Three of us hid in the bottom bunk, in back of the van. We covered ourselves in blankets and waited for someone to check the trunk as we pulled through security. The most anyone did was peek their head into the driver's window, but we were still scared shitless.
We felt the van rolling into the festival grounds. Knowing the layout from the previous day, I figured that we were passing in front of the main stage, which was being sound-checked.
Before we stopped moving I could tell who was onstage. Someone opened the back doors and we tumbled out, in the midst of Something Corporate running through 'Hurricane'. We were parked in front of the main stage.
Someone else in the band said, "We made it!" We had no wristbands on yet, so we crossed our arms and wandered to the center of where the crowd would be. A small collection of vendors and roadies had gathered, there might have been 40 of us spread out across a space that a few thousand would be later on that day.
They stopped and started through the song three or four times. I thought of when Ben and I saw them open for Blink-182, when they fucked up playing 'Space'. Then, we were 14-years-old and in Boston. Now, 22 and in California we watched them prepare for their first show back together.
It was like reuniting with an old friend,one you stopped keeping tabs on, only to find how well off he is years later. When I first listened to them, I was in love with my first girlfriend, and they were just breaking into the mainstream. That day, I was 8 years older, grown, and they were pop-punk veterans.
Not veterans in the same way as Green Day is, but to me, more nostalgic. Green Day never gave themselves a chance to be that way, mainly because they never went away. Teenagers today know who Green Day is, but most kids at Bamboozle left before Something Corporate.
This is slowly devolving into a rant on a defunct genre, so I'll just end by saying that, at Bamboozle that day, I felt like I was in Jurassic Park, stepping out of the car and seeing the Brachiosaurus feeding.