Vans Warped Tour, the summer festival notorious for underagers who
bring their parents along and, of course, mediocre pop punk. This year was no different than any other, although each summer the lineup dwindles further down a hole of “They’re still alive?”s and “Who the eff is this and why do they sound like dying kittens?” As a Warped regular (even through the past three years have been tough to get through), I am aware of which bands to avoid now (I don’t do crabcore and I don’t do screamo), which left little to be desired.

I made my way through the tweeny-boppers to catch the tail end of Never Shout Never‘s semi-acoustic set. Barefooted frontboy, Christopher Drew, proved his cute factor, but not necessarily his musicianship as his high pitched falsetto voice turned out squeaky live and his uke and guitar playing was unsatisfactory to keep up with the rest of the band. That of course didn’t stop the 13-year-old girls from bawling their eyes out if he glanced in their direction.

Shortly after Never Shout Never, Warped Tour throwbacks started with Sum 41, which in turn, made all those Never Shout fans run all the way up the amphitheater to get away from, well, Sum 41 fans, which is mind boggling to me as I was a fan when I was ten. Sum 41 did a decent set, of mostly all old material even though they have a new album due out this fall. Hanging around for a decade playing the same songs should be a breeze, but singer Deryck Whibley forgot the lines to so many songs, and there were so many times that I was embarrassed for him. Admittedly intoxicated, the set went on, including too many topless crowd surfers and two fans being brought up on stage to dance around. 2001 classics from their breakthrough album All Killer No Filler sounded almost as good as it used to, and even triggered some memories for the way too sweaty wife-beater wearing bros behind me – “BRO remember when we used to bump this?” “Yeah man, damn those were the effin’ days!” .

The Summer Set kept the trend of poppier bands with no shoes on, with their high energy set to an audience of all females. Including a cover of Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” which will be included on their bonus disc for the re-release of their debut album. Another part-barefoot band, The Cab, kept on with the pubescent hand clapping, although a little less satisfying to bubblegum ears. The frontman and Hayley Williams-look-a-like bassist kept going back and forth from the front of the stage to the drummer, like it was rehearsed. For good reason, as the drummer was the only true talent in the band.

As always, Andrew WK delivered an extremely charismatic feel good set that was unfortunately far under-appreciated. He never ceases to amaze me with the everything is okay attitude, stating “Everybody is alive today! Make the fucking most of it!” a notion that many Warped Tour attendees seem to forget while they pout all day.

A blast from my personal middle school past, Motion City Soundtrack and All American Rejects played not too long after. Motion City played an even mix of old and new, and as usual, came up to disappointment – expected as they were never too good live to begin with. All American Rejects played an…interesting set to say the least. Flamboyant and slightly disconcerting, Tyson Ritter in a skin tight white suit was acting very differently than when I had seen the band during Warped ’03 and a few other shows before and after that. With “I fucking love you baby”s and some jabs at the fact he was playing old songs (he switched the lyrics in a line from “Swing Swing” to “this song is old as shit!”) he didn’t seem too stoked to be playing.

Out of curiosity and an attempt to be well-rounded, I checked out The Adolescents. While their live performance was surprisingly good for such an old band, the crowd was an equally old drunken make-out spot, which was just too much to handle. Anarbor seemed to be the last band anybody cared for seeing, as the crowd quickly dwindled after their set. Some very loyal fans stuck around to see Boston punk band, Fake Problems and Warped alums Mayday Parade, while everybody else was waiting for their moms to come pick them up.

Warped Tour is unfortunately dying down slowly. While there will always be a large population of tweens who will be willing to throw down the thirty bucks of their parents’ money to go, I, however, think that I may have reached my Warped Tour prime and may not be attending so steadily in the future.

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