The Vans Warped Tour 2010 in Denver: The Line-up
This year marks the 16th year of the “Tour That Wont Die” which is The Vans Warped Tour. Started in 1994 by festival tour virtuoso Kevin Lyman, after his 3-year-teeth-cutting-stint with Lollapalooza, the VWT continues to roll on strong while other tours have faded from memory. Originally named after the short lived skate, surf, and snow publication Warp Magazine the tour has outlived its namesake by a good chunk of a generation.
iwrestledabearonce
In 1995 the shoe manufacturer Vans (the shoes Sean Penn wore in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. “Im so wasted!” Yes, those shoes.) joined forces with the fledging tour and now 15 years later the happy Vans and Warped couple are still rolling across the world in what has got to be biggest logistical nightmare since Gulf War I. 80 to 100 bands on some dates, support crew, execs, media meatheads, and various hangers-on and all the thousand pound stages and equipment and junk n stuff that goes along with that many people. Most of them being rock stars of varying degrees. Which is a nice way of saying Darth Vader from the newer trilogy with a crappy record deal.
Before we get into this years band line up I would like to cover some of the things that makes the Warped Tour actually work and the reason I call Kevin Lyman a genius. He makes the bands work. With their hands. Many of the newer bands work stages and setup and general festival stuff. The most interesting of the jobs is the BBQ Band. They are the band designated to cook the food and work the chow line to keep the whole shebang fed. A few of the BBQ Bands have gone on to be hugely successful like the Dropkick Murphys (14 plus MILLION YouTube views. see video above) and Madina Lake. (At last years Warped I asked the BBQ Band for a “Whiskey and whatevers easy for you.” “Well ice is easy,” as he hands me a big red plastic picnic cup filled with whiskey and 2 cubes of ice.)
NeverShoutNever (and his "bangover" hair)
One of the other genius things that is done at Warped is keeping the fans completely in the dark on show times which change every day. So to ensure that you see your favorite bands you have to show up in the morning at “doors”, enter the festival, check the schedule and listen to all the other bands until your favorites play. Plus theres no insy-outsies. Hope you have a good hot dog and soda mortgage broker because youre gonna have to make payments on those suckers to make it through the day. But the good news is that you will probably hear your next favorite band in the process.
The number of bands playing the Denver Warped is seventy something. Honestly I hit the sixties, got bored, and then extrapolated that there were still 15 bands with the horrible “Bangover” hairstyle (see left) (which is basically a mullet turned 180 degrees, then swept a bit sideways so those well-directed pouty eyes show through in the promo pics) to go on the list.
Now there are 2 things about this years VWT that totally have me stoked. One of them is a much heavier than usual amount of old school punk bands like: Anti-Flag, The Casualties, Agent Orange, The Dickies, Angry Samoans, and GBH.
Also this year, much to my general giddiness, the VWT has added several of the cutting edge metal bands that are rising up over the horizon such as Whitechapel and the ludicrous and avant garde (with a large dollop of humor) iwrestledabearonce.
Besides having my personal favorite band name of all time, this female fronted extreme band is truly beyond rational description. My irrational description is a bus full of differently trained professional musicians launching off of a cliff and trying to write their magnum opus as the ground approaches them at terminal speed. And they probably drank too much cough syrup before getting on the bus. Watch this whole iwrestledabearonce music video and youll get what I mean. The whole thing. Dont wuss out now:
As always there is some Internet wrangling and whining about the line up of the 2010 Warped Tour but I truly feel this years line up is rock solid. Except Andrew W. K. That one is just plain career reviving weirdness. So besides the old school punk and metal bands that I have already listed, there are other huge acts like Pennywise, Reel Big Fish and Alkaline Trio that I am absolutely stoked to see (and hopefully interview). In addition there are tons of cool new up and coming bands to check out. (Which really is what Warped Tour is all about. I mean these bands sling burritos and run electrical snakes to be on this tour, but they headline medium sized venues when not on Warped.) like Breathe Carolina, Alesana, and NeverShoutNever.
Warped Tour 2010 has many North American tour dates still on the docket including Salt Lake on August 7th and Denver on August 8th.