the Warped Tour

The institution that puts on The Warped Tour (whether it's still Vans shoes, or Launch.com, I couldn't tell you) brought its circus to a grassy hillside near Truckee, and considering the challenge of orchestrating one of these outdoor festivals, they did a fairly good job. Stacked with everything from a huge half-pipe to the obligatory merch stands to some dude who gets shot out of cannon, plus all the bands that were scheduled to play, this was going to be a difficult show to cover. And we wanted full coverage, we really did. Photographer D.C. Ramirez showed up an hour late and the scheduling problems rolled downhill from there. Looking at the day's list of what bands were playing, we noticed right away that there was no way to see everything. At any one time there were two stages going, sometimes three, and even if we wanted to be in three places at once, we only had two cameras so it wouldn't have done any good anyway.

I vaguely remember standing in the beer garden at about noon when the show started, trying to get a bearing on the assignment and drinking with D.C. and my cousin Jenny.

"How do you think we should do this?" I asked D.C. "Split up?"

"Naw, that's not going to work. We'll never catch up with each other again. There's what — seven, eight thousand people here? We should just pick the bigger names and focus on those."

"That's no good," I countered "I saw Hit By A Semi and Oddman were going to be up in this. We should try to see them too. Chico represent!" But sadly, due to logistical difficulties we missed them anyway (sorry guys, I heard you rocked) because during the time they played we were in the Deviates' motorhome, interviewing them because they were the only band we had access to. Somebody D.C. brought knew somebody from the band or something. It's all gray to me. What I do remember is interviewing them and noticing a whole slew of Zima in their fridge.

"You mind if I have one of these?" I asked someone.

"It's not ours. It's the Long Beach Dub Allstars', but go ahead," someone replied.

"Alright!" I said, and helped myself to a few. Sure it was Zima, but it was the Long Beach Dub Allstars' Zima and somehow, that made it better. It's funny how that works. Thanks to the Deviates for letting us interview them and for the cool beverage, and since we got bounced from all our other interviews (Bosstones be damned!) At least we didn't go off empty-handed.

Then came the marathon of performers. The first band I remember was Suicide Machines, and they mixed up their set with some of their more ska-crafted older stuff and their newer poppy crap, which I don't particularly care for. Then came Jurassic 5, who blew all hell out of the place. Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark laid down beat and sample madness like I've never seen, doing a little duet breakdown at one point with some trippy backwards shit like out of some vinyl virtuoso orchestra or something. Unbelievable. Cut Chemist is bringing turntablists to an entirely different level. Chali 2na and his MC crew flowed rhyme like that one line "making five MCs sound like one," and though you'd think they might have been out of place at the punk show, the crowd was definitely feeling them. El Hefe from NOFX was chilling sidestage, digging it too.

Next band I really remember was Papa Roach. I don't know if it was because the show was close to their NorCal home of Vacaville, or because these guys are selling a bazillion records these days, but the kids were all sporting their P-Roach wear and were super-hyped to see them put their thing down. They didn't disappoint either. It was a short set, maybe 30 minutes, but P-Roach rocked it like they do so well and again reminded me of a Deftones show I saw at Warped in '96 — lots of angst in the air, you could say. Well done.

After that we caught NOFX, who played a bunch of songs I've never heard live, and some new stuff too, joking around in between songs like they always do. This band is always great live. They ended with "The Brews," one of my favorites (because hey, I'm a heeb), and everyone sang along. Millencolin came next, followed by the Long Beach Dub Allstars, who played (surprise!) a bunch of Sublime tunes. They slowed them down, too, for some reason, which really bothered me. Their frontman / guitarist trades off vocals with another guy and between them, they almost manage to sound like Bradley Nowell some of the time. Not bad. Not great either.

Lastly, Green Day went up and rounded out the day with faves "She" and "Brain Stew" and a cover of an Op Ivy tune, "Knowledge," where they pulled a kid out of the audience to play guitar with them. I left early to meet up with the rest of my crew and missed the last couple songs but heard from knowledgeable sources that Tre Cool lit his drum set on fire and the crowd went wild.

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