Warped Tour 2002 @ Comerica Park, Detroit, MI
Live Reviews | Aug 18th, 2002
Date:August 18th 2002
Venue: Detriot, Michigan
I’ve been going to warped tour since it was in Pine Knobs parking lot… this time it was painfully obvious that the promoters and people who make the ass backward decisions were not at all prepared to use Comerica Park as a venue. There is no lack of space in those 3 lots… I would go as far to say it’s about 50% bigger than the lot at Phoenix Plaza, however there seemed to be bottlenecks all over the place…
the main one was in between the merch tents and the 2 main stages they narrowed the gap to about 10 yards and hundreds of people had to squeeze through there. But worst of all was the water situation… instead of having vendors all over selling water and Gatorade out of barrels of ice they had one location with about 8 cashiers selling water and food to the 10,000 plus crowd. they eventually started to give away free water if you followed the forklifts they took it to the entrance and threw them into the crowd for free, a friend and I managed to get a hold of some so ourselves and our friends didn’t have it so bad. And then there was the Mustard Plug fiasco, they played the Kevin Lyman stage…
which happens to be a tent, about the size of ones you buy beer in at the state fair, and it’s sunny out so obviously no one can see the band in the tent…
the whole crowd piles in right next to the stage and it was just like every other Mustard Plug show, Dave jumped into the crowd and we were all having a good time, then at the beginning of their third song “Throw A Bomb” the security freaks and pulls the plug, They ask everyone for about 10 minutes to back up, and eventually the crowd cooperated, but they wouldn’t turn the power back on anyway, so a few of the band members ran out in the audience and started a sing along of “Beer Song”, they apologized for everything and told everyone they were playing a bunch of shows in September and hoped everyone would come. I think they showed a lot of class for a crappy situation.
After this we go over to see the Planet Smashers who announce from the stage that Mustard Plug would be welcome to come take half of their set time and play on their stage. But Kevin Lyman jumps up on stage and starts yelling profanities at the crowd saying that Mustard Plug would not be aloud to play, and if we don’t like the way he runs things then we should start our own tour… well Kevin I have half a mind to…
it’s not like he financed it he just pitched the idea to Vans, what a self absorbed cock. Anyways, it would have been nice if that was all that had happened… but the drive thru stage PA, microphones, keyboards and RX Bandits drummer and merchandise were detained at the Canadian border so RXB played on a little side stage to a small crowd they only played maybe five of their songs but they did some sweet improvisational dub stuff, you would have loved it Spike. Anyways most of the bands played well, and I’m not going to say that I’ll never go again… but it just shows how much thought the Big Wigs put into each individual stop in the tour. I honestly think we fans could do a better job.
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