The Vans Warped Tour
is calling it quits after 23 years and its last local stop is at Tinker Field tonight.
“And now the end is near ... ” Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” is not something anyone is likely to hear at Vans Warped Tour, but Sid Vicious’ infamous cover of the song wouldn’t be out of place.
For 23 years, summer has meant checking out the latest in punk, pop punk, skate punk, crust punk, ska, hardcore, posthardcore, metal, metalcore, numetal, rap, rap metal, horrorcore and more. After this year, the longest-running touring music festival in North America is calling it quits. The last hurrah for Orlando will be today at Tinker Field (11 a.m., 1 Citrus Bowl Place, $42-$52, vanswarpedtour.com).
In a statement on the tour’s website, founder Kevin Lyman claimed he has brought his show “to over 11 million people around the world and watched that same world change while doing so. I have been proud to work with so many artists who have grown to be some of the largest stars in the world.”
On June 21, 1995, the first Warped Tour kicked off in Boise, Idaho. The next year added sponsor California shoe company Vans to the name, as well as extreme sports, such as BMX riding and skateboarding.
Eventually the sports went away, replaced by new kinds of acts, such as spoken word and comedy as well as a large presence for nonprofit causes.
The number of main stages has morphed from two to one and back to two, but smaller stages for up-and-coming bands have always been part of the program.
Warped tracked the changes in alternative music genres. Its stages have been home to punk mainstays, such as Bad Religion, NOFX and Rancid, and seen the rise of pop-punk acts, such as Blink-182 and Sum 41. Emo icons My Chemical Romance played Warped in 2004, the year of their major label debut. Orlando-based band Beebs and Her Moneymakers landed serious national attention on the 2013 tour.
“Though the tour and the world have changed since ’95, the same feeling of having the ‘best summer ever’ will live on through the bands, the production teams, and the fans that come through at every stop,” wrote Lyman.
Lyman isn’t the only one with fond, bittersweet memories of the rowdy festival. We asked fans to share some of their favorite times at punk-rock summer camp. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
The first tour I attended was in 2004, at the time I was working for the UCF paper. They provided press passes and I had the chance to roam around. I got to mingle with a lot of musicians, including cutting in front of NOFX as they waited in line for water and crashing Sugarcult’s tailgate beer party in the parking lot. This show awoke a need to be a part of it, and not just on the stage but behind it as well. Every performer, at some point, dreams of the day where they get to play onstage in front of a large crowd. Warped Tour made me want to be a part of the whole thing, onstage and off. Lucky enough, this year, almost 15 years from that day, my band Never Ender will be performing on the Korner stage. As our singer Kevin Wright says, “I’ve always wanted to play this festival. Talk about cutting it to the last minute.”
Warped Tour 2007 was probably the first time I got to experience a full-on blast concert. I