When I heard
that Black Veil Brides were coming to town, I thought to myself, “I must cover
this for Helping Hands Rock Reviews!!” I
did a little further research about the show and I learned that they would be
coming to town on the Vans Warped Tour.
Despite it being around for 19 years, I never actually attended it. Nor did I know much about it. I honestly thought that it was just another
tour with 5 or 6 bands of the same genre touring together. Ha!
Was I ever wrong!
Once I got
approval to cover the show I knew it was time to do some research. I obtained my copy of Vans Warped Tour ’13
compilation CD and went to work. I made
a healthy sized list of all of the bands that stood out to me and decided that
those were the bands that I would focus on. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, not quite….
I arrived at
First Niagara Pavilion in Burgettstown, PA a little before noon. This is much later than I had planned as I
hit some heavy traffic on our unpredictable highways here in Western
Pennsylvania. As I am waiting in line I
become aware that one of the bands on my list, Hawthorne Heights, is nearly
finished playing! Wow, I haven’t even
gotten through the gate and that’s one band that I already missed!
I walk in
and feel something dripping on me and I realize that it’s my own sweat. I haven’t even been here but 2 minutes and I
am already melting under the 90+ degree direct sunlight.
One of the
things that I learned about Vans Warped during my research is that they have a
large inflatable sign with all of the bands playing and at what time and what
stage. Finding that was my first
mission. An interesting fact about Vans
Warped Tour is that the bands do not play at the same time at every show. So there was no way to know ahead of time
when any of the bands would be playing.
The Big Red Sign |
After trekking though thousands of people and hundreds of vendor and band tents, I see the big red sign. I am feeling relived until I look up and see all 90+ bands on 8 different stages listed on this giant red balloon. I’m pretty sure that everyone around me could hear the little voice inside my head screaming in panic. For a moment I feel as though I have just opened up an extra-large box of Whitman’s Sampler candies and there are so many new and somewhat familiar flavors to try! I take a snapshot on my phone and bust out my old school notebook and pen. I know that I absolutely cannot miss Black Veil Brides so I seek them out first. After feeling like I was playing one of those word search puzzle book games, I finally found them and I let out a big sigh of relief as I learned that they would not be going on until 5:55. This would give me plenty of time to get my bearings straight and figure out my way around this musical maze.