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It’s taking some serious schedule revisiting to figure out exactly what I saw and did at Bamboozle this year. Upon arrival Saturday, I met up with Chris and Dave from Saves the Day in the shadow of a ferris wheel since they were the first willing sports to give my Karenplusone 90s Lyrics Quiz a whirl. They’re lucky we’ve got mutual friends vouching for their coolness because if their performance on the quiz was any indication, I’d beg to differ. Big time. After discussing the finer points of getting into festivals for free (Saves the Day Tip #1: Join a Band), I made my way to the Red Bull tent to find my wee sidekick Sarah and our favorite Californians, Ollie and Parker. I think we got a tad caught up in the lyrics quiz (Ollie represented for the Ooh Las and Parker brought his boys and game face for the Say Anything go), because alas – we missed Tokio Hotel. I really, REALLY wanted to see Tokio Hotel. And yes, I’ve seen them before. This is where crack marketing comes in. I’m sorry, but Tokio Hotel is quite possibly the worst band I have ever seen. Ever. I’ve raged against them on numerous occasions, but the fact that they were thrown onto a festival that is – for lack of a better word – emo, is hilarious. You can give TH all the credit in the world for having oodles of hairdo, oodles of makeup and oodles of mismatched fashion sense, but the one thing you absolutely CANNOT give them credit for is having EMOTION. I mean, look, I get it; they’re foreign. English isn’t their first language. But that said, isn’t it a tad criminal to make them sing “heartfelt” songs in an unknown vocabulary? It sounds RIDICULOUS. That said, the buzz in the Red Bull tent was all for catching ‘em, which I will attribute to the human condition of addiction to trainwreckage. I watched some Saves the Day and moved on to Kill Hannah. The KH dudes are my buddies, though it seems I’ve spent more time on the DJ circuit with them than at actual gigs. We did some math and figured out that the last time I’d seen them play was in 2004 when they were opening for HIM. Nuts. Sarah and I planted ourselves at the foot of the stage in an attempt to rectify our piss poor attendance record and I’ll go ahead and say that our position accounted for all the glorious posturing and pomp that followed. I’m sure friendship serves as a bias, but Kill Hannah are so much more fun than most bands at Bamboozle. I’m a sucker for the electro-rock hybrid (see: the Faint, Muse, Ladytron, Goldfrapp, Heavens, and obvs old-schoolers like Depeche Mode and New Order). All the new bands today that are ripping off this steeze owe something to Kill Hannah, whether they admit it or not. These guys have been chugging along for at least ten years. They deserve all the credit of those crowd-surfers. I’m pretty sure it was around this time that Sarah and I got hungry, and anyone who attended this year’s festival knows the $10 “burritos” were something to be avoided. Over in catering it was like a living, breathing version of rock n’ roll high school – loads of tables with people not-so-non-chalantly checking each another out. Where do you sit to be cool? We chose a discretely located table with our friend Kitty from Mindless Self Indulgence and her adorable boyfriend. After sizing up the other people in the room (“Why do the nicest guys always have to have the worst hair?”), conversation turned to television. What else do you talk about in a high school mess hall? Kitty and Gil were waxing rhapsodic about their favorite on-tour viewing - a Korean soap opera about feudal era peeps and their cooking montages. I dunno, at least, that’s what I gathered from the conversation. I was too busy trying to convince Kitty to quit being a pussy (heh, see what I did there?) and give the Sunday night lineup on Sundance channel a whirl (they show superfucked Asian horror flicks every week at midnight, check it out). Mat from Kill Hannah joined our table and we gave him hell about his studly turn as centerfold for Kerrang magazine last week. As he said, anyone under the age of 16 won’t laugh. We intended to see our friends Men Women & Children play, but stage proximity placed us in front of something so bad it doesn’t deserve a mention by name. All I will say is that this one performer at Bamboozle stood for everything that is wrong with music and internet culture today. And no, as stated earlier, I missed Tokio Hotel. Shock and awe painfully inflicted, Sarah and I retreated to the Red Bull tent where we were treated to cocktails, a dance off, more cocktails, and all the away message fodder one could stomach. Bring on Day Two….