Kevin Lyman's Fantastical Wonderland!

Kevin Lyman's Fantastical Wonderland!

Woah. Yesterday was crazy, man. I'm telling you, it is no worse than last year, even without FF5! Here's the deal, though. I've got about a week's worth of posts from one day alone, so I'll be doing things a little bit differently than normal. I'm not going to talk much about the actual sets today, I'm just going to run you through the timeline yesterday.

Here we go.

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So, me being so excited for Warped and all, I decided to get up early. And when I say early, I mean 5:30am. Yeah. I know. This gets me to Noblesville around 8, about when I arrive at Verizon Wireless Music Center (or whatever) and find out that the PARKING LOT doesn't open until 10, only one hour before the event starts. LAME. So, I head to the local outdoor mall, where a bunch of Warped enthusiasts have also taken as their own. So here I am, walking around this place, when I see somebody I know. Already, I assume the day is going to be filled with me running into familiar faces. I was right.

So, after hanging with them a little bit, I hear that the dude at the venue told some people 9:30. Piece of junk. We took off, and low and behold, it was 9:30. So, I took off for the line, to find myself behind two VERY awesome people. We started talking, and then one of the girls handed me a voucher, which gave me VIP treatment at signings, free water all day, and the ability to go to the bands' bus area! YEAH! She became my insta-friend.

The doors open (after a KEVIN LYMAN sighting, I was crazy pumped) and we took off to go claim our VIP wristbands, grab the limited ed. Vans shades, and to see who was playing first. My first band happened to be Less Than Jake. So, while heading to see them, I run into the one, the only, @MINKUS!!! WOO! She recognized me AND called me by name. What up? I had a very brief conversation with her, and then started my day.

I saw a ton of bands, but I didn't stay for a lot of most of their sets. Here's the bands I saw more than half of the set or all of their set.
Less Than Jake
Big D and the Kids Table
Shad
Lights
The A.K.A's
Streetlight Manifesto
The Devil Wears Prada
3OH!3
The White Tie Affair
A Day To Remember

Looking at the schedule now, I am baffled how I saw some of them, because their sets were at the same time. Huh. I'll figure it out later.

I'll talk about all of those sets throughout the week.

So, nothing extraordinary happened apart from the shows, so I'll skip to the end of my day. After select Warped dates, there is an afterparty, hosted by Denny's. 5 or so bands come out, and you can chill with them, whatever. I decided to head out there. Turns out, I saw NONE of the bands that were there, though Breathe Carolina was there, who I LOVE. So, after grabbing a meal with the same two girls I met in line at the beginning of my day, I headed over and chatted with BC about DRD3, and then consulted Dance Gavin Dance about album art. Haha. But then... It happens. The highlight of my day.

I was walking out of Denny's, when... KEVIN LYMAN APPEARS. I did a double... no, TRIPLE take, and then knew I had to say something. I went over, and we talked. Our conversation was longer than I had with Minkus or ANY of the bands. It was awesome. We talked about ska, and he gave me a few bands to check out. FLIPPIN' SWEET. Then, I tried to get a picture, but my phone wouldn't work. BUT, Mighty Mendoza (the organizer of the party) came to the rescue. It'll be up on the Denny's site in a few days, and I'll DEF post it here.

So, yeah! No pictures, no autographs, just a day full of music. DEFINITELY a day to remember. (Hahahahaha, look at the pun!)

More in the upcoming days, I promise.