will show up with me and again teach the younger crowd how to properly mosh. As for the newer bands and the ones that are getting modern attention, I'm going to think twice about seeing them again. But as for Warped Tour? I'll be back next year.
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