Photo by:https://www.flickr.com/photos/bantam10/
Put on your Blink 182 shirts and cargo shorts and skate over to one Van’s Warped tour stops for their Final Year.
The festival started in 1995, and for 22 years, it has been going from U.S. city to U.S city, with the occasional Canadian stop. As one of the last traveling tours, this will be the end of an era.
The festival was a proving ground for new bands to show off their chops and put the work in to make their dream come true, where punk teenagers could go and see the bands that didn’t regularly come to their hometowns.
It also, back in the day, was the beginning for many now popular bands and artists, such as then newcomers No Doubt and Sublime. The tour was also home to many great and popular bands, such as Blink 182, Limp Bizkit, a very early Black-Eyed Peas and Katy Perry, all of whom are now are giant radio chart toppers.
As is the case with other festivals, there are problems there, which other festivals also have been dealing with. It includes the not-talked-about-enough sexual abuse and harassment, which is well documented and written and covered by so many other sources, like Alternative press and Flavourwire.
The creator of the festival, Kevin Lyman, hasn’t appeared properly make amends or fix the problem. In an interview with Billboard, talking about Jake McElfresh, the singer for the group Front Porch Step, who in 2015 was accused of sexual harassment on tour, Lyman said: “No charges, no court appearance, no restraining orders, nothing, it was a ‘stupidity of the road’ kind of thing.” The backlash to Lyman’s response was swift, as many organizations and bands took to Twitter and other social media platforms to voice their opinion.
Lyman also mentioned the changing times and that kids don’t go out as much any more. He said his kids don’t like to leave their room, and that he sees that kids are much different now. Fans are currently into hip-hop, as opposed to a couple of years ago when bands such as Simple Plan and Green Day were controlling the airwaves.
Lyman also says that teenagers don’t go to concerts as much anymore, saying in an interview with Billboard that “we don’t get kids out of their rooms and going to shows. They’ll turn into 18- to-21-year-olds soon. If you don’t have the DNA going to concerts by then, it just doesn’t become a part of your lifestyle.”
Warped Tour was an honest attempt at changing that. It’s is an all-ages event, which may seem trivial as many other festivals are all-ages, but they really strived to make it easy for young teenagers to see their favourite punk and rock bands, offering free parent passes and having tents and activities for them too.
(Photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/121483302@N02/)
With all the problems that arose from creating and putting on Warped Tour, it is a place that catered to a now very niche but loyal set of fans that will truly miss it when it shuts down in 2018. If you were a fan back in the day, maybe its time to slip on your pair of Vans and fondly remember this legend of a festival.
