August 23, 2009

  • Today is the last day of the Van's Warped Tour 2009; not counting the up coming 15th Anniversary concert of course. Before I take off to the Home Depot Center in Carson, California to attend it, I thought I'd say a few words here. People who have been going to the Warped Tour since the beginning has commented about how it isn't mostly about Punk bands anymore. Fine. That's change I suppose. New bands pop up and they aren't going to necessarily be punk bands to fill up the Warped Tour. Besides the "old timers" like Bad Religion or NOFX, it's mostly under the radar bands, up and coming bands, or unsigned talent, which is great that they are getting exposure. So the question I ask here is, how are these relatively unknown bands able to gather a "huge" following already? I'm talking fans from as little as 50 to as much as a couple of hundreds, and that's just one day out of a whole summer tour. In several cases I would see kids in their teens singing passionately along with some unknown unsigned band, as if they've been around forever. Incredible right? I wonder... was it the internet? myspace? Is word of mouth really so effective? or am I just out of touch.

    That's probably it, I'm out of touch. I've noticed that there are far more kids out there today that are very open to listen to new music. They "discover" a band, and then they champion them by spreading the word to others, and follow them in their concerts as much as possible. In a way, I could relate. One of my current favorite bands; Meg & Dia, did start gaining their popularity via myspace. I personally discovered them by going to Warped Tour for the first time three years ago, at the myspace tent coincidentally enough. So maybe I'm not *that* out of touch, as I clearly do get what's happening here. People are looking for music that aren't necessarily on the radio, and I yhink that's really great. Of course kids are pretty fickle and are willing to stop being fans of a band just like that... but that's a whole other blog post.

    I'm going to try and continue updating my Twitter/Facebook status as the day goes by. I should have my blog post on the event sometime tomorrow, which means I'm going to delay my regular "random links" Monday post for Tuesday. Alright, off to Warped Tour.

    - check my Twitter for my Warped Tour experience - https://twitter.com/optimum5