If you ever want to feel old, go to a trendy festival show.
[taken from buzznet, credit to jiscilla]
WARNING: Nothing I say should ever be taken seriously.
So let me preface this with the fact that I’ve been planning for Bamboozle since about February, when I found out No Doubt was the headliner for the second day of the festival. As the list of artists grew, I became more and more stoked because it was becoming, as I affectionately nicknamed it, a “90’s Revival Weekend”. With such relatively irrelevant (and a few who will never go out of style) bands and artists as Third Eye Blind, Sum 41, Gavin Rossdale, New Found Glory – I can’t even think of anymore off the top of my head, but it was shaping up to be a SPECTACULAR event.
Then, of course, there are the handfuls upon handfuls of generic scene bands and relevant trendy music thrown in there, too. Not gonna lie, totally wanted a picture with Demi Lovato just because she is pretty much a big deal right now and I wanted to see if we looked related, but she wouldn’t go anywhere in the rain (and she had a legit umbrella dude), so my hopes were dashed.
Let’s start with Saturday. This day is what I call Fueled By Scene Bands day. The headliner (no disrespect, since you know I heart them) was Fall Out Boy, so I feel like that speaks for itself.
Lauren (who was visiting from Chicago for this), Rich Rambunctious (he is unabashedly part of the scene I bitch about – though he leans toward that screamo i-can’t-understand-what-the-fuck-you’re-yelling type stuff – except, he adamantly denies it), and I started getting ready at about 6:30 in the morning because we didn’t want to catch traffic over the GW Bridge, and we’re young like that so who needs sleep, right? Well, Lauren and I are in our mid-twenties and Rich is 18, but we’ll get to why I mentioned that in a minute. After running a few morning errands, I made Rich blast oldschool Backstreet Boys in his car all the way to Jersey, where we were promised the opportunity to sleep in the car once we were parked for Bamboozle. Yeah, that didn’t happen.
For those who don’t know, the predicted forecast for the weekend was rain, cold, and more rain. Unfortunate, since the weekend before was in the mid-90s and that’s the kind of weather I live for. So needless to say, Lauren and I were wearing tights and jeans and hoodies and such in an effort to stay dry. Well, it rained for about two seconds. Then it turned beautiful and sunny. No joke.
So, of course, knowing we were getting ready for SceneFest09, Lauren and I decided it would be a good idea to drown our sorrows in mini-bottles of vodka and rum, which she was able to hide in her gigantic boobs. I have tiny boobs, so I only stuck one in my bra and the other in that No-No Special Spot because I was paranoid of being patted down by security – they’ve done it to me before. I waited far too long with Absolut in my Hoo-Ha before they let us in without so much as a second glance.
Once we were let in, the adventure began. I met A LOT of people who follow me on twitter. Some of which were actually hunting me down. Strange. I have deduced that I am going to be the new form of Myspace Famous (for no reason) – I am going to be Twitter Famous. It’s a goal. Get into it. Tell all your friends to follow me @perfectdenial. We were given schedules for the day and noted a lot of last minute changes (like Third Eye Blind being put on the bill for that night!) and various other things. Since Rich is into the make-your-ears-bleed-from-awfulness music, we went our separate ways for a while so he could catch the Loud-Dudes-Who-Haven’t-Showered-In-Months stage while Lauren and I scoped merch and guys who were all way too young for us. This is, naturally, when we took notice to the ridiculous amounts of neon clothing, tutus and petticoats, and animal print running around the event. At one point, we were quoted as asking, “Is this a show or a petting zoo?”, and the verdict is still out on that one.
Enter the new love of my life, Paul Griffiths.
He is the mastermind behind babycakes clothing, and I think I love him. (So what am I so afraid of? I’m afraid I’m not sure of a love there is no cure for!) Pretty sure he was already wasted by noon (don’t blame him), and we took a few pictures and got him to sign a picture for a friend of ours, Fawna. He is pretty much awesome. He even signed it “Paul <3’s Fawna 4eva” which I basically thought was adorable. But he could have spit in his beer and kept drinking it and I would have been down with it, really.
By this point in the day, it was fucking hot out. So we found a nice group of port-a-potties, dipped behind them, and stripped off our pants. Thank god, in the scene world, a big shirt is a completely acceptable outfit. It was while we were behind said port-a-potties (which we soon realized hid an entrance/exit backstage and many skinny-jean wearing band dudes and dudettes kept popping up) that we saw what was easily one of the best parts of Day One for us:
The really old lady with Pink Audrey Kitching hair.
We lounged as much as possible back there because it was grassy and we could hear all the music from one of the stages clear as day (we sat back there for Metro Station because, as I explained it: “I don’t mind listening to [Metro Station’s] music, but looking at Trace Cyrus makes my eyes bleed and my uterus go sterile.” Note: I did Shake It back there, and their cover of the TI song made the little baby Jesus kill kittens. It was that bad.)
It was also at this point that Lauren and I realized that there are a shit ton of Gingers (that’s redheads for those of you who are NOT scene-savvy) in the scene bands right now. We created a game called Gingerspotting. I feel I don’t have to explain the rules of this game.
I don’t listen to this band, but I felt compelled. Note that his head is three times the size of mine.
After this, we passed by the Boys Like Girls signing, which was virtually empty. This made me laugh, as I exclaimed “Why is nobody here? Oh, right. Because it’s douchebag central.” and then I snapped a picture.
By this point, Lauren and I were already filling our ($4.50) cups of pepsi with happy juice so the rest of the day went swimmingly. SUPER thankful we packed our own since beer at the festival was $8.50 a pop. Even Paul Griffiths (loml) complained about it. We enjoyed the hell out of Gavin Rossdale, where we saw two ridiculous anomalies:
A real life mullet:
And a 90s pop-punk super-dude with a blonde strip in his hair – Jordan Pundik (that look went out when American Apparel moved in, fyi):
As the night wound down, it got chilly out again. I managed to find a few of my friends (the beautiful Danielle and my favorite girl ever, Sarah). I jumped Sarah while I wasn’t wearing pants and I’m fairly confident Bamboozle got a clear view of my really cute underwear, so we grouped together and I put my pants on in the middle of a Bamboozle crowd, and a guy named Jimmie took that opportunity to piss in public, right then and there.
Then the best thing in the world happened. JOURNEY started playing. At first, Lauren and I were like “Is this a Journey cover band??” To which Rich asked who Journey was (he’s so young…) but then the asian dude started singing and we were so fucking stoked on life for their entire set. Until we realized that they were technically opening for Fall Out Boy and the whole world felt backward for a minute.
After that, Third Eye Blind played. It was ridiculous, and Rich actually fell asleep during it because he’s young and doesn’t know what good music is. We got down to the hits and of course they ended with Semi-Charmed Life so we rapped our way to Fall Out Boy’s stage, where I was stoked because I knew they would be playing Tiffany Blews. Lauren did an interpretive dance to She’s My Winona that involved an imaginary fetus dropping from her vajayjay. Best part of the set.
When they were done, we stayed at the worst hotel ever to exist, dropped into a diner, and headed to bed with the exciting news that TAYLOR HANSON was going to be at Day Two!! Life = complete. My 90’s Revival weekend had come full circle.
Day two update to come soon…
