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

Bad Religion - "New Maps of Hell" Deluxe Edition CD Review

With the flood of CD reissues hitting the market, I was prepared to dislike this reissue before even listening to it. Too many of these reissues have just a couple of new tracks or (worse) remixes appended to the CD and then attempt to get full price for the "new" release.

The one complaint that I always read whenever a reissue comes out is "Why do I have to buy this again?". I have a few reissues in my review pile (with this being the first) and my goals with these reviews is to answer the question "Is this worth purchasing if you already have the original issue?"

The Deluxe Edition of New Maps of Hell is a winner. There are seven new tracks added to the original CD. These tracks are acoustic so it took me a second to mentally adjust to the change from Bad Religion's typical tempos. The acoustic tunes are just Greg singing and Brett on acoustic guitar and together they add a whole new dimension to some of the older Bad Religion songs. Three of the seven tunes are unique to this release and the other four songs are re-recordings of (mostly) older material.

The acoustic tunes clock in at about 20 minutes and here is the track list:

- Won't Somebody
- Adam's Atoms
- Sorrow (from 'The Process of Belief')
- God Song (from 'Against the Grain')
- Dearly Beloved (from 'New Maps of Hell')
- Chronophobia
- Skyscraper(from 'Recipe for Hate')

The acoustic tunes are cool but this set also comes a 23-track live DVD of the band performing live last year at the House of Blues in Las Vegas that rounds out the whole package. Also on the DVD are "The Making of the Acoustic EP" and "The Making of New Maps of Hell" along with two music videos from the current CD. I'm not much on the "The Making..." videos for any band (in most cases, these 'VH1 Behind The Music' type clips aren't worth more than one watch, if that) so these last couple clips aren't essential.

The Deluxe Edition of New Maps of Hell is (currently) $22.99 at BestBuy and Amazon.com.

Links:
Bad Religion's Website