Let's Do the Time Warped Again

Click on each photograph for more pics of the featured bands!

All Time Low: These guys lost us with their banter between songs. We don't consider ourselves prudes, but we were a bit put off by comments like "Somebody's gettin' pregnant tonight is all I have to say," and, when encouraging their fans (mainly twelve-to-sixteen-year-old girls) to come to their autograph signing: "Bring yourselves - and your condoms please." Oh yeah, they also played some songs, which sounded like throwaway Starting Line tracks.

Boys Like Girls: We'd heard a couple of their songs on the radio, and we weren't terribly impressed. They weren't as bad as we'd expected, but we certainly wouldn't call them memorable.

Starting Line: This Philadelphia band was the first band of the day we were really looking forward to, and they did not disappoint. Great energy, catchy songs, and they made a real effort to connect with the crowd. Thumbs up.

Pepper: We'd seen Pepper before, and they're a real guilty pleasure of ours. Their lyrics are vulgar and over the top, but don't really bother us (unlike All Time Low's banter) because Pepper seems directed at a slightly older demographic and the lyrics come across as somewhat tongue-in-cheek. (It's kind of tough to take a band too seriously when they come on stage to a tracked chant of "Booze, pussy, and weed!") Pepper was the first band of the day that made us say, "Wow, these guys can play." We had a ton of fun listening to them, and that's what they're all about.

Monty Are I: We'd never heard of these guys before their publicist contacted us, but we were pretty impressed with their performance. They put a ton of energy into their set, and they clearly put a lot of thought into song composition - something a lot of bands in the punk/hardcore family don't really do. And we don't often get to see a punk band break out the trombone and trumpet. We dug it, and after this performance, we felt pretty optimistic for the rest of the day.

Bayside: Bayside ran the most aggressive marketing campaign of the day. We might not even have gone to check them out if we hadn't seen flyers, t-shirts, buttons, etc. everywhere saying "Bayside is a cult." And it really did kind of seem to be a cult. Bayside had one of the most dedicated and energized crowds of the day. For a hardcore band, the musicianship was really strong and the performance was memorable. Goooooooo Bayside! (Oh yeah, we went there. We have no shame.)

Revolution Mother: We only stood and watched Revolution Mother for about thirty seconds. Literally. We didn't even stay long enough to even take a picture. We just couldn't deal with them. They play loud, aggressive metal, and we really couldn't figure out what they were doing on Warped Tour. We like metal...good metal. But we just couldn't deal with this.

Paramore: This was the most fun band of the day to photograph: their energy was off the charts. The crowd was really into them, but unfortunately, we just didn't hear it. They weren't bad, but not particularly memorable. The best we can do is to say they sounded like a more aggressive version of Letters to Cleo.

Bad Religion: We were both excited and nervous to see Bad Religion. We were excited because we've been listening to them for a long time. We were nervous because we couldn't shake this sinking feeling that they were going to suck. Fortunately, they didn't. They weren't great, and a lot of Greg Graffin's lyrics were unintelligible live, but their musicianship and energy made it a worthwhile set to watch.

Alkaline Trio: Our favorite set of the day, hands down, was put on by Alkaline Trio. From the moment guitarist and vocalist Matt Skiba walked onto the stage playing the opening chords of "Burn," we were hooked. Song composition, musicianship, energy, it was all there. We only wish we'd been able to see them play longer.

The Confession: The Confession plays straight-up, Judas Priest- and Iron Maiden-inspired metal. And they're really good at it. We just couldn't figure out how they fit into the Warped Tour brand. We would probably like them a lot more in a more appropriate setting, and perhaps we'll get it, as they'll be opening for Megadeth this fall, but they just weren't what we were looking for at Warped.

MxPx: Okay, so we kind of geeked out for MxPx. It was like being sixteen all over again. And we loved it. We love when a band sounds better live than they do on CD, and MxPx really nails their live performance. And, as with Pepper, even though we'd heard them before, we'd really underestimated their musicianship before seeing them at this show. Color us impressed - even if our favorite song ("Move to Bremerton") wasn't on their setlist.

The Vincent Black Shadow: This band was the most unexpected pleasant surprise of the day. We were walking through the pavilion to get from one side of the Tweeter Center to the other so we could get from the MxPx set to see Hawthorne Heights, and we stopped dead in our tracks when we heard this phenomenal belting female voice. It turned out to be Cassandra Ford of The Vincent Black Shadow. They fashion themselves as a kind of punky, kind of gothy cabaret rock band. It's a unique sound, and it really hooked us. Given their catchy-yet-dark sound, Ford's killer voice, and her equally killer look, we think this must be the easiest band in the world to market, so we're guessing they're going to be pretty huge in the not-too-distant future.

Hawthorne Heights: Sigh. We like Hawthorne Heights' music. We really do. But it bothers us when a band that plays such heavy music actually goes out of its way to encourage a circle pit. The music alone should be more than enough encouragement for the crowd to mosh without the band needing to egg the crowd on. Maybe we are getting old. The performance itself was one of the ones that we're going to call good but not great.

So that was our day at Warped Tour. On the whole, we were really pleased with the event. You really can't beat the value in terms of the number of bands you can see and, for the most part, the surprisingly good quality of the acts. But this value comes with one major drawback: total overload. We think there was actually too much going on at Warped. We counted six major stages and three smaller ones. For many bands, we had to bail after three or four songs so as to get across the venue to another stage to see another band we wanted to see. And we still couldn't catch everyone we wanted to. Either because of performance time or conflicts with other bands, we were unable to catch the aforementioned Cute is What We Aim For and Funeral for a Friend, plus Straylight Run, Coheed and Cambria, The Spill Canvas... the list goes on. But, you take the bad with the good, and there was definitely more good than bad at Warped Tour '07.

All photos by Ross Currie and Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey.