PHILLY PRIDE

I’m proud with very little reason to be. And I do this a lot. Watching All Time Low grow from being an unknown opener at the HFStival, having won a local band competition, to selling out headlining tours and having some of the biggest crowds at Warped Tour, it makes me proud. Sure, I may have told a few people about them, spread their popularity a little, and I did do some promotional work for them at Hopeless, but their success is due to their efforts, not mine. And yet, I’m still proud of them every time I remember them played Warped Tour in Scranton, PA in August of 2006.

A few weeks ago, I went to see Anarbor with some of the people I worked with at Hopeless. The headlining band I had never heard of, and at the time I figured I was just going to head home after Anarbor, as I had work the next morning. But while I was waiting for my tickets, I started talking to some of the guys in Anarbor, when one of the other band members came out. His name was Dan, and he let me know he was in the headlining band, The Scenic. After a few minutes of conversation, I found out he was from Doylestown, right near where my sister is getting married in May. Before he went back inside to watch the show, he asked me to stick around for their set, as their audiences had been somewhat lackluster the past few days.

The set was pretty good. They were obviously a very polished, practiced band, and they had some fun, catchy songs. Though the crowd wasn’t huge, they did have a decent amount of energy, and they were obviously having fun. So when I went up to talk to the guitarist I had talked to before the show, he was surprised and excited to see that I had stayed. He made sure to talk to me for a few minutes before I had to leave, and asked me to come out to see them when they came back to Hollywood for a Battle of the Bands in December.

Now, I talked to this kid for maybe 15 minutes before the show, and 10 minutes after. On top of that, a few weeks had passed in between our first meeting and the Battle of the Bands show last night. When I saw him walking away from the vans and towards the line, just checking out how many people were there, I figured I would go over and re-introduce myself, and after a few minutes of talking, he might remember me. However, when he saw me walking over to him, his face lit up. “Hey! I didn’t know you were coming tonight!” he screamed over to me. Not only did he recognize my face, but he remembered where he met me, and the conversation we had about Philly bands a few weeks back.

Some bands, when faced with a new level of fame (and therefore a new loss of privacy) shy away. They unfriend people on myspace and facebook; they stop signing autographs; they go straight from backstage to the tour vehicle. Now, these guys are still pretty small-time, and who knows what they’re going to do in the future, if they will become more reclusive. For now, however, having just been signed and done a pretty decent sized national tour, no one can complain that they were hard to reach. Not only were they all walking around the venue before the show, they stopped and talked to anyone who would talk to them, and thanked everyone who joined in for their mid-set conga line (because no one is too cool for a conga line). After the show, they were all at the merch booth, talking to fans (both old and new), shaking with joy: they had just been invited by Kevin Lyman (founder/owner of Warped Tour, Taste of Chaos tour, etc) to play the “Kevin Says” stage at warped tour this summer, as they didn’t win the battle of the bands competition (though they were his favorite).

This is the new music era. Before, it was all about the mystique of a band: they were gods, not real people. Though specific personal details might have been shared, bands weren’t there to interact personally with fans. Look at KISS, the very definition of mystique: how long was it before anyone knew what they looked like underneath the makeup? Now that has changed. Modern bands – and especially those bands aimed at the younger audiences, those under 25 – are all about personalization. The most popular bands are the ones that make an effort to get to know the audience, and let the audience get to know them. Every band has at least one video camera running at all times, and myspace pages are filled with band pranks and long tour ride videos. Fans today know exactly what the inside of the tour van looks like, without ever having been inside it. They also know all the girlfriends, tour crew, pets, favorite foods, most popular tour games, everything.

Many major acts are still trying to avoid this, but the truth is that secrecy just angers and annoys fans. The Scenic is not the best band I’ve ever heard, and I’m honestly not sure if they’re really gonna do anything more than what they’re doing now: small shows with mediocre crowds. But they found a supporter in me, just by being human.


www.myspace.com/thescenic