I had all but forgotten that I was still technically employed by Crew One when they called me and asked me to work the Warped Tour at Starwood on Wednesday. The sun was still creeping up when we threw ourselves into unloading every truck in sight, dutifully placing boxes wherever we were told. I was called over to help assemble the Cingular Wireless autograph booth while the rest of the crew dispersed to move PlayStation demo units or hang banners on the MySpace stage. I barely had time to throw down an official Warped Tour can of water (sponsored by Monster energy drink) before I moved on to the skate ramp. I have to say, it looked pretty awesome when it was finished—a giant eagle doing battle with a screaming skull. But we didn’t have a key to work from, so when we were positioning the heavy slabs, we had to scrutinize the artwork and ask, “Does this look like a talon to you, or is it more like a flame?” Just over the chain link fence from us, a thick, adolescent crowd was gathering around the ticket center. We finished with time to spare, so I wandered around to check out all the vendors as the floodgates opened and a sea of teenagers poured into the grounds. Energizer had a bunch of fliers of skulls listening to headphones emblazoned with the caption, “Long Live Music.” Eastpak’s booth was touting its special Warped Tour limited edition backpack and had settled on the motto, “Built to Resist.” Yes, built to resist tearing, weather damage and, presumably, authority. The 30-something sales rep shifted in her folding chair, looking a little uncomfortable in her skintight black “DISASTER” T-shirt. We finished with time to spare, so I wandered around to check out all the vendors as the floodgates opened and a sea of teenagers poured into the grounds. Energizer had a bunch of fliers of skulls listening to headphones emblazoned with the caption, “Long Live Music.” Eastpak’s booth was touting its special Warped Tour limited edition backpack and had settled on the motto, “Built to Resist.” Yes, built to resist tearing, weather damage and, presumably, authority. The 30-something sales rep shifted in her folding chair, looking a little uncomfortable in her skintight black “DISASTER” T-shirt. I once read an interview with the founder of the Vans Warped Tour. Under questioning about the tour’s daunting list of corporate sponsors, he adopted a defensive stance: “Hey, we’re doing this for the kids. If we didn’t have good sponsorship, we couldn’t sell tickets so cheap, and we could never put together a lineup like we have.” This is true. Even old-guard skate-punk bands rarely pack a venue larger than the Exit/In, and when you consider that most of the crowd can’t get into 21+ shows, it’s momentarily tempting to view Warped as a downright altruistic event. The kids get to run around for a good seven hours, bouncing back and forth between the sponsored stages and catching all their favorite acts, and up-and-coming bands like Nashville’s own Paramour get a great opportunity to share equal time with NOFX and The Casualties. And if you think the pubescent mohawks in attendance have more than a passing concern with the fact that their favorite punk acts are essentially being rented by the likes of Sony and Hot Topic, odds are you’ve forgotten the breezy disengagement and highly filtered worldview of the American teenager. One of the last performances of the night came from Anti-Flag, who drew riotous cheers when they called upon their audience to remember that they were all “a brotherhood, a sisterhood, united against oppression and conformity,” or some such blather. Then they launched into a rousing rendition of a song called “Fuck Police Brutality,” and a dusty circle pit ensued. Fuck police brutality?! It occurred to me that Anti-Flag and their ilk may actually be an articulate, intellectually subtle bunch of guys. Who knows? But they are in the position of the pied pipers to these kids, and tepid lefty polemics surely appeal to the same element of the developing mind that declares itself in and out of love with devastating efficiency and a stunning lack of irony. The fantastic thing about teenagers is how hard they work at presenting a complete, at-a-glance self-image, even as it shifts and resettles constantly. So yes, today we are a brotherhood. And by all means, fuck police brutality. Please don’t forget to visit us at the Cingular autograph booth. I actually felt kind of bad for NOFX when they took the stage. They were sandwiched uncomfortably between two Christian bands—the aforementioned Paramour and some sing-my-broken-heart-out act called Under Oath. Both bands exhibited an eerie market savvy. The cute girl singer for Paramour worked the crowd like an over-emotive Teen Beat act with an obsessive concern with moving merch. NOFX guffawed over the fact that she was only 17, which puts something like a 20-year canyon between them, and then relaxed back into their trademark dick-and-fart stage banter. To put it bluntly, they were tired, and they must know that they share some responsibility for ushering in the young bloods who tailor their appeal to the ESPN crowd. From there, it’s not a long walk to your local Baptist youth group. Under Oath held their tongues until the end of their set, when they announced with that special kind of glossy stage candor that they were here “in the name of Jesus Christ,” but that they weren’t out to force their beliefs, and that we should all respect each other, and on and on. The crowd erupted in cheers and thrust their horned hands to the sky as one. The “punk rock community,” as it’s constantly called, is an almost suffocatingly sentimental one. The Minutemen had a great lyric about discovering punk rock as teenagers in San Pedro: “We were fucking corndogs / We used to go drink and pogo.” Then they evolved into one of the most inspiring bands of their era, spastically weaving together punk, jazz, folk and anything else that caught their ears. But they’re a rare exception—most punk bands are more than happy to retread the same ground as their forebears, touting their respect for tradition and their loyalty to their given school. Which is not to say that there haven’t been some fine innovations within the circle, but the next time you find yourself at a punk show, look for the budding Iggy Pop or Darby Crash. Odds are you won’t find him, because he’d be bored out of his mind hanging out with all these high-fiving, dog-loving, swell guys. Back to the Warped Tour, and all the nice kids in attendance: I spent a day at Bonnaroo last week, and the contrast could hardly have been more severe. Manchester’s drug fest is certainly a strange place to find oneself, but for all the open-air debauchery, a strangely persistent sense of responsibility remains: everyone keeps their campsites clean, recycles and is careful not to harsh anyone else’s mellow. You can’t even get a beer at Warped, and I never detected a whiff of pot, but at the end of the night, the grounds were completely trashed—especially in front of the stage, where the free Warped commemorative magazines were torn and thrown through the air like so much confetti for hours. It was a benignly liberating form of destruction, and The Casualties liked it enough to exhort the crowd to keep at it. But after the tents were gone, the cleaning crew had to contend with both a sea of shredded paper and boxes of surplus merchandise left behind by the vendors. It was, of course, a microcosm of typical American consumer glut, but let’s not dwell on that shallow irony any longer than necessary. For my part, I got paid to set up and take down the infrastructure that would support a full day of sanctioned and supervised teen spirit in full bloom. At the end of the night, I walked away with a free case of energy drinks deliberately abandoned by their vendors. Oh, and did I mention that I got to see the Buzzcocks? They were the only act I really wanted to catch, and they were awesome in ways most first-generation cash-in reunion bands should never be. But when they closed with “Ever Fallen in Love..?,” they brought out a young singer from some other band to do a call-and-response vocal with Pete Shelley. It could have been a great torch-passing moment, if only the other singer knew all the words.
