The Warped Tour 2007 rundown

Lucky sevens meet the lucky 13 at Utah's State Fairgrounds


Whether the “warped” in the name Vans Warped Tour refers to the warped music of the bands that join the tour each year, the warped individuals who attend the all-day, outdoor event or the speed at which the tour moves (large numbers of bands playing a large number of cities in a short amount of time), it definitely lived up to its name as it made it’s annual stop to the Utah State Fair Park last Saturday.
This year marks the “lucky” thirteenth anniversary for the tour, which, ironically, came to Salt Lake City on July 7, the day referred to by the superstitious as the “lucky sevens.” This year the luck of the two numbers must have been with tour, because this year it was fantastic.
Starting at 11 o’clock and not ending until later in the evening, everyone flooding the fairgrounds came prepared for a long, hot day of music, sun and free stuff.
I was one of those in attendance. Since the tour is too large to report on the entire event, I have chronicled my personal Warped Tour 2007 experience in order to give some insight on the spectacle:

Though not having extensive experience with the tour, I am not new to the Warped Tour experience either. In 2004 a number of excellent bands came with the tour to Utah, but the experience that year as a whole was severely bogged down by anti-Bush speeches that kept the actual music to a minimum. 2005, though stacked with excellent performers, lacked in quality of performances. It seemed everyone was either plowed or half asleep when they took the stage.
This year was different. Even though a lot of the bands I caught on the tour this year had come either in ’04 or ’05, the actual performances of those bands I saw were much more up to par than those of the previous two tours I had been to.
For starters, Yellowcard came in 2004, and though they put on an excellent show then, they killed the excitement of the performance with political banter. But they did get an excellent circle pit going. This year Yellowcard cut the political fat out of their performance and got down to the essentials – playing their music. The only difference is they had a larger grab bag of songs to pull from, and the circle pit was superior to that of three years ago.
The Starting Line came around this year, primarily in support of their new album, Direction, which hits shelves July 31. But their performance was light years better than two years ago when they came, again, in support of a new album, Based on a True Story. That performance was terrible. Riddled with bad timing and Kenny Vassoli not only singing bad but dancing bad as well, I didn’t expect much from The Starting Line this year. But I was pleasantly surprised as Vassoli and crew pulled of a magnificent showing of songs from every part of their discography and improved dance moves from Vassoli.
Also on the tour this year was New Found Glory, who have never failed to impress. This time was no exception. The set, even with a shift in weather creating a disturbance with equipment, was incredible, including a taste of what to expect from From the Screen to Your Stereo Part 2, a punked up version of Sixpence None the Richer’s movie hit, “Kiss Me.” The record is an excellent addition the summer of sequels syndrome at the box office. One band I was not super impressed with this year was Coheed & Cambria. Between the time it took them to set up all their fancy little banners and all of the technical difficulties they kept apologizing for between every song, they only got five songs in before they were done for the day. The set was lack luster and, given the massive crowd that gathered (one of the biggest on the day) I felt they were extremely anticlimactic this go-round.
Other bands that did an incredible job this year included Anberlin, Amber Pacific, Circa Survive and Boys Like Girls. Also doing a great job were the people handing out free stuff. My backpack was pretty full with stickers, magazines, posters and sampler CDs.
And not to be forgotten, Provo's very own The New Nervous was even in action at the tour this year, playing in the Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands stage. They were great, though I only caught the tail end of their set. Much better than the bands (My American Heart, Throwdown) I saw and heard follow them on that same stage.
There were other great bands at the show this year, but due to conflicting time schedules, walking from stage to stage, trying to see what was going on in the freak show tent in the middle of the park and having to leave early, I was not able to catch them all. But what I did see this year renewed my faith in the Vans Warped Tour. Whether it was because it was their lucky number 13, the lucky date or just a slew of talented bands actually trying to put on a good show this year, the end result was success.

Gosh Dangit!

Expect some posts chronicling Warped Tour 2007's stop at the Utah State Fairgrounds next week. This week I will be off enjoying family and fireworks. Until then, read my review of the Honda Civic Tour 2007 and enjoy:

Honda Civic Tour 2007 brings the noise to Salt Lake City

Fall Out Boy and guests pull off magnificent performance at the E Center

The Honda Civic Tour stopped in Utah on the last leg of its 2007 national tour. The Honda Civic Tour has been touring the nation annually since 2001 with such headlining acts as Blink-182, Incubus, Black Eyed Peas and Dashboard Confessional.

This year pop-punk outfit Fall Out Boy took the reigns as the headliners for the tour, which showcased custom Civics and promoted environmental awareness and alternative fuel choice through its hybrid models.

Through the luck of the draw from an online contest, hosted by 1,000 Clever Lines, I was able to get in on the event, enjoy some excellent seats with my wife, thanks again to 1,000 Clever Lines’ giveaway, and catch great performances from Fall Out Boy, +44, The Academy Is…, Paul Wall and Cobra Starship.

The show kicked off around 6 p.m. at the E Center in West Valley City. Cobra Starship, the new band of Midtown’s Gabe Saporta, got things going, playing the better half of their debut album, While the City Sleeps, We Rule the Streets.
With songs like “It’s Amateur Night at the Apollo Creed!” and “The Church of Hot Addiction,” Saporta, who sported some of his killer new dance moves, and crew started the night off right, ending with the anthem from that one movie about snakes on planes, “Bring It (Snakes On a Plane),” joined on stage by Paul Wall and William Beckett (The Academy Is…), who also appeared on the studio version of the song and the video.

Paul Wall switched things up a bit, being the only rap act on the tour. The Houston performer showed off his skills and grills, for which he is most famous, while supporting his new album Get Money – Stay True. Though a talented artist, given the circumstances of the night, most of the crowd was roaming the hallways of the E Center instead of enjoying Wall’s beats and rhymes.
The seats filled again after Wall as Chicago pop-rockers The Academy Is… brought the evening into its prime. Starting of with the single “The Phrase That Pays,” William Beckett and crew kept the crowd excited sampling pretty evenly from their 2005 release, Almost Here, and their new record, Santi.

The highlight of The Academy Is…’ performance was the last three songs, starting out with the ballad “Everything We Had,” which had cell phones and lighters dotting the arena like fireflies in an open field at night, and bringing back the power with “We’ve Got a Big Mess on Our Hands” and “Checkmarks.”

The better part of 2001’s Honda Civic Tour headliners, Blink-182, joined this year’s tour under the new name +44. Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker’s new band, which gets its name from the United Kingdom’s phone code, played an incredible set, though most Blink-182 diehards were left with a lacking feeling from the show.

Hoppus’ antics felt very familiar to a Blink-182 performance with his skipping around the stage and making crass remarks throughout the set, but with songs like “Lycanthrope” and “Baby Come On,” a duet with Victoria Asher (keytarist for Cobra Starship) on “Make You Smile” and the performances by guitarists Shane Gallagher (The Nervous Return) and Craig Fairbaugh (Transplants), +44 is definitely out to separate itself from comparisons.

Even so, +44 fed those who compare the two bands something for thought, playing a version of “The Rock Show” which sounded almost identical to a Blink-182 performance of the song. Hoppus brought back the point that it’s all about him this time ending the set with the single “When Your Heart Stops Beating” and dragging out the ending of the song in classic rock star fashion then, after demanding more applause he, alone on stage, played a little improve bass solo and took a bow.

After the Mark and Travis show, headliners Fall Out Boy literally exploded onto the stage, performing the opening track, “Thriller,” to their new album, Infinity On High. Then, after playing “Grand Theft Autumn” (which Pete Wentz referred to as the national anthem) and being joined on stage by Gabe Saporta, they played a partial cover of Akon’s “Don’t Matter.”

The Chicago-based rockers’ set fairly consistently switched between the new release, 2005’s From Under the Cork Tree and 2003’s Take This to Your Grave. Except when they, “for the sake of the parents” in attendance, covered Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” in fine fashion. The cover was spot on musically and Patrick Stump’s lyrical stylings to the King of Pop’s classic were excellent.

After Stump performed a piano solo version of “Golden” and the full band returned for “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s An Arms Race,” they ran off stage. Then the host of the evening, Dirty, came on stage and set up a batting cage. He took a few pitches from a pitching machine to the chest, and then got the crowd chanting for an encore.
The band returned with “Thnks fr th Mmrs” and played a bait-and-switch for “Dance, Dance” as they moved Andy Hurley and his drums to the front, Stump halfway up the stage ramps and Wentz and Joe Trohman went into two glass compartments on either side of the door. A few moments later Trohman and Wentz reappeared on the top of a custom Honda Civic at on the other side of the arena and Dirty popped out of the center of the stage where the band first appeared, dancing.

Following “Dance, Dance” Hurley performed an intense drum solo, giving Trohman and Wentz enough time to get back to the stage, and the band ended the evening by inviting everyone down onto the floor for confetti and “Saturday.”

Full of fireworks, streamers, confetti and other pyrotechnics, Fall Out Boy put on a very entertaining show, as did the other guests with their stage presence. The Honda Civic Tour rolled out of Utah for 2007, having had a successful evening on the final leg of this year’s trip.

Wolf Parade frontman takes detour through Plague Park

This article also appearing in the June 18 edition of The College Times.

Boeckner’s Handsome Furs make “sparse and repetitive” anthemic

The latest installment of side projects off-shooting from the band Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs, released their debut full-length album on Sub Pop Records recently.
Plague Park hit shelves May 22. It sounds very similar to a Wolf Parade album, that is, if Wolf Parade was stripped and pieced back together consisting only of vocalist and guitarist Dan Boeckner, his fiancée, Alexei Perry, and a drum machine.

The concept behind the project, according to their website, is to be “Dark and minimal while noisy and earnest … as sparse and repetitive as possible with the help of little more than vocals, guitars and a drum machine.”

On first listen the album as a whole feels kind of lagging and bleak, but, given what the duo has set out to accomplish, they’ve achieved their goal with interesting results. Results that create a growing album that becomes more anthemic with each additional spin.

This growing power seems due largely in part to similarities to Apologies to the Queen Mary. Boeckner’s familiar, howling vocals on Plague Park feel reminiscent to “Modern World” and “Same Ghost Every Night.” It’s like he is using this new direction with Handsome Furs to improve and expound on the driving, haunting power that these two outstanding tracks provided to Wolf Parade’s LP.

Picking a couple stand-out tracks out from Plague Park is difficult given the “sparse and repetitive” nature of the album as a whole, but “Handsome Furs Hate This City” and “Dumb Animals” tend to stick out to most who venture into Plague Park.

This debut certainly mirrors the purpose of the project. The nine-track disc is bound by a very steady rhythm and tone. Each track bears some kind of originality while similarities envelope every stripped, machine-driven track.

Plague Park, though perhaps not super impressive on the first go-round, is a worthy effort from this duo, the newest addition to the pack of Wolf Parade sides.

D.A.N.C.E. video and song

I'm sure most everyone has seen this video by now, but it's such a good video for a good song.

I'm currently working out the details of some shows and finishing up an older show review and a CD review.