Myspace Music tour has wings!!!

MySpace Music Tour gets off to energetic start
By Marian Liu

Seattle Times staff reporter

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Archive MySpace kicks off its live tour here tonight
Since its founding in 2003, MySpace has become one of the most popular social-networking Web sites among teenagers. But just how powerful is the site's influence offline? The MySpace Music Tour, a nationwide series of concerts that kicked off at the Showbox SoDo Tuesday night, might be considered a test.

The show wasn't sold out or even packed, but the energy was high, the audience excited and the bands — chosen for their popularity on MySpace — performed well. Plenty of young people came out on a school night for the event, decked out in their hoodies, colorful T-shirts and skinny pants.

MySpace set out to make the show an experience, rather than just a concert. There were four video screens displaying the bands' music videos and two hairstyle booths to rejuvenate one's do. Three computer kiosks allowed fans to check out the MySpace site — even though teens are now accustomed to checking their MySpace sites from their cellphones.

Despite everything, there were lulls in the four-hour show. Other tours, such as the Vans Warped Tour and the Nintendo Fusion Tour, have several things going on — skateboard ramps and new video games — to keep concertgoers engaged when the onstage action slows down.

The lineup was brilliant, however. The two co-headliners were safe bets — hellogoodbye's last album, "Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs!," rose to No. 1 on the Billboard Top Independent Albums while Say Anything's "... Is a Real Boy" charted as well, peaking at No. 8 on Billboard's Top Heatseakers. Both have a stable fan base of screamers. But to separate their success from MySpace's influence may be hard, because their audience is demographically nearly identical — making both the chicken and egg, fueling each others' popularity on this tour.

Both emo-like, the co-headlining pop-punk groups expressed some beautiful angst. Emo can be an acquired taste, but for the teens, their lyrics read like torn diary pages. Say Anything's Max Bemis put it best when he said some of his songs came out of "extreme boredom and depression." While, the other co-headliner, hellogoodbye, expressed young love in the line, "Wouldn't you like to be older and married with me?" in one of its bigger hits, "Oh, It Is Love." They had some difficulties with sound and feedback at first, but came clear in time for their hits.

Opener Polysics was more of a gamble for MySpace. The Japanese new-wave band was new to the audience and spoke little English, but soon had their newfound fans waving devil rock signs and singing along. Some even were so swept up they bought Polysics' albums and posters — proof that MySpace is powerful enough to move swag. Will it prove strong enough to make a mark on the offline music world? Time will tell.