The Vans Warped Tour

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Warped Tour swung into the gaping maw that is the Sleep Train Amphitheatre on an unusually mild summer day, bringing with it scores of vaguely punk bands and thousands of even more vaguely punk spectators. What began 10 years ago as a mishmash of skate demos, shoe promotion and rock music has turned into a veritable cultural juggernaut, showcasing some of mainstream music’s bigger bands — Story of the Year, Thursday, New Found Glory and Yellowcard — and a laundry list of corporate sponsors from Samsung to Fuse. That being said, however, the Vans Warped Tour, moreso than any other festival of its kind, still offers more than its fair share of underground bands, from those on the cusp of breaking into the limelight to those still slanging burned CDs out of cardboard boxes. And coexisting peacefully with the aforementioned corporate sponsors are booths promoting everything from veganism to voter registration. All said, the Warped Tour has found a seemingly happy medium between success and tradition, mirroring the current state of the “punk” music that has made it what it is.
Though with the vast array of available distractions it would be easy to spend an entire day at the Warped Tour and never really see any band, it is also quite possible to see more bands in one day than most people do in an entire year. Granted, this takes both exceptional time-budgeting skills, a bit of legwork and a halfback-like hit-the-hole mentality, but it can be done. Here’s the short version: Alkaline Trio played way too early in the day. Atmosphere, though on a side stage, rocked the mic like it was 8 Mile. Thursday was really good on the songs that rock, all right on the songs that don’t. The Early November looked like high school kids but still made the crowd roar like a sea monster. Z-Man rocked the butt-est side stage tent like it was Carnegie Hall (and Mr. Dibbs from Atmosphere was feelin’ him). Taking Back Sunday sounded pretty decent from a half-mile away. Yellowcard had one of the biggest, most vocal crowds of the day. From First to Last looked like kids from Redding. Red With Envy rocked the Ernie Ball Stage and even though frontman Chavez Jarrett split open his head on the second song, they still played their whole set with him bleeding profusely all over the stage. NOFX were the seasoned veterans of the day, or at least tied with The Vandals who seriously look like (and probably could be) the father of most of the kids watching them. Coheed and Cambria are super prog, but they actually pull it off live. New Found Glory are like musical Sweet Tarts. Flogging Molly sound like you would expect. Story of the Year headlined the whole goddamn shebang, which was as fitting an end as any. Add to this, a countless number of side stage bands, main stage bands I forgot and various desperate outfits playing in the parking lot or in front of the concession stand and you have yourself a lot of music for one day.
However, the highlight of the affair has to be the official Warped Tour water, which is in a can. Available in the general press area, it at first appears to be an energy drink of some kind. But upon further inspection, it turns out to be nothing more than just ordinary, uncarbonated water, in a tall can. What will they think of next?!
– Words and Photos by Daniel Taylor

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