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How the Vans Warped Tour baffles the sane and insane

By Sean Rayford

An evening shower has just subsided at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Charlotte, North Carolina on the 18th stop of the 2007 Vans Warped Tour. I’m waiting in the photo pit for the next band to take the stage while Bad Religion inspires a sea of raised fists with “Infected” nearing the end of their set on the neighboring stage. “Hey mister! Who’s playing over there?” questions a teenage girl jammed up against the metal barricade in the front row with a few thousand sheep (I mean people) flocking behind her.

“Um- Bad Religion,” I reply. “They’ve been around for like 25 years. You should check them out.” She responds only with a “baaaahhh!”

Am I surprised? No. Am I bothered? Yes. Somewhere within the strange concept of time Warped Tour became less about Bad Religion, Pennywise, NOFX, and Rancid and more about bands like I would photograph next. Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. Red fucking Jumpsuit Apparatus?

I look around in front of the stage, the asphalt littered with the strangest items. Lots of condoms (Trojan gives them out and the kids blow them up pretending they are beach balls.) Shoes and sandals who can’t find their brothers and sisters or their mothers and fathers. But there aren’t any Doc Martens or Vans for heaven’s sake. It’s a graveyard of broken sunglasses, cell phones, keys, wallets and shorts.

Shorts? Who took their shorts off?

Another thing I find strange is how there are no fights. At least none that I’ve seen at Warped Tour over 10 years and nine shows. I’ve seen a lot of bloody noses from elbows and shoes from the endless sea of crowdsurfers who forgot that a band was playing on stage.

I watched a few days earlier during Haste the Day in Atlanta as a girl laughed while a stream of blood trickled down her forehead and down past her neck. She was still having a fabulous time. Good for her.

I guess that’s the important part about events like Warped Tour. Even though it’s a giant shopping mall in the 100-degree heat in some parking lot, the kids are still having a good time.

They are packing into their parents SUVs, blasting the bands from their MySpace “Top Eights” and driving like assholes. They can’t think because they are so excited about Hawthorne Heights.

There are like 10 fucking stages. No exaggeration. There’s a skateboard halfpipe next to a wrestling ring with masked Lucha Libre Mexican wrestlers. There’s a tent where you can play Guitar Hero and, yes- a tent where you can get on a computer and check your MySpace account (No kidding, it’s literally sponsored by MySpace.)

Warped Tour: what the fuck?

There’s only like five bands playing every second of the day, so don’t go and check out the bands that are playing. Go make your own fashion line with spray paint and a T-shirt under another tent and then say it’s DIY.

Everyone at Warped Tour is competing with someone else. The kids are competing for the best spots in the crowd, the coolest hairdo, strangest piercings and most retarded make-up.

Bands not even on the bill that day are competing. The moment you even get near the Amphitheater entrance you’re assaulted by teams of fellas and ladies with headphones and CD players pawning bands that you haven’t heard ever of. Bands from D.C. when you’re in Atlanta and bands from Dallas when you’re in Charlotte.

Once inside, tatted-up dudes are carrying around signs on poles eight feet high announcing when and where a certain band is playing. It’s survival of the fittest or at least the most aggressive.

But then you get to sing along to that epic gang-vocal chorus of Pennywise’s Bro-Hymn and you get to watch Greg Graffin of Bad Religion point a thousand times in a thousand directions as he burns a path into the stage.

You say hello and high five Colin from Circa Survive who used to be in This Day Forward who came and partied with you in a Louisville hotel room years ago. You run into Michele and John Nolan from Straylight Run, who last time you saw them was at a bowling alley in Cayce.

Paramore headlines at the Atlanta date and you’re smile stretches wide, proud of their success because you remember how nice they were when they played Columbia when they were only 16 years old. That girl Haley is a star.

Warped Tour, you’re not completely evil.