The Vans Warped Tour 2004

If the Warped Tour is sagging due to its advanced age, it barely shows, save for some gray hairs on a few of the aging punker’s heads. I’m talking about what’s left of Mr. Graffin’s middle-aged halo of hair, if you really want to know. I mean, I love Bad Religion but that guy just looks a damn fool up there, sweating while belting out “Stranger Than Fiction.” But fuck it. If you’ve still got it, you’ve still got it. And Bad Religion does, the old men that they are.
Now the setting — Pier 30/32 is a fucking awesome venue, not so much for the sound because the open air and lack of an amphitheater fucks that up, but the ambiance. The kids on this summer day enjoyed ocean breezes and the awesome stage backdrop of the Bay Bridge weighing ominously on the horizon. I’ve seen three or four Warped Tours there and one X Games and the place always rocks.
We sidled up to Atmosphere fucking up one of the smaller stages not long after we arrived, late as usual. It was a short, tight set, but the guy did a good job of working the crowd and doing about as well as any white MC could hope to do at a punk show. A while later on the same stage I caught Juliette Lewis (of Natural Born Killers fame) and her vanity rock band The Licks playing to a throng of curious onlookers. Her delivery was punk as hell, and she’s still hot in person although she does have a lot of acne. It was hard not to stare at her ass in the bright white skin-tight pants she was wearing.
Highlights of the day were Flogging Molly because they kill it every time, they sing about drinking whiskey and they’re Irish. And NOFX because they have a fucking spine lately and tell everyone to vote against Bush the W because he’s a prick and is fucking the American people in the ass. Then I ran into Steve Cabellero backstage and asked him when The Faction was going to play, and he laughed and said they might play a few shows next year. And lastly, there was Thursday who did an awesome cover of now defunct Sacto band, Far, and their emo classic “Mother May I.”
– M. Cameron Newell
– Photos by Alyssa Starkey

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