So let me start by saying this: I steal. A lot. And it’s all done on the computer. But I have to say, I’m 87 percent sure that people out there are actually OK with it. Now, for example, I’m a member of it-leaked.com (and I have no idea what I’d do without it). For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it’s a site where people post CD leaks as well as already released stuff. The thing about this site, though, is that nearly ever label has an employee monitoring the site to make sure leaks happen at the appropriate time. Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty when The Used’s “Artwork” was out nearly four months ahead of time…

So what’s happening here is a strategic release. The thing about it-leaked is that you can’t just sign up. Someone has to invite you. Each membership comes with two free invites, but to earn more you have to upload music to the site. Now, you can also donate money to earn invites. Record labels know that their stuff is going to leak, but here’s an example of how it’s done well.

Now, another thing about stealing music online…is there anything so wrong with converting a YouTube video including a song that doesn’t have a title yet, hasn’t been released, or isn’t available in this country into an MP3 for your own listening pleasure? For example, Avicii’s got a new track out that I adore, but how else am I supposed to listen to it?

So, that being said, I don’t think anyone’s changing their ways anytime soon. Happy listening!

So, as I said, I deleted my account. I said goodbye to the username I created when I was in high school (thankfully) and opted for cathcouretas, the name I use for pretty much everything else I do on the Internet. I also said goodbye to some embarrassing statistics. About a year ago, I cleared Metro Station from my account so no one would ever know how much I listened to them. Now, I’m saying goodbye to many, many more plays just like that (and you’ll never know!)

With this new account will come a boatload of new artists and a few familiar old ones. I guess my taste hasn’t changed that much, but I’ve added a lot to it. I’ve lost some music as I’ve switched from computer to computer, but I do like that Last.fm scrobbles from all of my devices, where some of that music is still hiding…somewhere.

But back to the fact that Last.fm annoys me. It’s almost like those in charge don’t want to change the system because it works how it is. I mean, it does, but I couldn’t name to you a single difference in the site’s functionality since I first signed up in 2007. Granted, there probably are a few that I just haven’t noticed, but it’s still such a basic concept and they could do so much with it. With Pandora, Spotify, and who knows what else, there’s a lot of room for Last.fm to take over in the United States, but the guys just aren’t doing it, and that will forever baffle me.

If you’ve got the opportunity, why not take it? You never know what will come of it.

I know this kind of stuff goes on all the time, but I just didn’t understand how three people who were chatting about their fake IDs were all OK with bringing cocaine to a concert venue. Talk about getting hit with the worst double whammy ever if you get caught.

But I ignored them, because their issues aren’t my business, and if they choose to be out of their minds, then I guess that’s the way it goes. As long as it doesn’t affect me.

But alas, a couple of hours later, it did affect me. All of us were in the first two rows of the crowd, and seeing Avicii live was an unreal experience. But when I got pushed out of the way violently by people who claimed to have been there first and chose to leave and try and get their spots back, I got pissed. One girl kept dropping–it looked like she was about to fall asleep and the loudest show I’d ever been to.

Another girl kept telling this one guy to get that first girl out of there, but he was too out of his mind to care and ignored everyone around him. So your drugs are fun, but you all turn into the rudest people I’ve ever met when you’re on them in public. As they continued to shove me around, I gave up. I walked out of the crowd, gave word to the bouncer that they were doing cocaine, and found myself a healthy, breathable spot in the back with a kick-ass view. Within 10 minutes, the annoying ones had filed out of the venue.

I couldn’t believe it. I was that girl.

Afterwards, I talked to a friend of mine who I know has done cocaine somewhat regularly. He asked if the cops were involved and I said I didn’t think so. “Good,” he replied. “That could’ve ruined their lives.”

Well of course it would have. But that’s not my problem.

A couple of weeks later, I chatted with a guy working crowd control at another venue while I was up in the pit taking photos. Between sets, I asked him about the whole drug thing at venues like this. I learned that essentially at any smaller-ish show like that, people with drugs just get kicked out unless they become out of control or violent, at which time the police are called.

So you know what? I don’t feel bad about ratting those kids out at all. They just got kicked out. I don’t even care if it didn’t teach them a lesson, because if you’re dumb enough to keep doing that, you’re going to get caught by the people you really don’t want to see you. And you know what else? Anyone who does that on a regular basis is lucky as hell that bouncers don’t care anymore.

So go ahead and keep pushing the limits. But if you see me, you should probably run for your life.

Derek Sanders of Mayday Parade. All Rights Reserved.

On Saturday, Oct. 23, Mayday Parade headlined The Noise Tour at Bogart’s in Cincinnati, Ohio, pleasing fans who had been aching to see the group for over a year.

As the show began, lead singer Derek Sanders could not have been more excited, as Mayday Parade and four other bands were forced to cancel a show at the same venue in October of 2010 when a stormy day lead to a leaky roof over the stage.

“We’re so excited to be back and ready to play for you guys,” Sanders said.

On this tour, Mayday Parade was promoting its most recent album release: its self-titled album came out on October 4.

“With this album, we were able to get back in the room with just the five of us and create songs that we love and music that we absolutely care about 100 percent,” Sanders said. “That was kind of the main focus for this CD, just to go back and make it a CD that we love first. As long as we did that, I think that’s what people will see the most and find the most real.”

The group has come a long way from its days of following Warped Tour and selling CDs outside the venue.

“When we started the band, we all loved writing music and creating music and playing it and that’s why we started doing this,” Sanders said. “We wanted to give it a really good try and tour as much as we could and promote our album ourselves.

Early on, then-lead singer Jason Lancaster left the group (later starting Go Radio), and the fivesome went from there.

“We did our second album we kind of strayed from the path a little bit,” Sanders said. “We had just signed to Atlantic Records and they wanted us to do all of these co-writes and go with a big producer and experience that world which is very different. When you have a whole lot of people who are involved with the creative side of the band, people are telling you what your band should be and what your band should sound like. I think we learned a lot from that experience.

Fans also enjoyed performances from We Are The In Crowd, You Me At Six, and There For Tomorrow.

“We’re very lucky to be where we are, Sanders said. “We’re very fortunate to do tours like these.”

Derek Sanders of Mayday Parade. All Rights Reserved.

Yesterday (or I guess two days ago now, considering it’s technically Monday) I spent my Saturday night at Bogart’s for The Noise Tour featuring Mayday Parade, We Are The In Crowd, You Me At Six, There For Tomorrow, and The Make. I’m a huge TFT fan and Mayday isn’t too shabby, but I keep going to these kind of concerts knowing that the screams of the teenagers there are more likely to make me go deaf than standing next to the subwoofers in the pit after the first three songs are up and I can’t photograph anymore.

I’ve been starting to wonder if I’m getting to old for these kind of shows. I love live music and I think emo kids put on the best show of all (though some of them could use a lesson in lighting). Their fans are the most dedicated and most excited than most others, but most of them can’t even drive yet, and if they can, then they’re sure as hell not old enough to buy cigarettes (or at least alcohol).

I’m 22 years old and I graduated from college almost a year ago. Ninety-nine percent of the photographers up in the pit with me are my age or even significantly older, and everyone likes to roll their eyes at each other when the girly screams begin. Seriously, you would have thought Biebs was there.

So I sit here now with a full show lineup this week. I’m headed to see Avicii at the Madison Theater on Monday night (tonight?) in Covington, Kentucky as a fan and I couldn’t be more excited. On Wednesday, I head up to Oxford, Ohio (home of Miami University) where Taking Back Sunday and The Maine are performing at Brick Street Bar. As a Miami alum, I’m super excited for the homecoming festivities that follow this weekend, but I’ll be cutting them short because I’m heading to see Never Shout Never Saturday back at Bogart’s.

It seems odd that a 22-year-old college graduate with a world of opportunity would choose to spend her Saturday night with a bunch of tweens and their moms, but I love concert photography too much (and I do secretly like some of the music, too) to ever want to give any of this up. So I guess to answer my own question, I’ll be going to these shows until I really don’t like it. Right now, I still love it for reasons completely different than those of the fans pressed up against the barricades in the front. However, when you ask me to move or think that I’m trying to take your spot, please think again. I think I speak for all photogs when we say that we’re not out to get you, we’re just here to do our job, and we want you to have as good of a time as we are. But hey, we are closer to the stage, we get to bring in professional cameras, and we don’t end up all sweaty pushed up next to hundreds of people for hours, so I guess I do think that we’re having a better time than you.

What’s funny is that most of the TV shows I watch don’t have a big soundtrack (think Law & Order: SVU, cartoons, etc.), so it’s all about the new stuff and listening hard. I’m always at the ready in case I do hear something that I like. What’s really fun is when you hear a song that reminds you of another song you’ve forgotten about or have always wanted to learn the title. At the same time, I get really annoyed hearing the same Top 40 songs over and over, and I have to exercise a lot of strength to not change the channel during commercials and risk missing out on something.

Anyway, athough they’re kind of all over the place and probably not meant for the same playlist, here are a quick 5 songs that I wouldn’t have in my iTunes library if it weren’t for MTV noting their music choices (and Shazam in some cases, too). Enjoy!

1. Electric (feat. Miss Amani) – The DNC
2. 2/5 Divine – Hell & Lula
3. Rescue You – Jake Epstein
4. Don’t Keep Me Waiting – Electrolightz
5. Better With You – Five Times August

There For Tomorrow’s vocalist Maika Maile explained it best.

“If they want to wear makeup, let them f*cking wear makeup,” Maile said of bands on the tour. “If they want to go out there and be tatted from head to toe to be as tough as possible, let them do that too. If you want to be a little pop star, do that. Who cares? Everybody’s got their own thing.”

Warped is about fun. Period. And it just so happens that many of the bands that play on this tour every year have a pretty large fan base. This year, Paramore, Gym Class Heroes and Jack’s Mannequin played select dates. It is a great opportunity for lesser-known bands to attract more fan and for anyone who loves music to spend a day outside wandering through merchandise booths and to the various stages.

The Veteran

Andrew McMahon is no stranger to Warped Tour. Having formed Something Corporate in 1998 and then Jack’s Mannequin in 2004, McMahon has been touring for over a decade. Some have taken sides with one band over the other or were thrown off by Something Corporate’s reunion tour last year, but McMahon said Jack’s Mannequin will be his focus from now on.

“We had kind of gotten to the place where you’re on the road and you start beating each other up and stop getting along, and that didn’t seem like a very healthy environment to create music in,” McMahon said of he and his Something Corporate bandmates. “So, I started making music that became Jack’s Mannequin.”

McMahon was lucky: he already had a solid fan base from Something Corporate. However, starting up Jack’s Mannequin was still like starting from square one.

“It’s an effort of just trying to grow things every day and reach new people,” McMahon said.

And Jack’s Mannequin is indeed growing. A summer tour with Guster continues into the fall, stopping in Columbus on September 4, and the group will release its third full-length album this October.

The Guys Next Door

Maile’s Twitter bio reads: “It’s like I majored in music with a minor in philosophy without the student loan debts or degree.” Maile has been playing Warped (or at least parts of it each year) since 2005, and has enjoyed the ups and downs that come along with it all.

“We’ve kind of grown up through the scene,” Maile said. “Doing it this year is so much different, even than in, say 2009. We were still so new. Our fan base has grown strong, and now that we have that on our shoulders, we’re able to make an impact.”

Maile said, though, that he preferred this year’s Warped lineup because of how broad it is.

“Everyone seems to get each other and at least kind of get along,” Maile said.

So, how did Maile escape the heat and the crowds to get some personal time while touring? By taking to a good book. At the Warped stop in Cincinnati, Maile said he had received a book from a fan that he had been reading.

“I’ve been studying Eastern philosophy and looking into the art of Zen,” he explained. “I’m not out here being a Buddhist or anything, but it’s pretty interesting and really out there.”

Even if you are not into Zen, There For Tomorrow might still be for you. The group’s latest studio album, “The Verge,” hit shelves June 28.

But what was Warped Tour really like this year? Hotter than usual. Right in the middle of the non-record-breaking heat wave (which was a major bummer, by the way), Warped took over Riverbend on August 2 and did not let up.

Anxious fans lingered from the initial line to get into the venue before 10 a.m. through the final sets pushing 9 p.m. Was the long day worth it? I’m sure if you asked anyone there, you would not get anything less than “definitely.”

FOB’s vocalist Patrick Stump is also around, having began a solo project last year. However, we don’t hear much about the other half: drummer Andy Hurley and guitarist Joe Trohman.

It turns out those two have been building a new fan base having formed a new band, The Damned Things, focusing more on heavy metal and hard rock than FOB’s pop-punk sound.

On August 20, The Damned Things headlined a show at Bogart’s in Cincinnati, and the crowd was vastly different than what would have been seen at a Fall Out Boy show. The days of pop-punk are definitely over for Hurley and Trohman.

The group was supported by Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, Hourcast, and veterans Fair To Midland. Although it may seem like a group with two ex-FOB stars would have stolen the show, it was Fair To Midland that had the loudest crowd.

Fair To Midland’s guitarist Cliff Campbell explained that the group started out while he and now-vocalist Darroh Sudderth were in high school. The band started filling out after the guys graduated from high school, and after being unable to find a lead singer, Sudderth was put on vocals after having played bass.

“We’re all just hicks from small towns around each other and we’re together because we’re the only people around,” Campbell said.

It was lucky that these guys found each other, because they have been able to hold strong for over 10 years. Many groups might give up or fade out without national headlining tours and international fame, but Fair To Midland is made up of people with a passion.

“We separate from each other when we go home,” Campbell explained, mentioning that the guys bring a mix of sounds into each song they have written. “We’re really into having a lot of epicness in our songs.”

But how does one describe the group’s sound, exactly? Wikipedia describes Fair To Midland as alternative and progressive metal. Campbell said it’s difficult to describe.

“I remember someone saying (our sound) was like Pink Floyd and some other band tripping acid in the desert or something, I actually thought that was pretty awesome,” Campbell said. “It’s hard to describe our sound, because it’s a culmination of all of us and we really sound like we shouldn’t be in a band together.”

Campbell said for the band, it’s about fans finding meaning in the music.

“That’s what really matters, because that’s what did it for us when we were 14,” Campbell said. “It changed our lives and made us start thinking. We’re trying to give that back to people in the best way that we know how.”

The band’s latest album “Arrows & Anchors” was released on July 12.

“We actually came to our own as individual musicians,” Campbell said of the new album. “You can actually hear each individual musician on ‘Arrows & Anchors’. We’re together but separate, and I think that was perfect, that album.”

With that being said, I’m a member of iT-LEAKED (who isn’t at this point?) and if I see a familiar artist, I’ll most likely download and listen. That’s what I did today with Automatic Loveletter’s new album, The Kids Will Take Their Monsters On. I’ve rarely listened to them but remember a year or so ago downloading some tunes because I liked the similar artists mentioned on the site. And I’m all about girl power. Female vocals can make the biggest difference (shout out to Lights!) especially when they’re in acoustic songs.

So this new album is pretty damn good. It’s summer in Cincinnati, and the weather couldn’t be more perfect. It’s that top down kind of weather where you want to sit outside with a glass of wine every day after work and not think about anything at all. This is the perfect album to listen to just walking around or running errands. I know people probably say that about a lot of albums, but come ON, Dave Matthews and John Mayer are really f*cking annoying.

If you want to rage, go download the new Jason Derulo single. Or Katy Perry. Or something else along those lines. If you want to sit outside or just open all the windows in your apartment and chill, this is the album for you. I guess you could say that Lights has inspired me to listen to more female singers and groups, and I’m really glad that a friend introduced me to her music a couple years ago.

Juliet Simms knows what’s up. You can tell she means every word she sings. I’m not going to sit here and spend another 500 characters analyzing her music. No one really wants to read that stuff. Listening to it actually gives you a legitimate idea of what this girl’s about, and she’s got a lot of good things to say.

I think what’s getting me most excited is following @VansWarpedTour on Twitter, along with @FearlessWarped and all these other bands on tour that keep tweeting photos from the stage. It’s such a tease, and if I wasn’t working, I would definitely be hitting more than one stop.

But this year’s a little different. This year, I’m not a huge fan of a lot of the bands on the tour. Granted, I’ll still be talking to plenty, and you’ll never have any idea if there’s one that I’m really not into, but that’s what makes me a music journalist, right? And I can’t imagine that there’s a group on that tour that isn’t super fun to talk to and hang out with. Except The Cab. They thought they were awesomeeeeeee. And trust me, they’re not. I see why they’re down to three members.

So what’s better, being brutally honest like that or just playing along and portraying every band to be awesome? I think honesty prevails. I talked to He Is We last summer about Rockin’ Romance, and they admitted that they were disappointed with how the track was mixed in the end. Did I print that? Yeah. They thought Iyaz’s “Replay” would be turned into a He Is We version, but apparently extra beats and such were thrown in and it ended up not even sounding like the band. Rachel Taylor told me the band uses that song to warm up, and I would LOVE to hear that version. I guess pop sells and that’s what the label was going for, but it wouldn’t be right to not print how Taylor really felt.

The same goes for The Cab. Frontman Alex Deleon was a dick, in all honesty. He talked about how fans have ADD and need more music all the time but that the good bands take it slow. Maybe that’s just him making excuses for his band starting to fall apart or maybe that’s just how he looks at his fans, but either way, he’s not setting a good example.

This year, hopefully I’ll be able to talk to more bands and get a better idea of some of the personalities spending that much time on the road. I can say that I’d hope most everyone is positive, but it’s the negative attitudes that make the good stories. We’ll see how it goes.