Well turns out that almost all the bands I wanted to see overlapped other good bands, so we had to make a tough decision and find the top 3 bands we wanted to see. 
Hey Monday, The Summer Set, The Rocket Summer, NeverShoutNever and mainly MAYDAY PARADE were the bands I wanted to see. Unfortuanely, we were only able to catch Hey Monday, The Rocket Summer and Mayday Parade. Since Mayday Parade was very last, we had a lot of time to kill..... So we walked around a lot, looked at each band's tents, etc. The weather had been great for the whole day, until about 4:00. We had a few hours to kill until Mayday Parade, and it started pouring rain!! Rain pelting us from all angles, feet tired from jumping up and down in crowds, and the beginnings of becoming farmers showing on our arms, I nervously looked around to our group. Do you guys want to wait it out until Mayday Parade? Everyone was trying to be nice to me, but I could tell that deep down they wanted to call it a day. The rain continued and I tried to keep spirits high by encouraging that the rain would stop soon. Rain, Rain, Go AWAY, Come Again ANY other day but today. It looked like there was no end in sight, but my fingers were still crossed. We couldn't leave before we saw the best band here! Especially when it had been kind of a crappy line up in the first place. I tried using the, "hey, at least we are making memories!" cop out, but that went over about as well as it usually does with me when my mom says it. Finally everyone thankfully agreed to stay. Whether it was out of pity for me, or out of belief that my life really would be over if we left, I didn't care. As long as we stayed. Thankfully, the rain subsided about 30 minutes before Mayday Parade was to start. Prayer really does work. Can I just tell you, that waiting in the rain was COMPLETELY worth it?? Mayday Parade was FANTASTIC!! Adam and I even shimmied our way up to the front, right behind the bar! Screaming at the top of my lungs and jumping around like a crazy person I had the time of my life. To my current knowledge, there is nothing comparable than an amazing concert by one of your favorite bands while you are squished in between a bunch of sweaty people. The best is when there are so many people crammed together that when everyone is jumping, you don't have to do anything to be moved up and down with the crowd. They jump for you! Same thing happens when you get in a circle of about 10 people and they all sit down on the person's knees behind them. Who knows how it works, but it's fantastic. One downside to being in an awesome concert at the very front along the bar. Crowd surfers. In a normal concert you'll get a few crowd surfers here and there that you can help heave to the front. Amplify that by a bajillion and you get Mayday Parade's crowd. One after the other, sometimes two on top of each other formed a continuous stream of crowd surfers. I'm sure this looked cool from above, but when you are the one underneath it is not so cool. When crowd surfers get to the front the bouncers just pull them down to the ground for the surfer to get out. Unfortunately this means using the front row as a slide to ease their fall down to the ground.
Dear Fat Sweaty Crowd Surfer Man:
Thank you for kicking me in the back of the head repeatedly and bending me completely in half over the bar so I can make your decent a little more comfortable.
Sincerley,
Hailey Francis.
Besides that, the music was fantastic, new bands were found and memories were indeed made. Here are some pictures of this fantastic day! Enjoy!
hay that picture in black and white of the guy holding up his guitar and all the hands reaching up to him is absolutely amazing! you truly are a photographer! nicely done! and the shirts look great!
ReplyDelete:) Thanks Kar! I was pleased with the shirts too! Yeah he was a poser, but it definitely helped my photography skills :)
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