The Los Angeles hard-core quintet the Bronx had an interesting take on the potential of punk rock during the Vans Warped Tour's kickoff show Friday at the Pomona Fairplex. "There is no revolution," howled singer Matt Caughthran during the track "Heart Attack American" in a ferocious early afternoon set.
The Vans Warped Tour, the longest-running traveling music fest going today, has never really been about bona fide upheaval -- see the corporate sponsorship in the festival's title. Still, the nihilism of Caughthran's lyric seemed oddly apropos for this 13th installment, where technical problems, murderous heat and the lack of any fresh headliner took the moxie out of the teen-heavy punker audience. Plenty of young side-stage acts were worth the gas prices to go there, but if this year's attendance figures were telling (down to 16,000 from 20,000 last year), it might behoove Warped's bookers to rethink what constitutes punk rock's elite in 2008.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 0 inches; 26 words Type of Material: Correction
Warped Tour: A review of the Warped Tour in Monday's Calendar section said that it's in its 13th year. The tour is in its 14th year.
The stalwart Hermosa Beach skate-punk quartet Pennywise, a late addition to this year's Warped, was the day's ostensible headliner. The 20-year-old combo's breed of galloping, hyper-masculine metallic punk was a defining sound of the Warped Tour's nascent years, and its recent album "Reason to Believe" might be its most high-profile record yet (and its first for MySpace Records). But the band's vintage-leaning set and pointed criticism of the sound techs from onstage were, warranted or not, certainly derailing for the day's biggest act. Any Warped veteran has probably seen Pennywise before, and its Warped set didn't leave much reason to try again.
Pennywise wasn't alone in technical snafus. The inaugural Warped set of the L.A.-based Say Anything, one of contemporary emo's leading lights, was hobbled by mix problems that left singer-songwriter Max Bemis with little recourse other than to grab a guitar and try to scrape together a solo show. He apologized profusely, but the bombastic nakedness of songs such as "Baby Girl, I'm a Blur" and "Walk Through Hell" was, in a weird way, only aided by his desperation to finish the show alone. Most of his fans were probably more excited to get a rare solo set anyhow.
