Show Journal 2004-07-11

I think this was my favorite Warped Tour I’ve seen to date. There was about a dozen bands during the day that I really wanted to see. Usually there’s just 3 or 4 that I’m excited about so today was definitely a good show. Getting in for free was a huge bonus as well. However, the law of averages has a cold reality check in store for us tonight. Through the luck of the draw we got scheduled to play from 8:40-9:00. The last headliner on the main stage finished at 9:00 so we were really only looking to play for people on their way out. That’s not too big a deal but the sound system and technical failures would plague our 20 minutes in the spotlight. First off we had to follow The Bled. Cool band but they thought they were the last band so they didn’t bother to move their stuff off the stage until we told them to. We got up there and all the monitors were moved and the microphones were nowhere to be found. We plugged in and the guy gave us the worst sound check ever. My monitor was not working. Jim’s monitor? Not working. Justin’s monitor worked, but it only played my guitar and at a volume loud enough to distort to an undecipherable buzz of noise. Justin said my guitar through his monitor was louder than his amp. From what I could hear of Dave’s vocals it was distorted and thin sounding onstage and out front. We finally started and a song into it the monitors started cutting out which makes everything go from loud to quiet. When things go from loud to quiet on stage your instinct says there’s a problem, which confused us all. Two songs into it Justin’s guitar breaks. Literally. The headstock physically broke. That’s an $1100 guitar too. He grabs another guitar and at some point the wireless becomes unplugged. Throughout it all the monitors keep turning on and off which makes us the think the power was going off. It was very disorienting to have everything running at full volume and then down to barely audible on stage. You expect that kind of stuff at a basement show or small venue, but it was a major letdown since we had such immaculate sound at previous Warped shows. I know I shouldn’t complain since there are dozens of bands that don’t even get the chance to play Warped but this show seriously sucked. Our friends said it was ok, but mostly I was bummed because I had such high expectations. The last two years went so well, so I just assumed it would be the same. There was one thing that made out set enjoyable and that was the large group of friends that stuck around to watch us play. When they told me we’d be playing at 8:40 I figured we’d be playing to 10 people. Amazingly there was a decent sized group of people that stuck around until the end of the night just to watch us play. That’s the one thing that saved the show for me and I seriously can’t thank each of you who stayed enough. I think we owe you all a better show next time!