THE BANDS: In rough order: I arrived just as The Academy Is… launched into their set, and once again, they were 100% enjoyable, playing two new songs and causing nearly every female in the audience to have conniption fits. Some band on a side stage covered Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love” and it just about fell apart at the end, although their take on it made the song much more tolerable than L. Lewis’. Gym Class Heroes‘ set was very tight, blending a few new tracks with songs from their SUNY Fredonia era, and their cover of Lamb Of God was surprising both in its actually happening and its being kind of good. Japanese all-lady ska outfit ORESKABAND was ridiculously fun, and brought back skanking to Long Island, something I thought I’d never see again on my home turf. Disco Ensemble were a Finnish dance-rock act possessing both catchy songs and a rock-star exuberance that reminded me of Vains Of Jenna, who also brought a full-on arena spectacle to a crowd of about 50 people when I saw them open for Poison last year. The lead singer of You Me And Everyone We Know’s pleading voice was very much in the Ted Leo vein, which isn’t all that surprising given that they, too, are from DC. The female-fronted British three-piece Tat played next to the skate ramp, which was fitting for their competent, if a bit cliched, punk. (The lead singer said her band was from “London town,” which should give you an indication.) Automatic Loveletter’s first song came off like a slightly crunchier Paramore, but then lead singer Juliet Simms strapped on an acoustic and went barreling into Alanis territory, complete with too-long outro. Ludo charmed me for the entirety of their set, in large part because their frontman’s voice sounded like it belonged to a bookish alter ego of Placebo’s Brian Molko. Cobra Starship’s “Guilty Pleasure” was probably my favorite song of the day. Against Me! had an older average audience than any other act I saw all day, and they were tirelessly good. Say Anything made me write the words “too many syllables” in my notebook, an opinion that I suspect will bring out many people who will tell me that I am a thousand per cent wrong. Bring Me The Horizon made the audience collectively freak out with its grimy British death metal, and then encouraged the audience to form a huge mosh pit, during which I saw many punches thrown. And then there was Katy Perry, about whom more in a second.

THE BOOTHS: Each band, each corporate sponsor, and various other entities had booths set up around the sidelines, where people could buy merch, collect free swag, sign petitions, or find out how to properly examine their breasts. My favorite one was the Rock Band tent, where I was given the chance to play the game for the first time. (Research, right? I do write about it.) And as it turned out, the drummer and one of the guitar players in my band were none other than sidemen for Katy Perry, a fact that I found out after I got a 90% for screaming the lyrics to “Creep” into the drummer’s ear. (I hope I wasn’t too loud!)

The line outside the AT&T-sponsored booth offering autograph sessions with the likes of Gabe Saporta and members of All Time Low was super-long for most of the day, as was the one leading into some Trojan-sposnored “ride” where people I think got free condoms at the end. (The swag was being inflated and batted around during various sunset sets. Safe sex, everyone!) Pretty much every booth offering a meet and greet had a long line leading to it, a fact that helped make it impossible for anyone to see everything, since maneuvering around them was sometimes a bit of a trick; there were certain artists with whom it was possible to spend pretty much your entire day, between watching their normal set, watching their acoustic sets in various tents, and waiting in line for them at a meet and greet.

And finally, the booth selling the following T-shirt gave me an anchor on which I could stand all day:

I like to think that this is the one point Pitchfork Music Festival attendees and those people at the Warped Tour can (maybe) agree on.

THE CLOTHES: Many people chucked off whatever shirts they were wearing and put on whatever apparel they’d purchased at the tents, which I guess means the “don’t be that guy” rule is as old as I am. Other popular Warped Tour fashions included: homemade shirts/chest-coverings advertising “free hugs” and “free kisses” (which, as the day went on, evolved into pleas for free blow jobs and breast-reveals from some dudes); bikini tops; Appetite-era Guns N’ Roses t-shirts (seriously, I saw about 10 of them); shutter shades of all colors; Chuck Taylors, natch; and plaid shorts.

THE CONFUSING MESSAGES: PETA and other pro-vegetarianism organizations were, perhaps unsurprisingly, out in full force, although vegetarian foodstuffs were few and far between; there were a few stands selling French fries, including one that was inside the Coliseum and on the opposite side of the parking lot, but fries and pretzels were pretty much it as far as non-meaty food options went. Which is less than ideal for something that runs through lunch and dinner. Perhaps this was an issue with Nassau Coliseum’s catering arm, but it sure did make me wish that the “vegetarian starter kit” one organization was handing out came with some soy dog samples. Also, for a festival that had its own booth touting its eco-consciousness, a) there sure were a lot of unopened bags of Doritos collecting in the corners and b) water was five freaking dollars a bottle.

THE END: Idolator bete noire Katy Perry was placed in the de facto “headlining” role for Saturday’s show, so I had pretty much nowhere to hide during her set. (Most of the merch tents had packed up by then, thanks in part to gusty winds that were causing many a banner to skip across the lot.) She was pretty much as annoying in person as I expected, and the guitar on “U R So Gay” sounded like it had been lifted directly from some Swap N’ Shop-worthy smooth jazz. Highlights, if you can call them that, included her taking a break to shout the word “PENIS!!!!” really loudly and prefacing her show-closing rendition of “I Kissed A Girl” with a call to her mom on a “bananaphone.” (I told a friend that I was somewhat surprised she wasn’t phoning home via hamburger, but perhaps even Perry thought that would have been too obvious.)

I did, however, enjoy that there were a few young ladies who took advantage of the mostly female crowd in front of Perry to hop up on top of everyone and crowd-surf. It was very ’90s. As was some of the feel of the festival–the activist tents, the Converse, the Long Island Roller Derby team that had a a tent (!!), the surprisingly high number of chick-fronted acts I happened to run into–although the piles of merchandise offered by every act did bring the proceedings smack back into the current century, what with every band on the bill needing to make some extra scratch thanks to the recorded-music business being in its current state. I would go back next year, sure. Although I would definitely try to find a way to smuggle in my own water bottle, and maybe a granola bar or two, if only to stave off the exhaustion that kicked into my old bones at around 6 p.m.

Idolator [Twitter]

Early on in the life of this column, I acknowledged one big caveat: I’d be reporting on modern rock radio without having easy access to any such station on my radio dial. I’ve based whole columns on songs that I’ve yet to actually hear on terrestrial radio, like the Flobots’ “Handlebars.” Since the demise of the trailblazing WHFS, the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. rock radio market’s rock outlets have been reduced to the active rock station 98 Rock and the active/modern hybrid (DC101). So the dirty little secret of a lot of my reportage is that it’s come from following the charts, playlists, and streams of modern stations in other markets, which has allowed me to see what modern-rock hits haven’t crossed over to active-leaning stations.

But all that’s changed in recent weeks: Clear Channel has flipped one of its smooth jazz stations to Channel 104.3, Baltimore’s first full-time mainstream alt-rock station in over three years. The station is borrowing its morning show from DC101, and from what little I’ve tuned in to hear so far, the playlist may turn out to lean a little Active like its sister station. But for better or worse, it looks like I finally have somewhere to hear crap like “Handlebars” on my car stereo.

Last time, I focused on the new hits from established acts that are currently dominating the Modern Rock top 10. So in the spirit of new beginnings like that of Channel 104.3–albeit symbolic beginnings that tend to bring the same old shit–I thought I’d take a look at some of the more unfamiliar names that are scoring their first radio hits in the lower reaches of the rock charts. By far my favorite recent debut is “Love Me Dead” by Ludo, which is still crawling slowly upward, currently peaking at No. 19 after nearly three months on the chart. I’m not really sure what this band’s deal is, and I’m hesitant to try and describe the song. So I will instead merely hope that you’re as entertained by the video as I was the first time I stumbled upon it:

Another chart debut that’s been kicking around for about the same amount of time with greater success–currently No. 3 on Mainstream Rock and No. 15 on Modern–is “Addicted” by Saving Abel, a band that seems to be striking the same nauseating balance between nu-grunge sludge and Sunset Strip sleaze as, say, Hinder. Hell, “Addicted” sounds eerily similiar to Hinder’s first hit, “Get Stoned,” which is to say, get ready for these assclowns to become the next big Active Rock dynasty. Safetysuit’s “Someone Like You”, at No. 22 on Modern Rock, likewise fits into a comfortable preexisting radio niche of big, sweeping sub-Coldplay arena balladry, even if it’s a little surprising that the band hails from Oklahoma. And the only odd thing about yet another grungy debut, Another Black Day’s “Wicked Souls,” is that it reached No. 25 on Mainstream Rock while on an independent label, Bieler Bros. (As far as I can tell, the only other acts on either chart that aren’t on a major label or a subsidiary thereof are Nine Inch Nails, who of course are record industry castaways by choice, and Vampire Weekend.)

“They Say” by Scars On Broadway, which recently entered the Mainstream Rock chart and currently stands at No. 27, is a new project by some familiar names, System Of A Down’s Daron Malakian and John Dolmayan. With System currently on an ambiguous hiatus that’s widely speculated to be a permanent breakup, Scars On Broadway is the second offshoot of the band to hit the airwaves, after two successful solo singles by singer Serj Tankian. If things proceed at this pace, we could have another vaguely exciting face-off of ex-bandmates, in the fashion of the dueling Angels & Airwaves and +44 singles that followed the breakup of Blink 182 a couple of years ago. And when bands that weren’t that great to begin with start splintering into seperate projects and competing on the chart, the overall effect tends to bring to mind the tagline from 2004’s Alien vs. Predator: Whoever wins… we lose.

Apocalyptica, the Finnish cello ensemble that became something of a novelty act in the mid-’90s for playing classical covers of Metallica songs several years before string tributes to popular rock acts became a cottage industry unto itself, has gradually become a career band with original material, often collaborating with various hard rock and metal vocalists. And in “I’m Not Jesus” with Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, Apocalyptica have finally broken through with their first big mainstream radio hit, “I’m Not Jesus,” which is currently at No. 9 on Mainstream and No. 26 on Modern. It’s not a bad song, but I really have nothing to say about it other than that it still cracks me up that the singer from Slipknot’s real name, after being known as simply “No. 8″ all those years, turned out to be “Corey.”

By far the most eyebrow-raising new artist on the Modern Rock chart is Carolina Liar, whose “I’m Not Over” is currently at No. 24 and rising. Carolina Liar frontman Chad Wolf is a scraggly Southerner, and his hit fits in nicely alongside other slick, guitar-driven rock radio fodder, but his band boasts a unique pedigree. Somehow, after relocating to Los Angeles, Wolf ended up rubbing elbows with adult-contempo types like Dianne Warren and Celine Dion, before ultimately meeting Euro pop mastermind Max Martin, who assembled a band full of Swedish session musicians for Wolf and put together a debut album:

Martin, once known as the architect of the bombastically synthetic sound of his countless hits for Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, has moved toward guitar-driven pop rock like Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” and Pink’s “U + Ur Hand” in recent years with the aid of another songwriter/producer for hire, Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald. But those songs were recorded by female pop stars, and while many rock fans and critics admitted (sometimes grudgingly) a weakness for their crunchy riffs and shoutalong hooks, rock radio never touched them. So it’s interesting that Martin has finally, yet somewhat stealthily, broken through to one of the few corners of American radio that had previously eluded his Midas touch, and one wonders if Wolf was deliberately recruited for just that purpose. Even if that’s not the case, it’s still pretty funny to imagine that back when Martin was ruling the world with hits like “I Want It That Way,” he may have been fantasizing about having his very own Days Of The New.

Seether – Rise Above This:

Ludo – Love Me Dead:

vs.

Jessy J – Tequila Moon:

Kenny G – Sax-O-Loco:

To me, it’s nearly a draw, as smooth jazz is so far removed from the actual jazz genre that there’s no mistaking the two these days (in fact, the “official” radio genre designation is “Smooth AC”, which seems more appropriate). The history of “modern rock” seems to have been rewritten, permanently erasing the Sire-heavy 80’s playlists of KROQ and treating “Plush” as the dawn of time. Also helping the cause of smooth jazz is the fact that Ludo is a curse on humanity. Such is life. As an added bonus with the format change, Baltimore residents also get a syndicated morning show, Elliott In The Morning (albeit a regional one, thankfully) as well. Thanks for everything, Clear Channel!

WSMJ/Baltimore Flips To Modern Rock [FMQB]