Vans Warped Tour '07 DVD Review

It seems hard to believe that Warped Tour has now been running 13 years. The original Lollapalooza Festival was supposed to be the indie-festival benchmark and it faded away in about half this time. This DVD documents the Warped experience from the 2007 Tour and mixes live footage with interviews from a number of bands.

The DVD is fun to watch as it is a good representation of the Warped Tour experience, from both the band and the audience member perspective. The camera crew uses a multi-camera set-up but the shots have a loose feel so the viewer can appreciate the experience without the footage feeling like an over-produced music video.

The bands are a nice eclectic mix of current fan favorites, old guard punks, and new up-and-coming bands. The interviews are fairly intersting and the age difference between the bands shows - Killswitch Engage talks about how they couldn't do the tour in a van and you have bands on the opposite end of the spectrum, like The Almost and Escape The Fate, who seem like they just climbed out of the van. The footage gives you a good perspective on the bands, their live set and what they are all about.

In addition to the main program of live footage and interviews, there are two additional tracks on the disc. The first track allows the watcher to access the long-form interviews, which run about 3 -6 minutes per band. (There are only interview snippets included with the live footage as part of the main program). The second track features additional live footage from the tour.

Here is the complete list of live performances:

Avenged Sevenfold - "Almost Easy"
Bad Religion - "Honest Goodbye"
Chiodos - "The Undertaker's Thirst for Revenge is Unquenchable", "Baby, You Wouldn't Last a Minute on the Creek"
Circa Survive - "In the Morning and Amazing"
Coheed and Cambria - "The Running Free"
Fishbone - "Behind Closed Doors", "Forever Moore"
Killswitch Engage - "Rose of Sharyn", "My Curse"
Pennywise - "Straight Ahead", "Pennywise"
Pepper - "Ashes", "Your Face"
The Starting Line - "Direction", "Island (Float Away)"
Sum 41 - "The Hell Song"

The hightlights for me are both of Killswitch Engage's live songs (and "Wall of Death") along with Coheed and Cambria, Pennywise, Fishbone and Bad Religion's performances.

If you want to get an inside look at what Rolling Stone called "America's most successful festival", check out this DVD. It will only be another couple months before Warped '09 starts up.

Links:
Warped Tour's Official SIte

Pennywise - Reason to Believe CD Review

Before getting into the music, I think it important to note that Pennywise broke ground with the distribution of their ninth album, Reason to Believe. The band made the album available as a free DRM-free, 320kbps MP3 download via MySpace. As far as I know, Pennywise is the first major act to make an album available to the general public as a high-quality download. (Before anyone mentions Radiohead, their ‘pay what you will’ download was very low quality). I read some complaints that Pennywise partnered with Textango and MySpace on the distribution. The reality is…why does it matter how the band distributed the music?

I should context this review by stating that I haven’t kept up with Pennywise’s career over the years so I can’t compare this release to any of their immediate prior. The last time I saw the band play live was 1994 when they opened for The Meatmen while touring behind “Unknown Road”. This new release, Reason to Believe, certainly seems comparable to “Unknown Road”.

While the music on this disc doesn’t stray far from Pennywise’s established 90’s SoCal skate punk sound, this is an enjoyable release. There are some ‘brushes’ with metal/hardcore but the band sticks with their formula of power-punk guitar crossed with breakneck drumming across most of the disc. Singer Jim Lindberg’s voice is mixed on top of the instruments and there are more call and response sing-a-longs, vocal harmonies and “whoas” than you would find in a Misfits tribute band. Lyrically, the band is just as pissed off as ever. Songs like “Western World” where the lyrics are “We are the dregs of the Western World, the steroid boys and video girls. We are the viral internet stars and the anchor man can’t stop crying. We are the dead with the dreaded disease, the nuclear sons of you and me” are pretty typical of what is on the band’s mind.

When listening to this CD, I kept hearing elements of mid-90’s Bad Religion. Try listening to this disc without thinking of Bad Religion’s “Recipe for Hate” or “Stranger Than Fiction”. This isn’t a bad thing though - fans of Pennywise or SoCal power-punk sound should enjoy this release.

Links:
Pennywise's MySpace Profile
Note: the old www.pennywisdom.com site now redirects to the band's MySpace page

Pennywise - New CD Available for Free on MySpace

This is an interesting promo - if you 'friend' Textango on MySpace before March 25th, you will receive high quality DRM-free high-quality MP3s of the new Pennywise CD for free.

This is the band's ninth CD and will be released on MySpace Records in the US (I didn't know MySpace had a label) and Epitaph in Europe and Asia. The European vinyl version (limited edition) will contain two bonus tracks unique to this release.

Click on the CD cover to go to Textango's Myspace page.

Links:
Pennywise's MySpace page