Warped Tour 2009 8.23.09 | Home Depot Center | Los Angeles, CA review by Chad Elder photos by Chad Elder, Michael Mullenix Going to Warped Tour takes weeks of preparation. With 100s of bands playing on multiple stages at times that are randomly selected each day, the task of covering Warped is daunting to say the least. I will be the first to admit that I was unprepared. Warped Tour has been around for 15 years now, and I have been to exactly zero of the previous events. Even as a teenager my summer festival experiences tended more towards Ozzfest, and Blink 182 and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones didn’t excite me enough to give Warped a try. Even living in Southern California where there are numerous opportunities to catch the day long festival wasn’t enough for me to part with my hard earned cash. So what changed in 2009? Somebody asked me to go. How do you turn down an offer to become a small part of the most successful touring festivals of all time? You don’t. You suck it up and learn as much about as many bands as you can in the 12 hours you have before you head to the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles. You pull up the list of bands and rattle off names to friends with the hope that they will recognize one and say, “oh yeah check them out.” I come to Warped Tour 09 with no preconceived notions of how it should be. I am expectation-less as I wander around the outside of the Home Depot Center, looking for the esteemed Michael from MishMash (yay for Michael who hooked up the tickets and photo passes). After tracking him down, we wait in a number of incorrect lines looking for our passes, and miraculously are ushered into the backstage area with seconds to spare before the insanity of Warped Tour begins. I have no idea when any of the bands start and the lines around the booths doling out schedules for the day are ridiculous and very un-linelike. Instead of wasting time waiting for a schedule I head in the direction that it seems most of the kids are heading in, hoping to uncover a stage in the end. In lieu of a map I bring along my friend Krisitin, who loves punk rock and can hopefully navigate me in the right direction. From friends and my own research, I have a list of bands to see that includes: Thrice, Tat, She Screams Remedy, alexisonfire, NOFX, 3Oh!3, and probably some others. Until I finally get a map a few hours later, I continue to follow the masses of kids, allowing them to decide which bands I will check out. I start the day with The Maine on the Hurley stage, which throughout the day is the stage I return to the most. The Maine receive the honor of pulling the short straw for the day, forced to play at 11am before most of the kids are even through the gates.
For their part, they pull it off with enough energy to make me believe that they weren’t partying all night. A continuous theme throughout the day is joy for the end of the tour. Most of the bands have been on the road with Warped for over a month, dealing with long, hot days all over the country. Some of them, you can tell, are just making it through this one last day. Some of them, however, brought as much energy and excitement as I can imagine them having on the first day. Some of the stand out performances came from the smaller stages. Where the Hurley Stage and The Vans Main Stage provided the biggest name attractions (NOFX, 3Oh!3), it was on the other stages where bands made names for themselves. Forever the Sickest Kids put on one of the most energetic performances early in the day from the Hurley.com stage, with a crowd spilling out into the other stage and beyond the first row of booths in the back.
Breathe Carolina entertained a similarly large and excited audience from The Smartpunk Stage. The Kevin Says stage featured the most eclectic and surprising act with Rev Peyton’s Big Damn Band, with the entertaining Rev. Peyton on guitar and vocals, Breezy on washboard and Jayme Peyton on drums. Their down-home family blues is a stark contrast to the highly polished emo/pop punk/screamo seen everywhere else at Warped, but they drew an ever-expanding, dancing crowd throughout their set. Trulio Discrasious played a late set from the Skullcandy Stage, but with their insane 27-piece reggae band, they performed a very relaxed set that was a nice wind down from an intense day.
While I like to root for the underdog, and found myself enjoying the smaller stages a ton, the two main stages offered up an impressive lineup and I was continuously drawn to that end of the parking lot to check out bands. On the Hurley stage I caught The Maine, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Tat, A Day to Remember, and Gallows, while at the mainstage I got to check out Thrice and 3OH!3. Even with all of the great bands I saw on those stages I still missed Underoath, All Time Low, Less Than Jake, NOFX, alexisonfire, and Escape the Fate. Unfortunately there are only so many hours. The two bands that I came in knowing, Tat and Thrice, just happened to be playing at the same time. I opted to check out Thrice as I had already seen Tat open for Pennywise a while back. In total, I photographed 18 bands over the course of the day, and passed by quite a few other bands as well, and Thrice was by far the most disappointing.
Their performance was tired and dull, lacking the energy and excitement that punctuated every other band I saw. They seemed to be going through the motions, though the thousands of people watching them seemed to enjoy it. I cursed every friend that ever told me how wonderful Thrice was as a raced to be redeemed by Tat’s performance. Just as I got there, lead singer and guitarist Tatiana, was inviting an audience member on stage to help her sing her next song, and while I still don’t know what the song was called, that little act of entertainment drew me back into the excitement that Thrice had sucked out of me.
Gallows warmed up the Hurley stage with their anger and hatred later in the evening. After cursing most of the bands on the Warped Tour, they played an intense and aggressive set from the middle of the crowd, mocking the Christianity of some of the better-known bands on the tour before dedicating their set to Satan.
This raw focused hatred led to one of the most memorable acts of the day, and they were the first band I told my friends about when I got home later. As the sun began to set and the stages started to go quiet, everybody headed to the mainstage to be a part of the last set of the entire Warped Tour 09, performed by 3OH!3. For a good spot at the mainstage for the last act, kids had been packed like sardines for hours, and anybody who had gone to see other bands were stuck far away, seeing the stage from hundreds of feet away. As a lucky member of the press, I got to be pressed in amongst 50 other photographers as 3oh!3 ran out on stage and flash bulbs blinded everybody in sight.
Photographers were ushered away after just two songs instead of the traditional three, so I joined the masses and tried to enjoy from afar. I admit that I only know one song by 3oh!3 and the only reason it stuck in my head is because of the lyrics, “I’m a vegetarian and I ain’t fucking scared of him.” So I wait patiently at the back of the crowd as they blaze through a bunch of songs I don’t know. For the kids that came to see them, however, this is a perfect end to an amazing day. Warped Tour has long been a tastemaker in the music industry for 13-21 year olds, and they continued on the same path in 2009, mixing some tried and true punk rock with some of the best up and coming bands. The tour also maintains its status with an impressive marketing and publicity campaign, spearheaded by a strong online presence. The bands used every means of marketing to get kids to come to see them. From the signs the bands make to advertise their set times around the Warped Tour grounds to each of their many twitter accounts, Warped has become a lesson in marketing strategies for bands. Any young band, whether they aspire to play on next years Warped Tour or not, should utilize the marketing models set up to reach an expanded audience…just start on Warped Tour bands MySpace pages.
>> Check out complete sets of band galleries from Warped Tour 2009.