Photos and Review by Jeff Palmucci
Galleries: Less Than Jake, Sleeping With Sirens, Sum 41, Falling In Reverse, New Found Glory
You know, I say “photos and review by Jeff Palmucci,” but that is kind of a lie. If you go to the photo section of the site you’ll see that tons of the recent photos are from the Vans Warped tour, either in Connecticut, or Massachusetts.
The reason is pretty simple. It’s just a freaking awesome festival, and all the photographers here want to shoot it. Since the tour hits a couple of stops in New England, and it has a phenomenal number of bands playing, the tour operators were able to swing us several photo passes this year.
I was pretty excited that we were able to swing 2 passes to the Mansfield show this year for a couple of reasons. One is that fellow photographer Bethany Anna asked first, so she got dibs. But also, I’d finally be able to meet her.
Let me explain: New England Concert Reviews is a distributed organization. We interact with each other mostly online through email, etc. Furthermore, usually if one of us has a pass to a show, that means no one else does, so we rarely run into each other at a concert.
So we finally were going to be at the same time at the same place and meet each other. But guess what: We never ran into each other. There were so many bands that we wanted to shoot that we went the whole day without picking a common band. That’s crazy.
There were 2 pairs of main stages set up on the fairgrounds with one stage of each pair occupied while the other sets up. That means the different sets came immediately after one another, without any pause between. The sets were a short 30 minutes each, but the sheer number of bands made for a full day (and then some) of music. One pair of stages was devoted to the more punk end of the spectrum, and the other was devoted to more metal. Four other smaller stages throughout the festival held smaller acts.
Random bits of news from the show: This will be Yellowcard’s last tour together. See them while you can. Sum 41 is coming out with new album, so watch out for that.
One absolutely hilarious thing about the Vans Warped Tour: the reverse day care tent. This is where kids can park their parents during the day while they watch the show. I never stopped by, but my friend who took his daughter to the show did. He said it was not a very happy place. You know, kind of like when you dropped your kid off at day care the first time.
The Vans Warped tour is definitely a great time. Be prepared to rock out all day, and make sure you put on sun block ans hydrate! (ok, am I sounding like your parents. I’ll go to the tent now.)
Vans Warped Tour at the XFinity Center – Mansfield, MA
