And summer camp continues.

It's been four weeks, and we're fully caught in the gears of the daily grind that is the Warped Tour. Keeping in line with the summer camp/high school analogy, the cliques have formed: the "cool" kids hang out with other "cool" kids while we gaze longingly at them from the band room ("Band fags!"), or in my brother's case, from the math club meeting. At least none of us have gotten swirlies yet; that would be particularly horrifying, considering the only toilets in our vicinity most of the time are port-a-potties.

Today marks the halfway point of the tour, and there have been some changes to the lineup. Some bands have left while others have joined. We were very sad to see Motion City Soundtrack and The All-American Rejects go; we got particularly close with the latter, as some of their crew and band are from Chicago, and when you're out on the road for this long, you tend to latch onto anything or anyone that brings you closer to home. The Rejects put on one of the best shows of the whole tour, in terms of both sound and performance. Tyson (their singer) is a madman; I'm still not completely convinced he's not insane. It's like two different people: Dr. Jekyll offstage; Mr. Hyde onstage. He riles the crowd into a frenzy and if it's not a big enough frenzy, he insults the crowd. And they eat it up. I saw them at least ten times while they were on this tour, and it never got old. He made me laugh and dance everyday for different reasons. They might be Rejects, but they will be missed.

A few bands have been added to the tour, most notably Fake Problems, but Pennywise and Dropkick Murphy's join in the next few weeks, which is exciting. I'm interested to hear one of the bands that's been added, just based on their name alone: Cerebral Ballsy. What a great name. I'm also interesting in hearing The Upwelling, who are signed to All-American Rejects' label. They stopped by our merch tent the other day and gave us their CD; it's pretty good. It's different from the typical fare on this tour, which is a nice change of pace. I'm getting a little sick of hearing the growling "singing" that every band on this tour seems to be doing. We've nicknamed that style "Cookie-core" because so many of the "singers" sound like Cookie Monster.

Check out these bands; they're the ones I've been making an effort to hear the past few weeks.

You Me at Six
Rev. Payton's Big Damn Band
I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody's Business
Flatfoot 56

Until next time...

-Johnny Don't!
lead guitars/vocals
AM Taxi