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As a media rat, it's always impressed me how well-kept the schedule is on the Vans Warped tour. Club shows in controlled environments are usually hard-pressed to start within thirty minutes of the advertised time, and yet if a band is part of this tour, and they're on the premises and scheduled to play at, say, 3:10 in the afternoon, by God they'll be on that stage no later than 3:10:05. It's eerily well-organized each summer, this traveling punk-rock summer camp.
Punk rock has, of course, long since ceased to be the lifeblood of Warped. In its infancy in the mid-'90s, pop-punk was exploding with Green Days and Offsprings and the embryonic Blink-182, and it stood to reason that a touring skate shoe-sponsored festival would feature those bands. In 2007 for the 'Lucky 13th' edition, Vans remains the title sponsor, but the musical climate nowadays dictates a healthy dose of MTV teen fare - along with a lot of bludgeoning metalcore. Some of the highlights:
Circa Survive singer Anthony Green can indeed hit the notes he hits on record; that being said, the man still, in a live setting, after twenty-five minutes of atmospheric nu-emo, sounds kinda like a thirteen-year-old boy whose testicles haven't dropped. This isn't a bad thing at all; it's his voice, like it or lump it, and it fits Circa's sound well - it's just a tad odd to hear it coming from an otherwise normal-looking grown man. Even if the band's entire half-hour set had sucked out loud, the bassist's killer Lanny McDonald-esque moustache would have more than made up for it.
Bless the Fall, members of the fast-rising Science Records roster, took the Lucky stage(the other main stage was dubbed 13...get it?) for thirty minutes of competently-played, somewhat-mediocre metalcore. August Burns Red and their ilk remain at the forefront of the genre; though BTF are evidently decent at what they do, and their stage presence leaves little to be desired, the fact remains that in a terribly overcrowded market, they don't really stand out. Great hair though, fellas.
Speaking of Science Records, The Confession were also present, playing the smaller Hurley smaller stage and filling their little pocket of sound with classic-sounding rock tinged with power metal. Not power metal like Dragonforce, not power metal like Def Lep, but simply solid rock-star arena tunes, replete with solos, raspy clean vocals and unforced melodicism. Somewhere, Scott Weiland was going, "Dude, that's rad."
All Time Low took the Smartpunk stage in the early evening and didn't immediately impress with their '90s skate-punk, but their genuine crowd banter - enhanced considerably by their being on foreign soil, unfamiliar with local customs or lexicon - slowly won me over. As a '90s kid, this sound will always be with me, and by the end of the set, I was quite enjoying myself - hell, I may even consider picking up their latest album on Hopeless.
Maylene and the Sons of Disaster's first few songs were almost completely eviscerated by sound problems, but these were eventually rectified and the six-member ensemble filled their small stage with hair-throwing, axe-wielding, proudly-Southern Black Crowes-ish metal. Solos aren't really necessary to Maylene's sound given its natural appeal, but they're still a plus, and Dallas Taylor continues to distance himself from his Underoath past, visibly having more fun with his current band.
The Rocket Summer is one Bryce Avary, a prodigiously talented 24-year-old kid from the DFW in Texas - one of the weirdest instances of worlds colliding I heard all afternoon was that he and As I Lay Dying guitarist Nick Hipa attended the same church as children. That aside, Avary simply writes killer songs, displaying his Beach Boys/Billy Joel/Head Automatica pop sound and going over hugely with the ladies. With a new album out on Island Records, it's a pretty sure bet that by summer 2008, this kid might be headlining classier events than Warped - perhaps a tour with Say Anything and Brian Wilson. Or, he'll still be playing clubs - either way, the smile will remain on his face. Whether you adore or despise his sugary offerings, The Rocket Summer is one to watch.
It's evident that the stage scheduling at Warped is a little odd - it's the only way to explain Throwdown being relegated to the tiny Ernie Ball stage. Not to denigrate that fine company or the festival, but in Montreal, Ernie Ball is stuck off in a rather isolated corner of the sprawling park venue, and I figured the Orange County hardcore battery would play to nobody. Wrong - roughly four hundred people crammed the ridiculously small Ernie Ball nook, and the band went off in their customary fashion, inciting repeated circle pits and the most security involvement of the afternoon.
"I didn't know they were this big" was the comment of a friend of as we watched Killswitch Engage destroy one of the main stages; guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz was present onstage with the band, evidently enough recovered from his chronic back troubles to join his mates, and true to form, the man they call Adam D rocked in short-shorts and a horned Viking helmet. Expansive, epic melodic-metal numbers from throughout KsE's catalogue were the soundtrack to the dust-filled ruckus in front of the stage.
Working at a radio station, I hear an awful lot of The Fold, one of the current jewels in the Tooth & Nail crown, so it was with interest that I wandered over to the Hurley.com stage to see how their songs translated live. Answer: decidedly average. The Fold are genuinely nice guys, and on record come across as very polished, infectious power-pop, but somehow the quartet didn't really cut it onstage. How a band plays their songs note-perfect and still manages not to impress, I do not know.
One of the day's biggest surprises came in the form of Paramore, five kids from Tennessee whose median age isn't much older than 20, and featuring 17-year-old dynamo Hayley Williams at the forefront. Current MTV smash 'Misery Business' led off the set, followed by twenty-six more minutes of near-perfect pop-punk-dance rock. An air of incredulity pervaded a number of faces at the rear of the crowd as some of us older types waited for Williams to miss a note, to trip over a cable - anything to denote her tender years. It never happened. Part Gwen Stefani, part Cindy Lauper and all business, Williams is a consummate stage performer. Wandering off to the next set, I told a bystander, "I just got owned by a 17-year-old kid. I'm gonna go somewhere and reflect on that awhile."
One of the highest-charting newcomers in the last year have been The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, whose anthem 'Face Down' has cracked the Top 40 Stateside and made them a staple of modern-rock radio. That and all the other hits were displayed in the half-hour, but despite their energy and Ronnie White's competent vocals, the RJA - they of half a million Myspace friends and unwavering devotion from their legions - failed to really catch my interest with their metal-inflected screamo. 'Meh' has never been more apt.
All criticisms were out of my head even before New Found Glory took the stage; I'd waited seven and a half years to see them and loved just about everything they've ever released. I am an unabashed NFG apologist - deal with it, scenesters. Unquestionably the best pop-punk band featuring a guy who used to be in Shai Hulud, New Found owned the stage, despite the sound cutting out about eight measures into opener 'Understatement.' Vocalist Jordan Pundik paused mid-leap, comedically holding his pose while his mates conferred and opted to re-start(as if they had a choice, with a thousand screaming acolytes waiting). Then the hits: 'Better Off Dead,' 'My Friends Over You,' something off the new record that I don't much like, and a killer cover of Sixpence None the Richer's 'Kiss Me'(taken from the band's upcoming second covers album) highlighted my favourite half-hour of the day.
My scariest moment of the day, conversely, occurred about five seconds into Poison the Well's thirty minutes of sonic assault, when guitarist Ryan Primack, evidently having sprinted towards the front of the stage to make with the rock-out, must have tripped and fell headlong off the stage to the dirt directly to my right. Thinking he was paralyzed, I then saw him merely wince before beginning to play lying on his back. Security got him up and back where he belonged, and PTW gave us half an hour of sheer power noise, drawing mostly from their last couple of albums, with little in the way of the fragile emo-core that marked their early years. The most intense set of the afternoon.
As I Lay Dying headlined the night, playing the last set of the festival on a stage lit only by two recessed worklights, and the dark ambience fit the San Diego quintet's finely-honed metalcore quite nicely. Their newest album being released in stores two days' hence, AILD didn't blow minds, but the crowd in front went off like a bomb, making security staff earn their money while soundtracked by 'Forever' and the rest of the hit parade. Jordan Mancino is one of the wildest-to-watch drummers in metal, powering the shredding black-clad machine in front of him - one really does conjure up mental pictures of vintage Metallica in their glory years, though AILD are certainly miles ahead in heaviness.
Warped is at its core a commercial enterprise, drawing dozens of sponsors and planting a couple hundred booths on whatever patch of real estate it occupies that day. For a grizzled old man such as myself, however, with little interest in the peripheries, it's still a good day for music, if you know where to find it.
-Mike Postma* * * * * * * * * *