Exchanging Sunshine...

What a weekend... things have been crazy for the last week out here in the plastic world of rock. Last week I was in the office till 7pm every night, then Friday kicked off the Lucky 13th Warped Tour, which meant absolute MADNESS.

Friday morning I drove to Pomona with the other intern in her car packed full of Immortal Records and Scary Kids Scaring Kids merch. I was on the phone with my boss every ten minutes on the way there, either because we were lost or he was checking in on us, then when we arrived guest services slapped wristbands on us and the mayhem commenced.
The Immortal merch guy called me and we met him in the bus lot, where we loaded the extra t-shirts and CDs into someone else's trailer (on rehearsal night our band's trailer broke, so now they are sharing with some random band, leading my boss to joke that he is going to quit our label and form his own, called Eleventh Hour Records) and then schlepped to the Immortal tent. Once we arrived, the merch guy left to get lunch, and I was left manning the tent. Flashback to two summers ago, when I spent every evening selling another band's merch to middle-schoolers who rocked my world. But this is what I love to do, so rock on. I could hear Boys Like Girls playing from the Hurley stage behind me, and pretty soon Yellowcard took the stage in front of the tent, announcing that it was 107degrees out. Two years ago when I was selling merch and all around being a groupie, when we had weather like that my boss would make us all drink two glasses of water at breakfast before we were allowed to get up from the table. Warped Tour 2007 didn't even have free water, even for employees. BUT Monster energy drinks were there for free, leading to every college student's worst nightmare: do I drink a Monster, which will keep me headbanging for the rest of the day, cool me down, AND is free? Or do I pay five dollars for a small bottle of water? I started out with Monsters, but pretty soon both me and the merch guy were shaking from all the sugar and caffeine and the significant dearth of water in us. There are no words for how hot 107degrees in the California desert is... Oh, yes, I've been hotter, but picture it: we're on a DIRT fairground in the middle of the desert; there are 11,000 kids there dressed in head-to-toe black; hardly any water kiosks to be found, and the ones that ARE still around are almost out of $5 bottles, and now the desert wind is picking up, throwing dust all over our sweaty bodies. I sweated through my tank top while carrying the shirts to the tent and spent the rest of the day slippery. My hair was soaked from the roots downward, my knees stained from kneeling on the ground to fold shirts, and I was loving every minute. Later on when I quit sweating (probably from dehydration, not because it had cooled off) I could feel the crust of dirt on me from the wind. My sunglasses were coated in dust, I was vaguely pink from the sun, and I had a blast. We were all sore from jumping around in mosh pits (I got a few breaks during the day and managed to see most of New Found Glory's set, a few Tiger Army songs until the dust picked up and literally obscured the band, the tail of Anberlin's set AND the entire Scary Kids Scaring Kids show), standing in the hot sun all day, and not eating... well... anything, but it was awesome.
Watching Scary Kids was amazing-- they are signed to the label I work for, and they put on a really fun show. The keyboardist is the most fun to watch; since there are only keyboard parts during the intro to the songs, the rest of the time he spends dancing onstage with mane-like hair, and at the end of the show he grabbed the neckline of his t-shirt and ripped it the shirt off, literally, straight down the front. Pretty much it was amazing.
My boss found out I wanted to come back and offered me the last pass he had for Saturday's show in Ventura, about an hour and a half outside Los Angeles, so Saturday morning I woke up early, dressed in a fresh wifebeater and different shorts, and headed off to Ventura. When I arrived, my boss met me at the gate with an all-access sticker pass and a fresh wristband, which got me in even more places than the band from Friday. I wasn't stopped anywhere I tried to go all day long, which was awesome. Eventually I ended up in the bus area looking for a bathroom that WASN'T a port-a-potty... The bus pen at Warped Tour is almost as big as the grounds for Warped Tour-- 50 bands to transport; each of those bands has a tent with a staff that doesn't ride the band's bus; every record label represented has a tent, and then there are the miscellaneous tents, for skateboard companies, magazines, clothing lines, etc., and don't forget about the trucks for equipment-- there are FIVE stages going at all times on the tour. All the big bands hang out in the bus area until it's time for their set, which I knew, but really all I cared about was finding a [semi]clean bathroom. I ran into the lead singer of Coheed & Cambria, a pretty big band that I can't stand, but the lead singer is recognizable a mile away by his huge curly hair. In trying to get back OUT of the bus pen, I walked through a gate I thought would take me to the main grounds, looked to the left, and realized I was at in the backstage area of the stage where Bad Religion was playing... Oh, yes, that's right, THE Bad Religion, like, from 1984. They came out with a new album about a month ago, and they definitely take the cake as the oldest act on the tour. There are bands on this tour who weren't even BORN when Bad Religion was already recording! I mean, they're legendary. (And they're actually not nearly as hardcore as that name makes them sound.)
I made my way back to the Immortal tent, where one of the guys from the label had just arrived with his 2 year old in a stroller with soundproof headphones. We all hung out for a few minutes, and then... sniff sniff... "What's that smell?" the merch guy asked.
"Oh no..." I murmured, recognizing it from my days of living in a frat house with interconnected vents. The guy from the label left with his son, and pretty soon the smell drifted away. About an hour later, the band at the tent next to ours arrived at their tent to do a signing... and the smell returned. They left... and so did the smell. They came back a few hours later to prep for their set on the Hurley stage, and... oh, yes, so did the smell. So rock on, As Cities Burn. And know that you smell strong enough that you nearly hotboxed the tent NEXT to your own.

Oh, and just so you know I haven't fallen completely victim to the scene, here's proof I am still the same awkward thirteen-year-old in a twenty-one-year-old's body:
I'm standing at the merch table, chilling by myself, when this guy walks by. He doesn't even pay attention to our tent, he's just walking by. But I look up and see him (I must have made eye contact-- I HOPE I made eye contact first), and I recognized him. That NEVER happens to me in Southern California. In fact, that hasn't happened to me since last summer when I was living in Southeastern Kentucky. So I opened my mouth and out came
"Hey! I saw--"
[at that point I realized I had no idea what to say]
"your band..."
[at that point I realized I forgot the band's name]
"last week at..."
[at that point I realized I had forgotten the name of the venue]
"the... the..."
[at that point I realized there was no non-awkward way out of the encounter]
"KNITTING FACTORY! Yeah, the knitting factory... last week."
I got a confused look from the guy, and I realized I had left out the key part of the anecdote.
"And you guys were really amazing!" I finished enthusiastically.

"Thanks....?" he said bewilderedly. "I'm... so glad you came?" he said, clearly having no idea how to handle being RECOGNIZED by a Warped Tour employee. "We, uh... we hope to see you again."

Here is why this was awkward, besides the obvious:
1. His band is unsigned. The gig I saw them at was their first in nine months.
2. They are a local LA band, and most of the Warped Tour staff (which is what he thought I was) is not from California, which is why he was so confused about being recognized.
3. He's not even the lead singer; he was only the bassist. Granted, I usually pay more attention to the bassists than anyone else onstage, but still. I am highly doubting he's ever been recognized for his BAND.

And then suddenly there's this sweaty emo girl telling him his band was amazing when opening for someone else's CD release party in the middle of the week at a tiny venue in the middle of Hollywood. Awkward.
You can take the girl out of middle school, but you can't take the middle-schooler out of the girl...

Nevertheless, I've fallen in love with those four magical words: "I'm on the list."

For blue eyes, and dark skies...
~B