After road tripping to more than ten concerts or music festivals, I can officially say yesterday was both the least and most lucky trip I’ve ever experienced. But how can one day hit both sides of the luck pendulum, you ask? Because even my least lucky day usually ends up working out anyways — and so begins the story of the Motion City Soundtrack trip.
So much for the afterglow. Just shy of my 11TH birthday I got my first NOW! CD for Christmas. I played that disc until it literally cracked one day. I can sing a long with Harvey Danger, K-Ci & JoJo, All Saints, Tonic, Everclear, & Lenny Kravitz word for word to this day and I haven’t listened to some of those songs in a very long time. I got most of the Now! CDs up until 12 or 13 when I got less and less into contemporary pop. Back then we did a lot of traveling as a family, which was great because every new trip meant I could get a new CD to listen to on the road.
My music tastes have fluctuated a lot over the years, but I think I have a pretty open mind. I can judge pretty quickly what I like from what I don’t and I’m pretty opinionated, which I think gives the impression that I have extremely specific tastes. I don’t.
Growing up I listened to a lot of country. I also listened to the radio all the time. I picked up a lot of music interests from my family. I spent most of my childhood bouncing between one home in Independence, another home in Waterloo, my aunt’s home south of Jesup, and finally my grandparent’s home in Jesup, the last two being where I spent the majority of my time and were really what I considered my home. Now staying at my grandparents meant lots of bike rides, football at Pioneer park, & pink lemonade, but staying at my aunt’s probably had a far greater impact on who I am today. There was music blaring anywhere at any time over there. 70′s, 80′s, hard rock, R&B, pop, and country. From the garage, the kitchen, the living room and everywhere in between. Looking back, this was probably the single greatest impact on my music tastes. I was exposed to everything and I loved it. My cousins were way more like siblings to me than cousins. Lots of memories and firsts took place on that farm.
Lately I’ve been trying to get find new music to get into. It seems like I’ve been in a listening rut with the same stuff which prompted me to look back at some of the stuff I’ve loved over the years.
Anyways. My birthday is January 27TH. I’m not usually big on celebrating birthdays but this year I’m looking forward to it. Motion City Soundtrack is playing January 23RD at First-Avenue in downtown Minneapolis and I’m going with a decent sized group of friends. It”ll be their first show following the release of their new CD and in their hometown, so it should be a good time.
www.blink182.com
According to Buzznet, blink-182 will be touring with Weezer this summer on their first outing since reforming after a 4-year hiatus. Buzznet cites an anonymous source and few other details are available about such a tour. What we do know is that the tour will be prior to blink-182′s album due this fall and will contain songs from several of the band’s albums.
Most information currently available, with the exception of the Weezer announcement, is straight from bassist Mark Hoppus’ own lips, or perhaps fingers may be a more appropriate word. Hoppus has been constantly updating his Twitter.com account since it’s creation with ramblings of day to day activities. Entries on the musician’s micro-blogging page range from his erratic sleep schedule to working on remixes for bands like Fall Out Boy and his announcement of working with new albums as a producer for acts like Motion City Soundtrack, with which he worked on Commit This to Memory in 2005.
Tour Mockup
The man seems content to remain busy even through out the finalizing of blink-182′s album and in preparation for a tour. Other entries by Hoppus are conversations with Chris Holmes, who worked with Hoppus extensively on +44 during the blink hiatus, about the possibility of working with production while on the road with his own band. This would lead some to ask why not take along a lesser known band to give them exposure? To be honest no one knows if other acts will be involved on the summer tour, although you’d have to think the details would come out soon. Weezer may have been guitarist Tom DeLonge’s idea. DeLonge did a co-headlining tour with Weezer and his band Angels & Airwaves just last fall, when the rumors of a blink reunion were starting to formulate. Immediately after the announcement of a reunion and a tour rumors had already sprung about just who would be special enough to join along, including the mock tour poster that made it’s way on to AbsolutePunk.
Regardless of who’s on the tour, this summer is sure to turn every twenty and thirty-something out there back into a 15 yr. old kid laughing at fart jokes. And let’s be honest, we could use some of that.
Rehearsal List
As I mentioned in the last post, Sunday we hit up Warped Tour in Minnesota and, while it was an amazing show, I was a little disappointed that Say Anything was unable to perform. Max was sick. Max was also sick for the Chicago show, but they got a little something we didn’t. Like Justin from Motion City Soundtrack singing Alive with the Glory of Love. Check out the video below and look around on youtube for other guest appearances from singers from Reliant K, Norma Jean, Every Time I Die & more.
So hear this please
And watch as your heart speeds up endlessly
And look for the stars as the sun goes down
Each breathe that you take has a thunderous sound
Everything, everything’s magic
Late Sunday night/early Monday morning we finally got back from the Shakopee, Minnesota Warped Tour show and I’m not sure it’s completely sunk in.
Warped is an amazing place not just because you have the oppertunity to see so many up and coming bands, as well as more mainstream bands, but because of the awesome people there. Whether it’s just the random people you see walking by in their strange attire or the people trying to get people interested in a cause. I don’t like pushy people, but they don’t come across as that and it’s always nice to see people movitated for something they believe in.
Oddly enough, the guys from Adventures of Brad and Jordan spotted me prior to the Anberlin set. It’s always nice to actually meet the people behind the writing you enjoy – if you’re reading this, sorry I disappeared. I had to get some air. Catch you at another show sometime maybe?
This year’s Minnesota date was somewhat different from the last time I went in that the sun was practically non-existent for the majority of the day. It wasn’t cold though and the breeze made everything just about perfect.
When we first got their we almost immediately headed towards the Van’s merchandise tent so one of us could get some actual shoes (flip flops are the worst thing you can wear to something like this) and while over there someone affiliated with Motion City Soundtrack asked me if we’d like to get some stuff signed. I think my response was pretty much “Uh yeah, are you kidding?”. I grabbed passes for the three of us so we could head back to the merch tent later for the signings. Three hundred total passes were handed out so I think we were pretty lucky.
At somepoint between waiting for bands we ended up walking by the ModLife bus when none other than Tom DeLonge walks out of it and starts hugging kids by the fence. Unfortunately we missed out on hugs/hand shakes as we were just a bit late but Tom was nice enough to give us some nice photo ops from the top of the bus and . . . well, we were just feet away from Tom DeLonge. What else can be said?
I wasn’t sure how Angels and Airwaves would be received at Warped. I guess these days that some of the bands at Warped are considerably softer than they would have been ten years ago, but AvA is in a whole new realm, vastly different from the likes of blink-182. Any hesitations I had about the energy of the crowd vanished as I saw the people filling in the area in front of both mainstages.
AvA put on an awesome thirty-minute set and the crowd was very, very into it. The atmosphere was amazing even without the lightshow from the last Angels concert I went to and the energy was intense.
And the last big set for me? Motion City Soundtrack in their home state. Things had drastically changed since 2005 when they played one of the smaller stages. Nope, that wasn’t happening this year. Mainstage Left in all it’s glory. Again, a ton of people swarmed in front of both stages to get as close as they could. MCS played a nice variety of stuff from all three of their full lengths and had people singing back the lyrics. It was an amazing show and I can’t wait to see them on one of their tours sometime.
Overall it was an excellent show this year and I’m looking forward to next year’s stop. Now I’ve gotta go finish catching up on sleep. G’night.