Vans Warped Tour history: the good, the bad, and the inexplicable

Some folks think of the Vans Warped Tour as an annual celebration of modern punk culture. Others view it as a commercialized celebration of everything that’s gone wrong with punk culture. So which is it? It’s probably a bit of both, seeing as how, in the course of its 16-year history, the package tour’s dominance of the summer tour world was built on catering to both legitimate punk fans as well as casual, radio-friendly teenagers. Before the package tour sets up shop at Invesco Field Aug. 5, The A.V. Club examined the high, low, and totally weird moments in the touring package’s first 16 years.

1995
High: Although Seaweed largely flew under the radar of both the punk and nascent indie-rock scenes during its original run, some time, absence, and a reunion slowly helped the band build up a formidable reputation among fans of hard-edged, ’90s-styled indie rock since.
Low: Apologists say it’s the language barrier that kept Germany’s Wizo from getting much attention in the U.S. That’s possible, but the act’s pop-punk was routine and predictable even in ’95.
Curveball: In 2011, Supernova’s probably best known for successfully putting the legal smackdown on the reality-show act spotlighted in Rock Star that attempted to use its name. In the mid-’90s, most people just thought of Supernova as the band that sang an ode to Chewbacca. (What a Wookie!)

1996
High: Beck was struggling with the transition from misunderstood alt-rock slacker to semi-revered musical mad scientist in the mid-’90s, when he played Warped stages, but that still doesn’t change the fact that you probably wish you saw this.
Low: 311 seamlessly made the transition from providing the soundtrack to University Of Nebraska frat parties to providing the soundtrack for frat parties all over the nation, making its inclusion on an underground music bill confusing even to the pledges.
Curveball: On one hand, Dick Dale had to be glad his music was still appreciated 30 years after he made it. On the other hand, he had to be kind of pissed he was stuck opening for 311.

1997
High: As one of the few underground acts able to balance commercial success against musical consistency, Social Distortion was cementing its place among punk’s all-time elite in the late ’90s.
Low: Limp Bizkit was still a fresh enough face in the music world that mercilessly making fun of its nu-metal/rap still held a lot of novelty value.
Curveball: With their second consecutive appearance on Warped, Tha Alkaholiks’ West Coast hip-hop was an incongruity among the rock-dominated festival, but also a harbinger of the more inclusive Vans Warped Tour bills to come in the next decade.

1998
High: Following up its best album, 1995’s … And Out Come The Wolves, with its most ambitious one, 1998’s Life Won’t Wait, Rancid was arguably at the top of its game as new-era punk icons at this Vans Warped Tour. More importantly, it had yet to become the least bit self-conscious of its position.
Low: You can’t really blame The Specials for reuniting to cash in on ska’s return to the spotlight in the mid-’90s. You can blame the band, however, for reuniting without key members Jerry Dammers and Terry Hall, and foisting that god-awful Today’s Specials on fans in the process.
Curveball: Kid Rock’s Devil Without A Cause hadn’t yet found its hit and drenched the hard rock airwaves with “Bawidtaba” on nonstop rotation, but even before the mouth-breather anthem blew up, Rock’s presence on the tour seemed contrived.

1999
High: Working-class street punk was almost exclusively the domain of skinheads and diehard crusties until Dropkick Murphys helped introduce skate-punk fans to Sham 69’s legacy while dropping a liberal dose of Celtic folk into the mix to keep things fresh.
Low: “Denial” became a certified nu-metal hit for Sevendust in 1999, enjoying a months-long stay in the Billboard charts. Chances are, if you went to the Vans Warped Tour in ’99, you hated it as a matter of multiple principles.
Curveball: You don’t get to block off Chicago’s Michigan Avenue to celebrate a new season of The Oprah Winfrey Show without paying your dues. Evidently, the Black Eyed Peas paid some of those dues back when they were playing “Joints & Jam” and “Karma” to punk rock fans.

2000
High: As the mainstream punk world scrambled to calibrate itself to the fluff-punk standards set by Blink-182’s success, Avail kept its feet placed firmly in the past, mingling doses of ’80s D.C. hardcore with straightforward, heart-on-sleeve punk that would help propel the Richmond, Virginia scene into the mainstream.
Low: Even in the era of the declining standards brought on by rap-metal, Kottonmouth Kings’ 2000 single “Peace Not Greed” was generally considered one of the genre’s low moments.
Curveball: As if bridging the chasm between the old and new millennia, Green Day, Weezer, and No Doubt all appeared on Warped stages in 2000. Kids in 1995 and 2007 would all be incredibly jealous of this lineup.

2001
High: The presence of Lee Ving and company (a.k.a. Fear) as a highlight of the year is as much a reflection on the shaky ground the Vans Warped Tour 2001 walked as much as it was the a reflection of the Los Angeles veterans’ ability to keep rocking after a couple of decades.
Low: As Fear scared the hell out of the suburban punk teens, Good Charlotte’s fluffy pop-punk eased them back into kid-friendly territory, with mother-approved songs about the difficulties of romance in high school.
Curveball: Kool Keith’s various incarnations—Dr. Octagon, Dr. Dooom, and member of the Ultramagnetic MCs—land him a spot in hip-hop history, but coming off a couple lukewarm albums (Matthew and Spankmaster), the MC was anything but legendary as the tour’s token nod to urban music.

2002
High: By 2002, post-hardcore’s most revolutionary days were well behind it, as it became assimilated as just another punk subgenre. That didn’t stop Hot Water Music from delivering Caution that year, or from taking to the tour to give stragglers a rare glimpse of the visceral energy that drove the style in the late ’90s.
Low: Even at its peak, Home Grown was merely a second-tier act pumping zany, bubblegum music to the mall-punk crowd. By 2002, the act was well past its peak.
Curveball: Andrew W.K.’s I Get Wet with its house-party jam “Party Hard”

2003
High: As condemning the Vans Warped Tour’s pop-punk-heavy lineup became an annual rite of passage for punks, Florida’s Poison The Well stepped up with a brainy blast of metalcore loud enough to remind detractors that Warped wasn’t afraid to get noisy.
Low: If you were going to unabashedly jack another band’s gimmick, style, and attitude, you probably wouldn’t choose to greasepaint your face and rap about horror-movie violence using the Insane Clown Posse blueprint. Then again, you’re not a member of Twiztid.
Curveball: While most regional acts that earn a limited spot on the tour don’t warrant much attention, San Antonio’s Jumping Monks’ funk-rock was incongruous on one of the least diverse lineups in the tour’s history.

2004
High: Nobody would argue against claims that Bad Religion was well past its prime by the time it released The Empire Strikes First in 2004. Nonetheless, the Los Angeles punk elder statesmen still showed up many acts made of musicians half their age.

Low: A band that purposefully set out to discover a generic sound and blend into pop-punk’s landscape in 2004 would probably sound almost exactly like Rufio did.
Curveball: While Dennis Lyxzen and The (International) Noise Conspiracy preached socialist foment in their garage-punk anthems, the Swedish act didn’t really see any problem with playing a festival originally designed to help peddle shoes to skateboarders.

2005
High: Experimental, intellectually challenging and at time ferocious, The Dillinger Escape Plan’s math-rock assault was pretty much everything for which Warped wasn’t known.
Low: Hawthorne Heights only became interesting when it engaged in that very messy, very public legal battle with Victory Records. That flurry of litigation was still a year away at this point, however, leaving the nu-emo band without much upon which to hang its identity.
Curveball: A 50-year-old Billy Idol would do just about anything to regain the spotlight, including attempting to integrate his Generation X songbook on Gen-Y listeners. It didn’t work out so well.

2006
High: With its DIY roots struggling against the band’s career trajectory as career musicians, Against Me! used that conflict to fuel its folk-punk/rock hybrid with a passion that was more than enough to overcome the chorus accusing the band of selling out.

Low: No matter which actor The Germs borrowed people from Hollywood to play their dead singer onstage, The Germs just aren’t The Germs without Darby Crash on board.
Curveball: Joan Jett And The Blackhearts celebrated the 25th anniversary of “I Love Rock ’N’ Roll,” playing the signature tune to an audience with an average age much less than the song’s.

2007
High: After British punk spent a couple decades in relative hibernation, Gallows’ Orchestra Of Wolves established the band as a firebrand blend of smarmy hardcore that made most of its American counterparts look like 98-pound weaklings.

Low: If you’re going to mount a nostalgia-based reunion tour, you’d better have been one of the leading acts in your scene the first time around. Buck-O-Nine certainly wasn’t that for the third-wave ska scene, and an unnecessary reunion couldn’t change that fact at all.
Curveball: Before you lose you hipster shit praising OFF!, don’t forget that Keith Morris resorted to nostalgic reunions of his former band, Circle Jerks, in 2007.

2008
High: With The Gaslight Anthem’s breakout album, The ’59 Sound, not released until mid-August of the year, the New Jersey punks spent their summer polishing their Springsteen worship and anthemic tunes on the Vans Warped Tour. The exposure did the band good, helping propel the act’s bridge-and-tunnel punk to the underground’s upper echelons by the end of the year.
Low: Whatever wafer-thin charms the pseudo-irony of Cobra Starship’s 2006 debut—a former member of Midtown! Playing top 40 pop!—originally wore off about a year after the album hit stores. That didn’t stop Gabe Saporta from milking this joke for all it’s worth, and then some, for years following.
Curveball: Before her stunning, pinup good looks and spun-sugar teen pop made Katy Perry a household name, she was establishing her pop credentials on Warped.

2009
High: Normally, the best a punk act can hope for is to manage not to become an embarrassing self-parody as it ages. It just took NOFX 25 years to grow up: Although its 2009 album, Coaster, lacked the Bush-baiting antics of mid-decade releases, Fat Mike and company show that middle-aged millionaires can still keep it real.

Low: Brokencyde is so awful that even the kids in the prime Vans Warped Tour demographic on Absolute Punk can’t stand them. That’s saying something.
Curveball: Try as hard as the Warped booking agents might, slipping an alt-country act like Shooter Jennings onto the bill just seemed a little too forced to accept.

2010
High: That Pennywise could be without its founding singer, Jim Lindberg, and without a new album to peddle to fans and still be the most interesting act on the 2010 Vans Warped Tour speaks volumes about the tour’s ho-hum lineup last year.

Low: It was pretty tough to get excited when acts like The Angry Samoans and Assorted Jellybeans toured before breaking up, and a couple of unnecessary reunions just reinforced that fact.
Curveball: Although it managed to score a couple hit albums and make an awkward appearance on Live With Regis And Kathy Lee that summer, 3OH!3 opted to make an appearance on its fourth consecutive Vans Warped Tour.