Day 1:
The party – some good parts, some bad parts, mostly awesome cake parts. The Mother War cake looked amazing and tasted equally fantastic. Brown sugar chocolate anyone? Nothing helps out beer-induced hunger quite like a cake shaped like a woman in a gas mask, eh?
Once we made our way in we caught Madina Lake who put on an amazing show. The crowd was tame at the beginning and by the end it had grown three times its original size and the kiddies were going nuts! Their live show is something to definitely catch if you get the chance.
We caught The Almost which spurred a flurry of jokes pertaining to how they were "almost talented" and "almost The Used." In all reality though, they're not total shit. The singer told some lame jokes about Bam'boob'zle, but their performance was decent.
MC Hammer drew a crowd that rivaled that of Killswitch Engage. It was amazing, seriously. I watched a couple of songs in passing and unfortunately neither of them were 2 Legit 2 Quit or Hammer Time but in true Hammer form he had the big pants and a windbreaker that could rival a Cosby sweater topped off with about 15 choreographed dancers. Isn't hiring too many people what got him in trouble the first time around. Ah, hindsight isn't always 20/20 is it? The quality is shifty but you get a good idea of the crowd he pulled.
I'm going to back track a minute. Can someone please explain the thrill of Jeffree Star? When we walked in he was literally being swarmed by no fewer than 500 people. It's a dude in drag with airbrushed make-up. I don't get it. Enlighten me.
We saw Hellogoodbye, who opened for MCR. The most fun show I saw all day for sure. The singer looked like he should be in an episode of Ugly Betty or take over Rivers Cuomo's position in Weezer. I'm not really into dance music but when they brought out people dressed in food-related costumes you couldn't help but get involved.
My Chemical Romance put on an amazing show despite them being sick with salmonella poisoning. This was my first time seeing them live and to the people out there who aren't feeling MCR and can't figure out why they're huge – you clearly haven't seen them live either. They owned 40,000 people for an hour and a half. As per how their tour has been thus far, the played The Black Parade all the way through and then had an encore of songs from earlier albums which I don't remember but I think it included I'm Not Okay. Fill these in if your memory is better than mine was that day.
Day 2:
Considering the sunburn I was nursing (SPF 40 apparently wasn't enough) I didn't plan on staying long Sunday. We caught another performance from Madina Lake who were playing under the code name of Retardobot and we were treated to yet another amazing performance. You hear more of the tone deaf person filming singing than you do Nathan – you can see how into it the crowd was.
Killswitch Engage tore it up. There was growling, there were guitars, there were lude comments. It was rowdy.
Embedding was disabled so go here for the video.
I didn't stay for Juliette and the Licks or Linkin Park. Way too tired and honestly didn't really want to see Linkin Park. However, I am thoroughly disappointed I missed this:
