Warped Tour

My admirably apt associate summed up the Warped Tour 2009 experience pretty well, so I won’t bore you with a second recounting of the day’s events. I also won’t bother with the obligatory “this was my sixth and last Warped Tour because I am OLD” spiel that encapsulated my reviews of the last two years of everyone’s favorite summer cash suck. Mostly since A) it probably isn’t and B) I’m not old...not yet, and in fact Warped Tour 2009 actually made me feel a lot younger than I’ve felt in a good long while (not like the jump from 15 to 22 is all that impressive…if I were 36 maybe that statement would mean more, but I’m gonna run with it.) 

When I was younger I held this naïve assumption that while laypeople like me could judge bands favorably or unfavorably, there was a general sense of unity amongst “bands.” As I grew older, I realized this is starkly not the case and in fact musicians have been waging war amongst themselves, usually over the entirely silly concept of “credibility”, much longer than I’ve been on this Earth. This elitism has been especially present on The Warped Tour over the past give or take seven years. While initially founded as a summer, carnival inspired punk and ska tour, the lineups rapidly expanded to include representatives from such esteemed genres as emo, screamo, metalcore or, essentially, whatever happened to be hot amongst vaguely alternative kids that year. As the lineups became more diverse, the war of legitimacy raged on as the purists took up arms against the new kids, the punks glued their mohawks ever higher and the scene kids combed their hair even further down their faces. 

Then came 2009…then came “crunk-core”…then came Brokencyde. 

Admittedly, for a self-proclaimed music culture scholar, I did not see this coming. Who could have thought the once mighty hip-hop would…even COULD pervade pop culture like this? Never in a million years did I expect to see screamo kids attempt to rhyme-scream (or worse, lip-sync) over poorly constructed dance club beats. Try as I may, I did not see “crunk-core” coming. Now, admittedly, while they may or may not have attained this moniker, I’ve more or less determined Albuquerque’s Brokencyde to be a figurehead of this movement. Respected British author and commentator Warren Ellis has called the band "a near-perfect snapshot of everything that’s shit about this point in the culture" and I for one see it as a pretty apt description of these four pretty boys, decked out with their hair neatly coiffed and their guyliner (did you know that’s what they were calling it now? I sure as hell didn’t) eloquently applied screaming about tits and ass and throwing the n-word around like it was Tennessee in the 1960s. Despite having confirmation by other bands on the tour that these marvelous pretty boys were actually LIP-SYNCHING on the goddamn WARPED TOUR, kids turned out in droves to see them as well similar (read: similarly horrible) acts Millionaires, 3OH3, I Set My Friends On Fire and Jeffree Star. One could be very quick to crucify tour founder and organizer Kevin Lyman for tarnishing the almost respectable name of the Warped Tour like this, some would say almost beyond repair. However, I for one understand that times are tough right now, and in order to stay afloat at all everyone, even the punk purists, have to acknowledge (not accept, but at least acknowledge) that changes have to be made. To Lyman’s credit, he did manage to pack in a noticeable amount of “respectable”, old school acts in the form of NoFX, Less Than Jake, Bad Religion, Flogging Molly, Anti-Flag, Big D and the Kids Table and earlier on the tour, The Bouncing Souls, to the point that the few screamo acts present (Chiodos, Silverstein and Underoath to name a few) almost seemed like the odd men out, sandwiched between trends long past and trends present (whether this signals the end of screamo in the mainstream remains to be seen.) 

However, this new shift in performers had some previously unforeseen results: the legitimacy bar, once incredibly high, plummeted to the point that it all but disappeared and if you played your own guitars and wrote (and sang) your own songs, you were immediately accepted over the likes of the lip-synching pretty boys and scantily clad showgirls. Never in a million years did I expect to see any member of Bad Religion use the word “friends” and “Alexisonfire” in the same sentence. I was legitimately stunned to observe the playful back and forth between NoFX and Underoath as presented by their merchandise (mentioned above), especially after the very bitter and very public feud that occurred the last time they were on the tour together. For the first time since I was fifteen years old I saw “bands” (in general) united against a common enemy, playing their hearts out for a cause they believed in against someone they perceived as a threat (and rightfully so to some extent.) 

Therefore, when Gallows frontman Frank Carter thanked the (substantial) audience for turning up to see them, you goddamn knew he meant it. Now, I know I promised not to retread the ground laid above, but I just have to take a moment to emphasize how fucking incredible Gallows were. I’ve said in the past that Gallows are at their entertainment peak when they are goddamn pissed off. This performance proved that what may previously have been intensity manifested by anger was now very much intensity motivated by love. Gallows, possibly more than any other band that I saw that day, were doing what they were doing because they legitimately loved to be doing it SPECIFICALLY in the face of some of the other acts on the tour. I’ve been fortunate enough to see Gallows four times now and while it’s already old hat for Frank, the elder Carter, to make his way into the pit to rough house with the crowd he very much saw himself as a part of, I was legitimately surprised to see usually reserved rhythm guitar player Steven Carter throw his guitar off and jump into the crowd smiling from ear to ear during the lead out of crowd favorite track “Orchestra of Wolves.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: believe the hype, Gallows are one of the best things going on in hardcore right now and they can only get bigger (and better) from here. 

Before I wrap up, I want to mention one more act who I can honestly say not only shook me right to the bone physically, but reaffirmed the power of music to me in general: Minnesota’s own P.O.S. One of only two hip-hop acts on the tour (which is generally one more than usual), his set happened to be conveniently placed right inside the eye of the torrential downpour the pummeled Ile St. Helene that day. However, despite the rain beating down and the aural onslaught of the Anti-Flag performance happening a new yards away threatening to tear him town, P.O.S. ventured down off the stage, his microphone wrapped in a towel, and sang his heart out for the few fans dedicated enough to stand in a circle in the middle of a downpour to see a rapper perform at the Warped Tour. Despite the noticeably biting pellets of rain beating down on me, threatening cell phone destruction and future sickness, I stood my ground, marveled by the performance of this very small fish in the this very big pond. 

So that’s that…another year, another Warped Tour. It’ll be interesting to see where the tour stands next year if the changes present this year are, as some are suspecting, only the beginning. Regardless, for a few brief hours I observed a glimmer of hope for honest, hard working musicians in a scene that is quickly growing away from them. What happens next is quite literally anyone’s guess, but chances are I’ll be around to document it (or at the very least ridicule it.)