Vans Warped Tour 2005 in Northampton Fairgrounds, Northampton, MA, Monday, 8/15/05. Get yer punk on....
Good crowd, except major mud throwing starting around 4 pm and continuing through the evening. Didn't see a lot going on at the medical tent, which is a plus. No problems getting in or out of the area (pays to come early), but the venue areas / fairgrounds en toto were muddy sloppy from thunderstorms the day prior. Lots of single flip flops in the vendor aisles and venues (who the heck wears flipflops to see 30+ punk bands - would you go into a mosh pit in flipflops?
LOL)
Music - sound was better the closer you got to a stage (as was the crush of flesh, as always). Offspring set was well received, doing a bunch of older standards that had the crowd going; however the DropKick Murphys ruled the day (what do you expect being about 2 hours from Boston?), with lots of high energy in their eclectic Irish punk (including the warped up "Amazing Grace" - gotta love punk with bagpipes!). Other bands of note included Opiate For the Masses (sparse crowd / minor stage for them - don't understand why), Mest (who actually played their own songs this year, as opposed to 2003 at Brockton, MA, when they played only covers), Avenged Sevenfold, and MXPX. Also, two thumbs down for Skindred, who kept a crowd waiting for a while, and then sent out someone to inform the crowd that the lead singer "was stuck in traffic" and the band would not be playing their set.
Only downer to the Warped Tour set up is the limited set time bands get. Oh yeah, hats off to the boarders doing their thing all day long - the crowd to see them was constant throughout the day.
