Well, after 10 minutes browsing the Vans Warped Tour website, I feel old and bitter.
Old because I went to my first Warped Tour in the summer of 2002: a seminal gap between the awkward doldrums of middle school and what I saw as the raging freedom (Dazed and Confused, anyone?) that was high school.
Bitter because I’ll never be able to experience that feeling again.
I fancied myself a little punk rocker at 14, because, as we all know, living in a gated community and sitting shotgun in mom’s Sienna are sure signifiers of the next Henry Rollins. The van would transport me to Best Buy or Sound Exchange on weekends, where I could pick out the next CD, like, actual CD (weird right?) that the older and much cooler kid down the street had shown me earlier that week, or that I’d read about in Alternative Press or heard playing hours of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
Rancid, Social Distortion, Lagwagon, Alkaline Trio, the list goes on and on… Basically, if it was offensive or had a cartoon-y album cover I was game. The punk circuit was a whole new world of paradigm-breaking, angry music and, essentially, aural crack for a 14-year-old angsty and self-righteous turd like myself. [That's me above with the bassist and lead singer/guitarist of the band Ozma, c. Warped Tour 2002.]
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2010.