August 26, 2007

  • This past Saturday, despite only having about an hour and a half of sleep, I drove over to the Home Depot Center in Carson, CA, for the last tour date of the 2007 Van's Warped Tour. Ofcourse I primarily went there to see Meg & Dia, although there were other bands I wanted to see as well. Unfortunately, due to time schedule constraints and the fact that it was so crowded, I only really ended up seeing Meg & Dia and a couple of other bands.

    I would have seen Killswitch Engage and Pennywise again but no such luck. It would have been nice to see Avenged Sevenfold for the first time as well, but once again I didn't have time to see them. I did get to see a little bit of Sum41 though, and man was that a disappointment. Sum41 recently lost their lead guitarist (Dave Brownsound), and it apparently affected their live performance because they did not sound good at all, especially comparing to the fact that they sounded great the couple of times I've seen them live years ago. I did get to "hear" Bad Religion's whole set at the end of the night though, and it sounded great. I say "hear" because I had to stand pretty far away from the stage because of the huge crowd, and all I could see are people's backs and tents blocking my view of the band.

    Being that this is the last day of the Warped Tour, the Meg & Dia band wanted to do something special for us faithful "boardies." They invited about 30 of us backstage for a surprise three song acoustic set and a short Q&A session. We also did a meet and greet with the band and ate cake with them to celebrate the occasion. This was also the chance I took to give Meg and Dia a thank you card I wrote. I also gave them a copy of Neil Gaiman's "Death the High Cost of Living," which is a graphic novel I hope they'll enjoy since they are avid book readers.

    It kinda takes me aback to how many new fans Meg & Dia are gaining every time I see them in concert, you can tell by the really long line waiting for their public signing at the energizer booth. Since most of us "boardies" have had many one on one experiences with the band, we were pretty efficient in just greeting them, get a signature, and move on. We decided to head over to the stage they will be playing and wait for their set. In fact we weren't the only group of fans who thought of doing that, as a lot of people were also showing up early to wait for Meg & Dia.

    The majority of Meg & Dia fans seems to be teenage girls and while waiting at the "Hurley.com" stage, another band was performing at that time. It was a band called "Total Chaos" and being that it was a hardcore punk band, a good majority of the Meg & Dia fans looked like a deer in front of headlights at the vulgarity and the huge mosh pit that was going on at the time. Being that I'm also into punk, I was enjoying myself, but I did find it humorous to see the contrast of fans there were at the stage at that time. Meg & Dia did perform about a half hour later, and they did a stellar job as usual. Personally, I think I actually enjoy their set more in a smaller more intimate venue, but that could just be me feeling lost in the sea of hundreds of new fans.

    It was a good last day at the Warped Tour, and I enjoyed spending the day with fellow Meg & Dia fans from the message boards. Unfortunately, Meg & Dia will be doing east coast gigs for the rest of the year, so I will have to wait until January to see them and the fellow boardies again.