Warped Tour 2003 @ Randall’s Island, NYC
Live Reviews | Aug 3rd, 2003
Date: August 9th 2003
Venue: Randall’s Island, NYC
After a year off, I decided last minute to check out Warped in New York. Roger and I headed down to the show without a ticket, and barely had enough. When we got there, tickets were 35 bucks cash.
With only a few bucks remaining we had hoped there was an ATM at the show, but with much searching, found nothing. So like the soldiers we were, we managed to survive the day on 5 bucks. oh yes, it was done. Thanks a lot warped for no ATMs! I digress, onto the show! Mad Caddies opened the show at noon, and they were pretty good. The crowd was still getting in. They played a lot of slower songs for the most part. All in all, a good opening act. Thrice, The Starting Line, and Poison the Well played after that. I dig the old Poison the Well songs but the new ones just don’t do it for me. Just scream buddy, none of this scream and whine stuff that everyone has jumped on the bandwagon for. The next band was Simple Plan. Snooooozzeeeeee!
Suicide Machines came on and rocked. Also, they decided to start a small riot. The singer decided to have them either stampede the stage to next to them, those waiting for Rancid, or to charge the ice cream truck and get them some ice cream. Yeah that’s what they chose. I was right near the damn truck when I see a heard of people coming right at me. Time to run. Those imbeciles jump on the truck and starting shaking on it, as well as jumping off it. I felt bad for the guy. With all the damn security and police around, they didn’t show up til the second song of them jumping around. Good work guys. After they finally got off the truck, the windshield of the truck was all cracked and messed up. This isn’t woodstock you hooligans. I thought Suicide Machines put on a great show though. Despite our next act, Rancid. What happened? Maybe it was the crappy sound that I heard. You stand on one side of the stage and you’d hear bass, walk to the other side and hear nothing but vocals and guitars. Ugh.
By this point, it started to lightly rain and was cloudy most of the day. That didn’t stop what is usually known as the dustbowl, to being the mudbowl. Mud kids were walking around all day, full of that crap. So yeah, the other bands that I thought rocked were Dropkick Murphys, Less Than Jake, The Toasters, Pennywise, and Coheed and Cambria. Coheed had a huge crowd for playing on one of the side stages. After that I went back to catch a few minutes of Me First & The Gimme Gimmes. I was so tired I couldn’t hold out so I bounced. It was time to eat finally! Some ideas for next year: less money, less kids, atm machines, and bands that aren’t the flavor of the month.
