Vans Warped Tour - The Rise and Fall

Did you ever go to Warped?

As someone who travelled on 6 Warped Tours there's a few things that should be said about Kevin. While Coachella may charge $100's to $1,000's for after parties and backstage passes, Kevin would do things like see kids in a wheelchair and give them backstage access for free. He would bring in bands not because they'd make him a lot of money but because he wanted to give them a chance. He would personally go into the parking lots in the morning to help direct traffic and he would take time out to say hi to people in line. He came on a charity trip with me to Burma and donated to build a water tower for a medical school after meeting them for the 1st time in his life. He would even try to respond to kids on social media for a festival with almost a million attendees! At the end he could have actually sold the tour probably to Live Nation but decided they would change it from what it was meant to be and make it corporate so he chose rather than make a lot of money on the exit he would just let it go. For him it wasn't about the money, it was about his passion for music. Kevin was an amazing guy.

Regardless of what era of warped you prefer, the idea itself is just so badass. An all day music festival with a bunch of stages and a bunch of bands of all genres. From locals to big acts. Then after their show, you could go to meet and greets, smaller side shows, interviews. All the cool tents selling shit and with games, awesome junk food, free stuff, etc. It just all felt very intimate and down to earth. Then, at the end of the day they packed all their shit and headed to another city. So badass.

I think that Warped Tour was something generational with a clear shelf life. With each generation changing, so do the trends and styles of music. Like Fall Out Boy lyrics go, "We're the kids you used to love, but then we grew old". Great times, good memories.

I think they lost their way with what bands they needed to have. Instead of always having punk bands that needed exposure, they started chasing the trends, and that killed it.

I do admit the tour became much bigger over time, but calling a tour with No Use For a Name, Sublime, No Doubt, and Face to Face a near failure is INSANE

I got to go to Warped every year between 2000 and 2005, and by the time that last year came for me when I was 18, how I felt about the tour had changed, as had the newly incoming teens of that year. The bands I loved from those first few years had either blown up to playing larger scale venues, or broken up due to the dwindling nature of being in any kind of band long term. By the time my old band got to play the tour in 2009 at 23, how I felt about the tour had changed yet again - and the only thing I enjoyed about playing in that environment was the looks on our teenage fans faces, which mirrored those of my friends and I at that age. By the time the 2019 resurgence came along, the idea of spending 3 days in the burning hot sun had long evaporated, but I still gave it a try because that tour made more of an attempt to appeal to my age bracket. Do I still love that music? Absolutely. Has my life gotten a hell of a lot more complex in 20 years that it is way more difficult and less reasonable to pull off spending hard earned money to be uncomfortable all day? Also yes. Here's the thing: people age, and newer generations move in. Plain and simple. What's appealing to your generation will seem to suck to the next one, and vice versa. And with new generations, technologies, ideas, trends, fashions, types of music, or anything really, the culture is going to shift as well. Whether it's Warped Tour, or any cherished memory from growing up, what you're talking about is a snapshot of a perfect moment in time that's valuable to you and those close to you. The tour had to evolve over time in order to cater to its target demographic: teenagers and early twenty-somethings. What makes each generation different is the way in which we capture and celebrate our nostalgia. For my parents, and many generations before that, they had hard copy photos kept in shoe boxes and photo albums - plus a litany of poorly recorded home videos, which were only revisited on special occasions or small gatherings. With every generation since, we've grown up with technology that has us revisiting old pictures and videos on a near constant basis with social media posts and whatever we keep stored on our phones, which is literally every aspect of our lives. For this reason, we're CONSTANTLY nostalgic. Newer generations will be even more so because literally their entire lives have been immortalized on the internet. Warped Tour in its glory days is just that: A snapshot of a perfect moment in time, when all the elements (trends, the culture, your age, and every bit of business sense) aligned enough to allow for it to happen to all of those involved. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

You sound like you're in your 20's. As you go through life, you observe that more and more things that you remember fondly have come to an end, only to be replaced by something new. I've been going to music festivals since 1995 and shows since 1991. I attended Warped twice. Warped held on for a long time. In 1995 there weren't many music festivals. I attended one or two festivals every summer. Now there are thousands of music festivals for every taste. That's the legacy of Warped and the other 1990's festivals.

I went ever year all the way from 2014 to the last tour to say this festival was an event is an understatement as everyone in my high school even the kids who didnt like music went so the next week after every social group would have something to connect over for a short time before splitting up again. Best memory is probably seeing bring me the horizon play diamonds aren't forever during a thunder storm with lightening during the break downs, new found glory making a comeback with resserection and everyone in the crowd loving it despite not knowing them very well. Attila fighting with wonder years and winning by being more fun with red solo cups on stage to through ping pong balls into. Asking alexandria playing the first comeback show with dennis. august bruns red prayng with me when my mom had cancer. Hatebreed giving me hugs after my cats passed away. seeing new and intresting or weird music, some of the best memories ever man and a truly unique experience

I'll never forget being a highschooler and attending my first ever Warped in 2008. It was like nothing I've ever experienced. I had a fairly diverse taste in music (for a 16 yr old).. so being at one festival and seeing all types of different bands like ADTR, devil wears prada, suicide silence, anti-flag, the chariot, reel big fish, bad religion, flogging molly, hell even some rappers and fucking nevershoutnever, was a really special experience that i doubt anything will come close to ever again

There’s a couple things incorrect with this: Social media actually helped the fest. In the late ‘00s and early ‘10s, bands were really great at promoting themselves with MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, etc. And that in turn generally helped the tour. Punks always generally had disdain for the tour because they always viewed it as “commercial.” They always complained about Blink-182, Sum 41, etc. The Modern Baseball thing: They wanted to be an indie rock band but caught on with the pop punk crowd. “Indie” bands always generally looked down on pop punk, emo and the idea of playing Warped. It just wasn’t a thing hipsters liked again because it was “too popular” and many still thought of punk genres as “immature music” despite the fact bands like The Wonder Years were playing it and bands from genres they liked were present. The issue Warped ran into: It tried to play to the same exact scene demographic even though people who were “scene” were too old to be able to take a vacation day on a Wednesday to go to an all-day concert. If they only had it during weekends it probably could have kept going. Warped Tour was always pretty good at staying ahead of trends. Skate punk and ska were popular in the ‘90s. Emo, nu metal and pop punk were popular in the early ‘00s. Pop punk and metalcore were popular in the late ‘00s and early ‘10s. A lot of those bands who were still popular in the mid ‘10s were too popular to keep playing the fest since Warped Tour didn’t really pay the artists. It was a way for artists to sell merch. Some of the acts they had featured were playing the fest for years and weren’t necessarily that popular with high school/college-aged crowds towards the end (2018 withstanding). I was 26 I think during the last Warped Tour and bands during that year and the year before I thought were cool. But some of the younger audiences (who apparently just also prefer Netflix to concerts) were probably into Lil Peep and other emo rappers or hyper pop probably just didn’t care about the lineups the way someone like me would have. Pop punk has had a major resurgence so there’s a chance it could work now, but they’d need the fest to be on selective dates (weekends) and either pay the artists or stay ahead of trends again.

I remember a lot of talk about the sexual misconduct of a lot of bands in the scene too, and I wonder if that had something to do with it as well. Seemed like every year someone did something, the whole Front Porch Step thing for example. I remember people saying their parents didn’t want them to go because it wasn’t safe, and a lot of kids wouldn’t want to go, because that predatory behavior was beginning to be taken much more seriously in alternative culture. Or perhaps, social media made those issues more public and easier for people in alternative culture to notice.

I have a feeling if instead of a tour, they just did a 3 day event in one location, and really packed it with top acts that people would travel to go see it still. Just an annual 3 day event, similar to how most edm festivals are. I've been to a couple edm fests, and people travel across the country to come out and see their favorite artists and enjoy music. There isn't really any event like warped tour anymore to satisfy that genre of music. They could definitely come back.

I attended the Warped Tour from 2005-2011, and then one last time in 2016. As cliche as it sounds, I feel the corporations that were always there advertising, took too much power. Charging $2 for a map and schedule, and those ridiculous signs that warned about moshing and crowd surfing felt like the final nail in the coffin for me. It didn't feel exciting as it used to, and felt like they worried too much about safety and pleasing the soccer moms reading books in the crowd.

Back in the day in Seattle/Eastern Washington we had Warped Tour at a venue called The Gorge, which was a giant grassy amphitheater on top of a cliff overlooking the Columbia river. I've never seen any warped tour venue as badass as ours was. What made it even more incredible was there was a massive camp ground attached to the venue so we got to show up and camp/party friday night before Warped, wake up and go watch a ton of awesome bands play, then go back to the campground with thousands of other people for this absolutely enormous party, then crash in our tents saturday night and wake up sunday and go home. It was one of the most memorable experiences ever.

Loved the video, well made. But you left out the biggest reason... They went bankrupt because of dozens of sexual assault lawsuits and unpaid wages that got pushed under the rug. However it is good to know Fronz from Attila is waiting till the legal disputes are over to purchase it from Kevin and revive it. But it'll take a couple more years to be settled.

I got to play the whole 2015 warped. definitely a memory I'll never forget.

Warped was so much fun. I was fortunate enough to play a date in 2014, and they treated us so well. That community feeling was ever present.

I got my license in 2001 and went to Warped Tour every summer until 2006, it was hot AF and water was $5 a bottle, but omg the memories are priceless. Punk rock bands would just be walking around the place-- I met NOFX, Rancid, Bowling For Soup, Offspring, Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, it was a teenage dreamland.

I went to the last Warped Tour in 2018 and I felt like it was definitely more commercial and money-hungry than what I heard about from friends who went in previous years. They turned off the only water station, so I filled my water bottle in the bathroom. It was 95 and humid af and I was constantly going back. The food sucked and the only good food was Ben & Jerry's, so I had ice cream for lunch lol. I did get to meet the guys from Knuckle Puck and Real Friends (before Dan left), so that was dope. I just felt like it was more "corporate", I guess, than I expected. Everything for the fans was half-assed and they only seemed to care about pushing merch. The only "punk" thing about it was meeting the bands and talking to cool people. It sucks that it died, but they did it to themselves imo. I definitely got the vibe it was almost like a social media stunt at that point; social media and pop punk maybe, finally being "dead" killed it