#2004 was crazy man. the bus breakdown timeline is wild i wanna make a proper post about that bc. and i hate that i know this.

[raytorosaurus]

I hope it’s okay to ask you but you seem to know everything about MCR so you might know. But I read recently that they were the designated bbq band on their first Warped in 2004 so they had to cook for everyone. Have you ever heard of that being the case? It just feels like a weird thing, with Ray apparently being a hermit in the bus and Frank being vegetarian and Gerard being blackout the whole time. I can’t imagine Mikey or Matt Pelissier holding down the fort.

haha yeah apparently so! warped tour was designed to be as efficient to run as possible because its primary purpose was to book up-and-coming bands and put them out there. it had a lot of weird components as a result - e.g. the sheer number of bands and locations, cheap tickets and free tickets for parents, and a constantly changing lineup schedule so attendees couldn't plan their day in advance around specific artists (so the artists were on a more ~equal footing and to encourage ppl to show up when the gates opened and stay all day). it was also notoriously gruelling and uncomfortable for the bands - really demanding schedule, no showers, etc etc.

so one of the things it did (along with showcasing local acts at each location) was invite a "bbq band" to join the tour for free and play every day if they helped run the nightly bbq that fed all the musicians. according to this podcast (around 17 mins in, but the whole episode is a short and really interesting listen, i recommend it!), mcr were that band in 2004 (they were only on the first half of the tour tho, june 25-july 18,24). i'm not sure exactly what his source is but he seems to know his stuff, and i'm almost positive i've heard gerard refer to it in an interview at some stage, though i can't remember when 😭. anyway, that doesn't mean they fully ran the bbq and were the only staff - they were just helpers! warped had a catering company and served a truly enormous amount of food every day, and apparently the artist's bbq was something like 300 hot dogs, 300 burgers, and 100 veggie burgers a night (all from that podcast). mcr definitely wouldn't have been doing that on their own, they were probably just helping out hahaha.

anyway, this was all in 2004, when the lineup included thursday, the used, tbs, coheed and cambria, the bouncing souls, etc. so revenge had only been out for like a month and they didn't have their own bus yet - i'm like 80% sure they stayed on senses fail's bus that tour, but i can't remember which one of them said that or where haha (they definitely shared a bus directly afterwards as they toured back towards nj).

after that is when they went to japan, came back, fired otter, and filmed inok, and went back on tour with bob and face to face all in the space of 2 weeks. that tour is when their van finally broke down for good and they got on their first own tour bus at the end of it.

the more ~famous mcr warped tour is 2005, which is the one with fob etc. i haven't seen lotms in a while but i actually assumed the bit where ray said he'd been a total hermit in the back of the bus was from that 05 tour, because that's the one they had the bus studio where he spent a lot of time writing parade demos. either way, he might not have been partying and socialising a whole lot, but i'm sure he would've sown up to bbq duty anyway! it was their free ticket, after all.