“Hey Kids!
Hey Dad!
What do ya want to do today?
We don't know.
Do you wanna go to the matinee?
NO!
Do you wanna go to the Amusement Park?
NO!
Do you wanna go to the punk rock show?
Yeah! Let's go to the punk rock show!”
- NOFX, The Separation Of Church And Skate
Two years ago I wrote an article on the Warped Tour titled Corporately Named Christ Tour 2007 about how the abundance of Christian music (and bad music in general) plus commercialism turned me off from going, missing the chance to see one of my all time favorites Bad Religion. After not even bothering to look into the tour last year, I was shocked to find out that for 2009 not only Bad Religion, but NOFX, Gallows, Less Than Jake, Big D and The Kids Table, and other actual worthwhile bands were playing. I was intrigued, but still not sold, there were a number of shitty bands on the line up who's presence and fan base I did not want to be in the same vicinity of. A couple days before the tour came here I bit the bullet and got a ticket. I figured if I would pay $30 a piece to see Bad Religion and NOFX play separate shows $40 for both was a worthwhile purchase, and two days later I set off on my journey unsure what to expect.
The first thing I realized when arriving there was that it was extremely clear everything at this place was designed for profit and not convenience. As soon as I parked and got out of the car I noticed an opening to go into the venue right in front of me. I preceded to walk through it but was stopped and told I could not enter because I needed a special pass that could have been purchased with ticket for x dollars more. This wasn't an entrance to the backstage area or anything it was simply an entrance to the venue, dumb but fare enough. But then they added "same things with the bathrooms", pointing at the port-a-potties which were on the outside of the entrance. "What?" I said thinking this person was making a joke. "You need the pass to use them,” the security guy repeated. I set off on a 10-minute walk to the other side of the venue where the official entrance was so that I could come in and then take a piss. I was thrown off because they weren't checking ID's and xing people up after they checked the tickets, which I was reminded they don't bother to do at big venues serving alcohol. After being accustomed to doing that upon entry to so many shows in a row it was a culture shock of sorts, one of many that I would experience that day. Also upon entering I was told there was no re-admittance if you step outside the venue. This is fine for a show that takes up the evening but ridiculous for an all day event. At Insubordination Fest you were simply given a wrist band which you could show whenever you exited and came back to the venue, it worked well so that when no one you liked was playing you could leave and come back when someone you were interested in was on, and if you were hungry it allowed you other options than the hot dogs and hamburgers being served there. This was a simple system that could have been easily implemented at Warped. After seeing the $8 sandwiches, $9 beer, and $5 sodas being served here it became clear why they did not want people to be doing this.
It became clearer and clearer they were trying to get every last buck they could milk out of you. There was no set schedule for the day, so to find out who was playing at what time, and where each stage was located, it cost $2 for a crappy photocopied schedule and map. When I met up with a friend later that day and asked how they determine the schedule he said it's picked at random which is an absolutely horrible idea that serves no practical purpose of anything but getting people to pay $2 (I'll get more into the problems with the random schedule later).
Anyway now that I had the day’s schedule I noticed no worthwhile bands playing for the next 40 or so minutes. I walked around and checked out the merch tents. As I noticed the other people I felt very out of place, lots of high school kids, girls in flip flops, neon shirts, parents, even a tent for the anti-smoking campaign "The Truth". I ended up spending time talking to the dude at the Vagrant Records tent about Screeching Weasel and Even in Blackouts, before killing some more time and finally giving in to my hunger, which cost $8 for a Roast Beef sandwich with chips. I was shocked to find their were water fountains free of charge if you walked over to the bathrooms, and even more shocked that people were in spite of this putting down $5 a bottle on multiple bottles of water throughout the day.
When it came time for Streetlight Manifesto the, first band I was interested in seeing, play it took me a while to find the stage, despite the fact that I had the map. Instead of doing something that made things locatable like labeling stages in numbers or letters based on the order they can be found in, each stage was named after a corporate sponsor. Now with a map this problem is solvable except when you do something stupid like name one stage the "Hurley Stage" and another stage the "Hurley.com Stage". The venue was arranged so that most of the stages were set up in the parking lot, all of which were shown on the map, and unbeknownst to me one stage was in the actual amphitheater. After being confused about why there was no one on the stage I thought I was going to see Streetlight at I rechecked the map and in small print saw "Hurley.com Stage in amphitheater". I realized I was at the Hurley stage. If it wasn't for the map I may have missed the set because they gave two stages almost identical corporate names, $2 well spent I guess (though it still should have been given away for free as a necessity).
I got to see most of Streetlight's set and it felt great jumping into the pit with slamdancers away from all these people I had nothing in common with. It was a stellar set, but right after Streetlight finished some crappy band called Dear and The Headlights came on, and I looked at the schedule only to see I had another 40 minutes to kill before anybody worthwhile came on. I again wandered around the venue, and surveyed up the people around me. During Streetlight Manifesto it seemed like a regular audience you'd see at any show, but when these people weren't all in one concentrated area they were drowned out by an abundance of people I felt no connection to. It wasn't even the age different, listening to these kids converse, it felt like these were the same people I hated when I was in high school. Before meeting up with some friends later on, I spent most of my conversation time with the people behind various merch booths who were impressed by my Screeching Weasel shirt.
When the 40 minutes were up I went to check out Anti-Flag. Going into this I was never a huge Anti-Flag fan, I knew a few of their songs but in general thought they were sort of a cliché anti-corporate major label band, however in this environment they came off as a total breath of fresh air. Fast paced sing a long punk songs, a great crowd, and a Clash cover thrown in, were much needed and all delivered.
Unfortunately once they ended another huge gap of time was opened up before any other worthwhile band played.
I did more wandering around, more talking to people at merch tables about my shirt, caught some of this British punk band named Tat do a half-decent set of songs in front of a crowd who just stood there, and finally decided to go into the amphitheater and just sit now to kill the rest of the time between now and when Bad Religion played. While there some pop-rock type band named Meg & Dia played. They did a cover of Blind Melon's No Rain, but for the most part served as background noise.
I went back to the parking lot turned fairgrounds area to see Bad Religion, and saw the exact same crowd who were at Anti-Flag and Streetlight congregated again. I also ran into some friends and we talked about how lame this was turning out to be.
Bad Religion gave a great performance as always, and I wished I had shown up at this point instead of hours earlier, as Bad Religion, Gallows, and NOFX were all going to be playing around this time (if only there had been some way to know this in advance…). When Bad Religion finished I rushed over to another stage to catch the Gallows. The schedule noted there was a 15 minute overlap with these two bands, but I figured I could still catch half of there set. By the time I got over there I saw them play two songs, Abandon Ship and a cover of Black Flag's Nervous Breakdown which few people seemed to recognize, since most people there familiar with Black Flag where watching Bad Religion (hell most people familiar with the Gallows were probably watching Bad Religion).
So after sitting around for hours with no worthwhile bands playing, two of them play at the same time. Lets take a look at why this happened, and why anyone who actually cared of putting on a good festival wouldn't let this happen; because the schedule was picked randomly in order to get people to spend money on schedules and maps, people and bands have to suffer by having bands with similar fan bases play at the same time, all in the name of Kevin Lyman making a buck, when he's already whored out every other avenue that he can at this tour. When the Insubordination Fest schedule was posted (logically in advance) I remember Chris from Insubordination Records said that he tried his hardest to make it so that similar bands would not overlap. I guess I should expect some sort of emphasis on profiting at a festival named the VANS Warped Tour, but the fact that they put it over the fans experience is ridiculous.
So the two Gallows songs were great, and NOFX followed that up with a stellar set as always (though Separation Of Church And Skate wasn't included). As I left the venue I had mixed feelings on the experience. It was well worth the $40 to see Bad Religion and NOFX, but the waiting around, the other people, the blatant emphasis on money over everything else, it's not something I'd like to see again. Sure the abundance of Christian bands weren't there, but the almighty lord had just been replaced by the almighty dollar.
I'm sad to see bands like the Gallows, Bad Religion, and NOFX associate themselves with this. What about showing some DIY spirit and booking your own tour together? That way fans will get to see longer sets, and can just show up at 8 instead of devoting their whole day at the venue. I applaud Rise Against and Rancid for doing a co-headlining tour like this for this summer, and it's something more of the bigger punk bands should do together as opposed to the Warped Tour.
This tour was started as a purely punk rock showcase, not some huge event that all the high school kids go to as if it were a trip to the beach. As it stands now it's closest connection to the punk scene is the famous quote by Johnny Rotten, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" I have.
0 comments:
Post a Comment