Adam Pfleider's Blog Entry

Great writeup, you should feel great.

That being said, looking forward to going insane the last two days of the tour. Looking forward to catching up with the I Call Fives dudes, and a bunch of other people. I probably will die.

Excellent article!

Fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the tour, Adam. I'd love to do something like this some year.

I really want to hear about Matthew Lillard now.

I've read a lot of Warped-related essays and commentators and such; this is probably the best I've seen. Well done.

I liked this write-up. I really did. (And you can probably already tell I'm going to say something negative.) But this is one of your best written pieces, extremely readable, stream-of-concscious in an endearing way, etc. Really well done.

But the thing I kind of get tired of hearing about, from self-professed music fans or lovers, is that they feel like it is impossible to feel like you once did about music. taht to me is a slap in the face to the people enjoying music and especially the people making it. what has changed since we were 16? we have jobs and our parents don't buy our shit? to say that we are all "figured out" now and that's why this stuff can't stick like super glue just doesn't make any sense to me.

the day that i stop being able to hear something and be floored on a few different levels is the day, i suppose, i stop being a real music fan.

and especially in terms of you, adam, specifically, you seem like one of the BIGGEST music fans on this site. you write impassioned reviews and talk ad-nauseum about the bands making an impression on you. yet something inside you still says you can't enjoy this stuff like before? we adapt, just like music does. it's all a never-ending wave of attachment, and maybe you don't belong at a place like warped tour, but do you really, in your heart of hearts, feel that you're jaded to the art of music?

i got blasted by jeremy aaron late last year for a sentiment like this, but i still find it to be true. maybe i'm the one who needs to change. maybe i haven't grown up enough since i was in high school. fine. perhaps that's really the problem. but maybe that isn't my problem but the luckiest thing that could have ever happened to me. idk. i know i took like 2 sentences out of this wonderful article and fixated on them and i'm sorry for that. but an increase in age doesn't mean decrease in enjoyment. and if it does, that's not music's fault.

first off, don't feel bad about this response. you make a valid point - and one I constantly think about (especially since I'm the one trying to make sure the ABS100 goes off this year, and for the last two years)

maybe "jaded" isn't the right word. it's not that Warped Tour ISN'T for me per se. I especially don't want to put down new bands and say "it's been done before" and just write it off like they're worth nothing. I guess what I was trying to get at (and that as usual I had a hard time putting in the "right" words) is that I'm less prone to consuming new music as much as I was when I was 16. then, I used to flip new CDs through my discman like crazy. Now I'll spin about half classics and half new stuff - if that.

example: the first band I started spinning when I got back home from Warped Tour was Taking Back Sunday. It should have been Dead Sara - that was the BEST band I saw all weekend - bar none. what's strange is that disconnect to a new thing that blew me away in the moment and the reconnect to the old thing that I truly hadn't really listened to in a while. I guess I wonder why I went to one and not the other.

I completely agree with your last statement that an increase in age shouldn't mean a decrease in enjoyment. i know that's not true for me in the least. That Brighter Arrows record is flooring me right now.

I understand where you're coming from on this, because I myself feel the same way when I hear it from other people, and I know I'm more than guilty of that on occasion. Maybe I went too far outside the box to show that the reason Warped Tour isn't for everyone is because Warped Tour is not catered to those people that bitch of "how it used to be," but more so to people who WANT to find new music at an age that I do feel a bit of detachment from for reasons I'm still trying to understand myself.

i mean, yes. i can understand that point. at least about half classics/half new. but that's not becuase we can't appreciate the new. it's that we have built up a huge appreciation for the old. and it means a lot to us. and some of these records now that we currently love, will become those. we just have to wait. (like, for instance, the latest Pianos Become the Teeth record).

i think the difference was, back then, we weren't thinking about music in terms of what it meant for our future. because we just didn't have the ability to think liek that. we were kids. we were living literally in the moment. and now we have more life experiences and use music more as a tool than before. which is saying something when discussing emo kids and their emo music.

it's a tricky thing. becuase we don't want to forget waht brought us here, and feel a certain sort of debt or whatever to a record like, for me, Northstar's Pollyanna or whatever. and every year, i still get weird and sad and think that this is the year i don't care or nothing hits me or whatever. every year i think that. and every year i'm wrong and something happens that i'm just unbelievably blown away. i won't stop ever being afraid of that, but i also won't ever stop being taken aback by the sheer quantity of quality.

Yeah some of the shirts they sell at Warped in recent years are just mind-numbingly stupid. Believe me, I can relate to the sentiment of "I Fucking Hate You Bitch" but printing that in big letters on a shirt is not clever or creative and I don't get why anybody would want to wear that.

Oh I must also be old because I knew that the times werechanging. When I went to the Houston date of warped tour I walked by the truth tentand heard them talking so I stopped by to see what was going on, they wereplaying music and asking people to name the artist. At first I thought peoplewere kidding when they could not name them. They played AFI-girls not grey, theoffspring – the kids are all right, Thrice- All that’s left, a Nofx song and arancid song I can’t remember which ones now but I knew then and not one of thekids could name it. (there was about 50-60 kids there) I seriously thought thiswas a joke, then they played The Ramones- Blitzkrieg bop and not one person knewit, I was like what the hell is going on here then they played paramore, 3oh3!,and Kesha everyone knew that and at that moment I seriously thought that thisis he beginning of the end of good music.

I would love to see the two of you turn this point-counterpoint into a tag team article or something. Just saying.

a special podcast presentation. :)

Well written, Adam. I'm a lot like you, used to attend religiously and volunteered for Takeover and Hopeless years ago. It's rare that a band will speak to me like NFG or MxPx once did, partly because I was younger and more impressionable. I think it's absolutely wonderful that those bands can still come out and headline Warped while helping to draw their fans to the shows that'll see all of the great young bands in the process. That's what bands like Rancid and NOFX did years ago for bands like NFG and TBS, and Warped is a way to give back to the scene if nothing else. Warped is about experiencing new bands at a reasonable price - there's no better value in music if you're at all interested in this "scene".

I enjoy music as much as ever, but it's in a way that's simply different. It's not that music is unexciting, but the sense of adventure isn't quite there. A great new band or album will still make me excitedly text certain friends, and I still buy heaps of new albums each year. But those formative years--when my thirst for new music was almost insatiable--just had a certain spark to them...

funny you said that about dead sara, kyle from fireworks told me to check that band out, that it was his favorite on the tour. i caught a song on my way to see title fight and they sounded really cool