Warped: Modern rock tour makes South Florida stop
Modern-rock fans are no doubt pumped up to see most of the main acts on the Vans Warped Tour -- Angels & Airwaves, Relient K, As I Lay Dying, Every Time I Die, Mayday Parade, to name a few. But no one is more thrilled to be at the concert than one of the bands: A Dream of Reality.
The Coral Springs-based group joined the tour July 3 in Dallas after its manager ''pulled some strings,'' says lead singer AJ (just AJ), and will take the stage at Bicentennial Park sometime Saturday for a 30-minute set (each day's lineup isn't revealed to the acts until 9 a.m. day of show).
''We've been having six-hour-a-day practices for about a month now, making sure everything's perfect and ready to pull the trigger,'' said AJ the week before joining Warped. 'We don't even have lives anymore -- it's like, `Let's just do this band.' ''
A Dream of Reality's sound is a natural for Warped, whose lineup is dominated by hard-rock, nu-metal and thrash.
'A lot of people define us as a `screamo/emo' band, but I like to think of us as just a rock band,'' AJ said. ``We try lots of different things, but also lots of familiar things. Screamo only limits you to so much and emo only limits you to so much, but rock is everything.''
The band's manic stage presence is also tailor-made for the tour.
''We bring lots of energy, lots of crowd participation,'' says AJ. ``I'm one of those guys who likes to be all over the stage at all times. We really like kids to get involved with us -- we have little games we play, we give out candy and toys and stuff like that.
'It's just me and a mike up there, and I just try to stay off the stage as much as possible and in kids' faces. That's my job -- I climb things, I hang upside down from things and I never stop moving. You can't let them lose attention -- if they lose their attention for a second, you've lost them completely.''
AJ thought up the band's name in the eighth grade, but says it didn't mean much until they started finding success.
''I never really put much thought into it -- I just came up with a name,'' he says. ``But now when I think about it, you know, this is our dream, and we're working really hard to make it a reality.''
The group will release its first album, It's Nothing Personal, on Powerline Records Sept. 6. Fans can watch videos of the singles After Dark and Let Me Be the One on YouTube.com.
AJ -- who grew up listening to Dion & The Belmonts, Frank Sinatra and Elvis -- has always pushed the band to offer something different.
''We try to give the audience something they've never seen before, something that died years ago,'' he says. ``Like the time of the Rat Pack. Acts like that used to get the crowd involved, they'd bring people onstage, they'd do each other's songs and stuff like that. Not a lot of bands do that today -- a lot of them are just straightforward, boring, seen-it-all-before, check us out with our long, sweet hair. We're not trying to do that -- we're trying to give people their money's worth.''
Posted on Fri, Jul. 11, 2008