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VANS WARPED TOUR

25 Years of Warped Tour | EP 1: When Kevin Lyman Met Steve Van Doren

25 Years of Warped Tour | EP 2: Skate Culture

25 Years of Warped Tour | EP 4: No Room For Rockstars

25 Years of Warped Tour | EP 3: They Played Warped?!

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Why Did Warped Tour End?

Why did Warped Tour finally come to an end?

The annual rite of summer passage, also dubbed "Punk Rock Summer Camp" by many, was a place where many music lovers discovered new bands in the '90s, 2000s and 2010s, but in 2018, the Vans Warped Tour finished its final run.

What Was the Warped Tour?

The Warped Tour, which eventually picked up sponsorship from shoe manufacturer Vans, was a traveling rock tour that started in 1995, initially with the idea of being an alternative rock festival, but eventually finding much of its early success focusing on the punk rock music scene.

As the years passed, the festival evolved to include a wider variety of acts. From the early ska and skate punk bands to welcoming nu-metal, emo, pop-punk and eventually metalcore, there was a little something for everyone.

READ MORE: Whatever Happened to the Bands From the First Warped Tour?

When Did Warped Tour Officially End?

Though 2018 was the final year of Warped Tour as a touring festival, plans were announced that a 2019 25th anniversary would be taking place.

This turned into a three-city celebration, with shows taking place in Cleveland on June 8, 2019, Atlantic City on June 29 and 30, 2019, and Mountain View, California on July 20 and 21, 2019.

Why Did Warped Tour Come to an End?

While there had been rumors of the festival not being as profitable in prior years, Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman spoke of the traveling tour's eventual downfall and marked it up to a loss of community.

Speaking on Kerrang! 's Inside Track podcast in 2019 , Lyman stated, "Ultimately, when I started to think about winding this down after 25 years, it was, ‘I think we’ve lost the sense of community.'"

"It took a community to make Warped Tour go," he added. "Some of that was self-inflicted… I thought you addressed the fans that complain on Twitter! I was addressing everyone and tried to keep that conversation going, but you realize that you can’t really negotiate, debate, or educate on social media!"

Lyman also added that playing on Warped Tour also came with its own stigma, revealing that some bands turned down playing the festival because they didn't want to be known as "a Warped act."

"This is what kind of pissed me off," he recalled. "Because in 1997, ‘98, Pennywise couldn’t judge a band until you met ‘em in the parking lot. You’d be in line at catering because of this community setting with no dressing rooms. You’d meet these people, and they were musicians too. Then I started watching this community tear itself apart from within, with this band — not even meeting these people, just disagreeing with them or with how they look — bashing that band online."

"People would come up to me on Warped Tour, and say, ‘Well, I don’t want to be on Warped Tour because Attila are on Warped Tour,’" he continues. "Have you met the guys in Attila? We’re not here to judge each other’s music. The fans will judge each other’s music.’ Atilla brings people. Do I personally run around screaming ‘Suck my fuck?’ No. Do you? No. But they’re good musicians and they’re not bad people. I’ve never seen them do a bad thing to someone."

"Every year, I’d send offers, and just — ‘We don’t want to tour with those bands. We don’t wanna be a Warped-esque bands,'" sighs Lyman. And it’s like, dude, Warped-esque bands — you mean Bad Religion . A Day To Remember . Paramore … it got very frustrating."

Will Warped Tour Return?

Though Warped Tour wrapped in 2019, there have been rumblings in the years since about a possible return.

In 2020, Kevin Lyman suggested in a tweet responding to a fan that it could eventually return, but with one caveat .... "it might just be called something else." But, so far, there has not been a Warped Tour rehash under the old name or something different.

One other proponent of Warped Tour's return has been Chris Fronzak , the vocalist for Attila. In 2019, Fronzak reached out to Kevin Lyman with a plan to resurrect Warped Tour .

"I've honestly been thinking about this for 2 years now," he explained at the time. "In this time period I've formulated a business plan and setup that would be viable for both bands and @VansWarpedTour itself. I have a chip on my shoulder and I wanna prove to the world that rock isn't dead."

Then, in 2023, Fronzak revisited the idea of reviving the Warped Tour as part of his presidential platform , announcing that he had planned to run for President of the United States in 2024. "If you vote for me as our next president, I promise to bring back Vans Warped Tour," he responded to a fan who suggested they'd have his vote if he brought back the popular tour.

So far, the Warped Tour has not returned.

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Happy 50th, vans: how the iconic shoe brand born in anaheim has kept on surviving.

Bill Cruz has hundreds of Vans shoes in his collection. Among his favorites are a collaboration the shoe maker did with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Follow us on Instagram @OrangeCountyRegister, the official feed of the #OCRegister Photography Department, showcasing photos from in and around Orange County.

Vintage Vans shoes at Vans' Cypress headquarters. The “Off the Wall” logo was put on all the skate shoes in the 70s, a term skaters used when they went above the lip while skating in a pool.

Some of the memorabilia hanging in the office of Steve Van Doren, whose father had co-founded the Vans company, at Vans' Cypress headquarters.

Steve Van Doren, whose father had co-founded the Vans company, shows off show off some of the memorabilia hanging in his office at Vans' Cypress headquarters. Van Doren is the vice president of events and promotions.

Steve Van Doren, whose father had co-founded the Vans company, shows off shoes he designed from his office at Vans' Cypress headquarters. Van Doren is the vice president of events and promotions.

Steve Van Doren, whose father had co-founded the Vans company, shows off the 50th anniversary shoe for employees in his office at Vans' Cypress headquarters. Van Doren is the vice president of events and promotions.

Steve Van Doren, son of founder Paul, shows off footwear with artwork of him.

Vans North America General Manager Doug Palladini in his office.

The Transplants (from left - Tim Armstrong and Travis Barker) perform during the Vans Warped Tour at Cal. St. Long Beach in 2005. The Vans Warped Tour is a place where big names and up and comers perform.

Fans fly through the air during the Vans Warped Tour at Cal. St. Long Beach in 2005

The Orange County Register Ian Knox, 12, of Westminster performs tricks in the ramp and rail area at Vans Skate Park in Orange. The park was built in

Collector Bill Cruz has hundreds of pairs of Vans shoes that fill a storage unit. Among them are these Vans Vault x Taka Hayashi x Pendleton Sk8-Hi LX

Steve Van Doren, vice president of events and promotions poses for a photo near his namesake Vans logo in 2014 before the opening of Vans Off The Wall Skatepark in Huntington Beach.

House of Vans displayed on boxes heels of some of the first shoes sold in Anaheim, 1966.

University High Schools students Katherine Wang and Aki Barber designed four pairs of sneakers for the fourth annual Vans Custom Culture shoe design contest a few years ago. The duo submitted a pair with oragami print and oragami cranes for the art category. Winners of the Custom Culture contest get $50,000 toward their arts program.

A couple of visitors to the Vans display got a bit of a higher view in an oversized shoe at the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach.

Patrick Gudauskas of San Clemente competes in the U.S. Open of Surfing at Huntington Beach on Wednesday. Gudauskas and his brothers are known for their “Down Days” travel webisodes, produced by Vans.

A young fan take a photo with Patrick Gudauskas during U.S. Open of Surfing at Huntington Beach on Wednesday. Gudauskas and his two brothers are sponsored by Vans.

Michelle Thomas, left, and Paola Sandoval pose on Vans shoe mobile during last year's Vans U.S. Open for Surfing at Huntington Beach. Vans came on as title sponsor a few years ago.

Brent Caballero, 52, of Huntington Beach watches the competition on a big screen TV set up in Vans Doren Village on Saturday during Vans US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach.

Vans allow visitors at the U.S. Open of Surfing to design a shoe and if it was picked for production they get a free pair.

Vans made special edition shoes for U.S. Open of Surfing.

Nicholas Saucedo, 21, of Huntington Beach jumps the Vans sign during opening day of Off the Wall skatepark in Huntington Beach.

Professional skateboarder Christian Hosoi puts on a show as he breaks in the just-opened Vans Off the Wall skatepark in Huntington Beach after the opening of Vans Off the Wall skatepark in Huntington Beach.

Vans, born in Anaheim 50 years ago, started out as a small manufacturing company whose founders had an unconventional idea to dabble in the retail world. In the ensuing years, the company has ballooned into a multibillion-dollar action-sports brand recognized around the world.

But it wasn’t a smooth ride to success.

Like the gritty skaters who first made the footwear cool, Vans learned there would be some bumps, bruises and crashes as they leaped high and pushed a subculture into the mainstream.

Taking a gamble

Paul Van Doren knew the money wasn’t in manufacturing shoes. If he wanted a successful business, he’d have to go into retail to sell his product directly to customers.

Van Doren, who had experience in the shoe business while working in Boston, opened up the Van Doren Rubber Co. with his brother, Jim Van Doren, and friend Gordon Lee. The doors opened on March 16, 1966 at 704 East Broadway in Anaheim.

A sign outside read “House of Vans.”

They had styles on the racks, organized in color-coded shoe boxes. Men’s sold for $4.49, women’s for $2.29.

There was one problem: They forgot to put money in their cash register.

As customers showed up throughout the day, Paul told them to pick out their style, then come back with the cash when they picked up the shoes.

“My dad has a lot of faith in people,” said Paul’s son, Steve Van Doren, who works at the Cypress headquarters with the title “Ambassador of Fun.”

Lines soon spilled out the shop’s door, so the founders decided to open more locations. The first stand-alone retail shop popped up in Costa Mesa off Newport Boulevard. The Van Dorens and Lee also would fill up their trucks with shoes and hit the swap meets on weekends. Paul Van Doren would scout new stores to open.

Six of the first 10 stores weren’t profitable. When advised by his accountant to shut them down, Paul gambled and did the opposite: He opened more stores. The way he figured, the more shoes he made, the cost to make them would go down, and he’d bank on the successful stores, explained Steve.

The first decade, the company simply tried to stay afloat. Then, the skaters showed up.

Off the Wall

There’s a saying in the skater world: “Did you see that guy get off the wall ?”

Vans adopted the phrase, stamping it into the heels of each shoe.

In the mid-70s word got out about the shoe with extra grip, a thick sole and tough canvas that could handle a battering as skateboarders launched off pool lips and did tricks on their wooden boards. Skaters like Stacy Peralta and Tony Alva – who were laying the foundation for what skateboarding is today – became team riders sponsored by Vans.

Nike had its swoosh. Adidas had its logo. Vans had to come up with its own unique design, so the shoe got what’s called a “jazz stripe” on the side to make them stand out.

Years later, kids started drawing checkerboard designs on the rubber part of their Vans. The company took note and created its own checkerboard slip-on.

A young, up-and-coming actor named Sean Penn – who grew up surfing and skating around Santa Monica – told movie producers he needed to wear the shoes in the Fast Times movie. In the 1982 film, the perpetually stoned character Jeff Spicoli slaps his head with the slip-on and declares, “I’m so wasted!”

The movie’s soundtrack would carry the Vans shoes on its cover.

Checkered slip-ons soon were flying off the shelves. Business at Vans instantly doubled, and revenue grew to $45 million from $20 million the previous year.

But it turns out, that boom wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

Growing pains

With all the money coming in, Vans quickly churned out a shoe for everything you could think of: A break-dancing shoe. A running shoe. A basketball shoe. Even a skydiving shoe.

Vans’ fast times soon came to a halt.

“We basically fed that beast as hard as we could and used all that profit to try other things,” said Doug Palladini,  North America general manager. “And we ended up sitting on product no one wanted. It was a double-edged sword.”

In 1984, Vans filed for bankruptcy.

Steve remembers when his father had to tell his employees he couldn’t give them a raise for three years. He told everyone to bring pencils from home, because he couldn’t afford to buy pens. The banks wanted him to liquidate, but a judge agreed to let Paul Van Doren bring in a plan every six weeks and make payments.

He paid 100 cents to the dollar on the debt.

Paul and the other partners retired when venture investment firm McCown De Leeuw & Co. offered to buy the company in 1988 for $74 million. The new company took the brand public in 1991.

Through the 90s, Vans continued to grow its following in the skate world and set out to expand into the music scene with what’s now called the Vans Warped Tour. Today, the Warped Tour makes dozens of stops around the country and is known as the place where up-and-coming musicians can be discovered.

By 2004, the company grew to $300 million from $60 million. That same year, the company was sold for $396 million to VF Corp., which assured Vans executives the brand would continue to operate on its own.

Up to that point, Vans had been a California brand. In other surf and skate shops around the country, Vans were found in dusty corners – if the shop held them at all.

The next goal became clear: taking Vans global.

Staying focused

When asked what makes Vans successful, Palladini used one word: Discipline.

The company stopped making shoes that didn’t sell and focused on what execs call their four pillars: art, music, action sports and street culture.

“We had so many evolutionary dead ends, it’s phenomenal. Other brands, it would have been their demise,” he said. “Somewhere along the way, we lost focus of who we are. Where we came from is right there, Dogtown” he said, pointing at a poster in his office of skater Stacy Peralta hitting the lip of a pool.

When every action sports wear company decided to jump on active wear or yoga clothes, for example, Vans declined.

One way the company expanded its reach is through collaborations. Vans recently teamed up with Disney and Star Wars. Other Vans partnerships have included the Simpsons and Beatles brands.

They’ve kept a stronghold in the surf world by hosting the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing in Hawaii and the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach.

With the backing of VF Corp. Vans has expanded its retail operations, with more than 700 stores worldwide, 20 in Orange County.

While other action-sports brands like Billabong and Quiksilver have grappled with losses, Vans has hit its stride. Their annual financial report released in February shows full-year sales totaled $2.2 billion, a 7 percent increase compared with 2014.

Duke Edukas, co-owner of Surfside Sports in Costa Mesa, remembers thinking Vans was on a roll with its vulcanized shoes, but the trend would only last about five years.

“That was 20 years ago, it never happened,” he said.

In addition to their footwear, snowboard boots sell well at the store. Its clothing line is not as strong, and Edukas does not carry it in his store because not many people ask for it.

“I think it’s important for them to not take their eye off the ball on their footwear,” he said. “They don’t want to lose steam on that, because that’s the strength of the brand.”

Vans obsessions

Even as Vans transformed into a household name around the world, shoe enthusiasts, including Bill Cruz of Glendora, have stuck with the brand.

Cruz is a collector; he owns hundreds of Vans shoes that fill a storage unit. He runs the website stuckunderthepalms.com , which caters strictly to Vans fans.

“My obsession is more like an addiction nowadays,” he said.

As Cruz collected the brand he, like many others, became more passionate about what the brand stood for.

“They are a little bit off the wall, like they say,” he said. “They follow trend, but they represent people who don’t care to fit in. They have deep roots in the skate culture, outsiders, outcasts.”

The appeal of Vans is at an all-time high, especially after the social media meme “Damn Daniel” exploded on the Internet.

Teen Josh Holz took video clips of friend Daniel Lara at a Riverside school and posted it on the Snapchat app, showcasing the teen’s outfits. In one of the clips, Holz is heard saying, “ Daaaamn Daniel, back at it again with the white Vans!”

A modest estimate shows the video clip reached at least 45 million page views on various multimedia platforms, with another 20 million watching a YouTube segment when Lara appeared on the “Ellen” television show.

Vans saw a major marketing opportunity, giving Lara a lifetime supply of Vans shoes. He’s the only person outside of the Van Doren family privy to such a promise.

While Palladini couldn’t give specifics, he said there was a significant uptick in white Vans sales after the social media explosion.

“It’s not about milking it, it’s about being a part of the experience when it’s there, and now we’re moving on to the next thing” Palladini said.

50th celebration

To celebrate 50 years, about a dozen “House of Vans” parties – where skate, music and art collide – will happen around the world from March 16 – 18.

All 9,000 Vans employees will get a special 50th anniversary shoe, with the words “Off the Wall Family” on the heel.

Local efforts are focused on moving their headquarters from Cypress to Costa Mesa by early 2017, where the company is taking over a 180,000-square-foot building on 14 acres – and room to grow.

There are big projects in the works this year: A new waterproof, chef-inspired shoe, and a collaboration with Nintendo on the horizon.

Palladini said it’s not a self-congratulatory moment for the brand. It’s a chance to give gratitude to their fans, employees and customers.

“Being 50 is a pretty humbling experience. Not many people get that far,” he said. “It’s less about us, but more about the people who have supported us over the years.”

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Behind the Hype: How the Vans Old Skool Influenced Skate, Art, Streetwear, and Beyond

The popular sneaker staple transcended footwear to become a tried-and-true design for the masses and tastemakers alike..

Vans continues to be an influential brand within skateboarding, street fashion, art, and popular culture — its iconic red logo is instantly recognizable across generations. However, one silhouette kicked the brand into high gear in terms of global reach and covetability amongst discerning footwear aficionados. The Vans Old Skool , accented with Vans’ signature Sidestripe, established the footwear label’s incomparable legacy. Since the release of the shoe, Vans has gone on to demonstrate longevity amongst various cultures, all the while being hailed by celebrities including Justin Bieber, A$AP Rocky, Travis Scott, and Frank Ocean, as well as skaters, artists, fashion designers, and the youth culture. In the latest installment of Behind the Hype , Hypebeast recounts the rise of Vans and the various cultural touchstones the classic Old Skool has become a part of.

The Vans story began when brothers Paul and James Van Doren, along with Gordon Lee and Serge Delia, partnered to start the Van Doren Rubber Company. The brand released its first skate model, the Era, in 1976 as part of the Off the Wall line. About one year later in 1977, Vans added the Old Skool (known initially as Style 36), followed by the Sk8-Hi (1978) and Slip-On (1979) models. Each original shoe displayed the red Off the Wall heel tab that can still be found on contemporary models, but the Old Skool sported a new look and durable suede construction that caught the attention of skaters everywhere. It debuted a never-before-seen Vans signature Sidestripe, drawn by Paul Van Doren himself. Paul gave the doodle to Vans’ in-house designer and patternmaker George Greenwood, who then integrated it into the Old Skool’s design and nicknamed it the “Jazz Stripe.” This identifiable design feature as well as unique leather panels in the toe and heel of the shoe made it an instant fan favorite for its style and durability.

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Warped Tour 2011

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Warped Tour 2011 is the 17th annual Summer Warped Tour festival. Vans Shoes was again the tour's primary sponsor. The tour dates were announced on November 22, 2010, with the first official band announcement on December 8. [1] The Warped Tour 2011 kick off party took place on March 25, 2011 in Brooklyn, New York featuring performances by The Wonder Years , MC Lars , Moving Mountains and Lionize with main stage announcements happening at midnight. [2] Warped Tour 2011 was the first Warped Tour to visit Las Vegas, Nevada in 6 years.

• 1.1 Teggart/Main Stage
• 1.2 Advent Clothing Stage
• 1.3 Tilly's/Alternative Press Stage
• 1.4 Nintendo 3DS Stage
• 1.5 Skullcandy Stage
• 1.6.1 Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands 15 Winning Bands
• 1.7.1 Earn It Yourself Winners
• 1.8 Miscellaneous
• 1.9 Dzambo Stage
• 1.10 Las Cruces Local Stage
• 1.11 XPOZ Local Stage
• 1.12 Detroit Local Stage
• 1.13 Break Thru Stage
• 1.14 Jersey Stage
• 3 References

All bands confirmed for the entire tour unless otherwise noted. Dates and stage placements subject to change. [3]

Teggart/Main Stage [ ]

Advent clothing stage [ ].

• Abandon All Ships [10] [11] (Played 7/21-8/14)
• The Acacia Strain [12]
• Black Veil Brides [8] [13] (Played 7/1-7/20 and 7/22-8/14)
• Dance Gavin Dance (Played 6/24-6/30)
• Enter Shikari [14]
• Falling In Reverse (Played 8/10-8/12 and 8/14)
• Miss May I [15]
• Of Mice & Men [14]
• Set Your Goals [10]
• We Came As Romans [16]
• Winds Of Plague [15]
• Woe, Is Me (Played 6/24-7/20) [3]
• The Word Alive [16]

Tilly's / Alternative Press Stage [ ]

Nintendo 3ds stage [ ], skullcandy stage [ ], ernie ball stage [ ], ernie ball battle of the bands 15 winning bands [ ].

The following bands were chosen to play the Ernie Ball stage in their hometown for the Warped Tour. [38] [39]

Kia Kevin Says Stage [ ]

Earn it yourself winners [ ].

The following bands performed on the Kevin Says stage as chosen by Earn It Yourself.

Miscellaneous [ ]

• Juliet Simms [65] (Acoustic)
• Larry and His Flask [18] (Appearing in various spots around venues doing multiple sets each day)

Dzambo Stage [ ]

[66] [67]

Las Cruces Local Stage [ ]

The following bands performed on June 29 at the Las Cruces, New Mexico stop of Warped Tour. [70]

• The Caskets
• Cloud 9 Murders
• Friday Nights
• Stabbed in Back
• Terror Eyes

XPOZ Local Stage [ ]

The following bands performed on June 30 at the Las Vegas, Nevada stop of the Warped Tour. [71]

• Amarionette
• At Sixes and Sevens
• Inherit the Sky
• Next Generation Rising
• This Romantic Tragedy
• Tuesday After School

Detroit Local Stage [ ]

The following bands performed on July 8 at the Detroit, Michigan stop of Warped Tour. [72]

• Alive in Standby
• All's Quiet
• Aria Aesthetic
• Call it Karma
• Chavis Chandler
• Heroes on Parade
• Living Like Ghosts
• Rocky Loves Emily

Break Thru Stage [ ]

The following bands performed on July 13 at the Mansfield, Massachusetts stop of Warped Tour as spsonsored by MassConcerts and I'm Thirsty Entertainment. [73]

• Armor for the Broken
• The Awakening
• Dead Ellington
• The Greenery
• Last Minute Sedative
• Lions Lions
• Our Last Night
• Rumors of Betrayal

Jersey Stage [ ]

The following bands performed on July 24 at the Oceanport , New Jersey stop of the Warped Tour. Bands for this stage were chosen through Starland Ballroom 's yearly "War For The Warped Tour" Battle of the Bands competitions. [74]

• A Lot Like You
• Jolly Rotten Skeletons
• Kicking Daisies
• Killing the Messenger
• Like The Stars
• The New Royalty
• Time Will Tell
• The Waffle Stompers
• The World Ends With You

Warped Tour 2011 had 42 tour stops in the United States and two dates in Canada. [1]

References [ ]

• ↑ 1.0 1.1 Exclusive: Warped Tour and Mayhem Festival dates, holiday pre-sales revealed
• ↑ 2011 Vans Warped Tour Kick Off Party Details
• ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 WARPEDREPORTER.COM - Journals
• ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 [1]
• ↑ A Day To Remember To Play Warped Tour 2011
• ↑ Template:Cite web
• ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Jack’s Mannequin, Madina Lake, five more added to Warped Tour
• ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 Less Than Jake, Planet Smashers (one date) confirmed for Warped Tour 2011
• ↑ Paramore on The Warped Tour!
• ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Set Your Goals, Foxy Shazam and MC Lars are among the latest in the 2011 Vans Warped Tour Lineup
• ↑ Abandon All Ships Events Page
• ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 Peelander-Z, Relient K and The Acacia Strain are among the latest additions to the Warped Tour lineup
• ↑ Black Veil Brides Will Be Playing the 2011 Vans Warped Tour
• ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 Of Mice & Men, Family Force 5, Lucero, more added to Warped Tour
• ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 The Wonder Years, Miss May I, Winds Of Plague, more added to Warped Tour
• ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 The Word Alive, Every Avenue, and more Announced for 2011 Warped Tour lineup
• ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 The Aggrolites, Sharks and the Exposed among the latest additions to the 2011 Vans Warped Tour
• ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 18.4 18.5 18.6 18.7 Black Pacific, Terrible Things and Larry and His Flask are among the latest lineup additions to the Warped Tour
• ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 19.5 19.6 19.7 19.8 Craig Owens' new band D.R.U.G.S. among the nine bands named for the Warped Tour lineup this week
• ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 20.3 20.4 20.5 20.6 Template:Cite web
• ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 Unwritten Law and more join Warped Tour
• ↑ Sum 41: Tour Dates
• ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 Vans Warped Tour Facebook Page
• ↑ Suburban Noize Records | Tour Dates & Events
• ↑ Unwritten Law Upcoming Concerts and Events
• ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 27.3 27.4 27.5 Template:Cite web
• ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 28.3 28.4 28.5 28.6 28.7 Eyes Set To Kill, Big Chocolate, Etc. Added To “Vans Warped Tour
• ↑ 29.0 29.1 Terrible Things @ The El Rey Plus Interview With Josh Eppard
• ↑ MC Lars >> Tour
• ↑ A Skylit Drive To Play Warped Tour 2011
• ↑ 32.0 32.1 Earn It Yourself >> Blog Archive >> Scene Report: Pomona
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: ST PETERSBURG RECAP OF THE ST PETERSBURG STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: NASHVILLE (LONG-OVERDUE) RECAP OF THE LAST STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ Ernie Ball Crowns the Winner of the 2011 Battle of the Bands!
• ↑ Woe, Is Me Events & Shows
• ↑ Ernie Ball on Facebook
• ↑ Battle of the Bands
• ↑ Shows << The Fold
• ↑ Battle To Warped Tour II
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: CHARLOTTE RECAP OF THE CHARLOTTE STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ We Are Pleased To Announce...
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: MARIETTA, GA RECAP OF THE MARIETTA, GA STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: BALTIMORE RECAP OF THE BALTIMORE STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: LAS VEGAS
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: PITTSBURGH RECAP OF THE PITTSBURGH STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: INDIANAPOLIS RECAP OF THE INDIANAPOLIS STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: SOUTH FLORIDA RECAP OF THE LAKE WORTH STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: CHICAGO RECAP OF THE CHICAGO STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ 53.0 53.1 SCENE REPORT: NEW MEXICO RECAP OF THE ALBUQUERQUE STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: KANSAS RECAP OF THE WICHITA STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: NEW YORK CITY RECAP OF THE NEW YORK STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: NEW JERSEY RECAP OF THE NEW JERSEY STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: CLEVELAND RECAP OF THE CLEVELAND STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: MINNEAPOLIS RECAP OF THE MINNEAPOLIS STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: PHOENIX RECAP OF THE MESA STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: MICHIGAN RECAP OF THE LANSING STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ 61.0 61.1 SCENE REPORT: AUSTIN RECAP OF THE AUSTIN STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: ORLANDO RECAP OF THE ORLANDO STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: VIRGINIA BEACH RECAP OF THE VIRGINIA BEACH STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ SCENE REPORT: DENTON RECAP OF THE DENTON STOP ON THE EIY SPRING (INTO ACTION) TOUR
• ↑ Juliet Simms Is Playing Warped Tour!
• ↑ WARPED TOUR 2011 HERE WE COME!!!!
• ↑ Artists |Dzambo Stage
• ↑ WATERTOWN BOTB WINNER
• ↑ WESTLAND Events
• ↑ update: Lady A, Warped, Street Fest, EPSO, KOT, Primal Filth and more
• ↑ XPOZ Local Stage Info
• ↑ Jersey Stage at the Warped Tour
• 1 Warped Tour 2004
• 2 Warped Tour 2002
• 3 Warped Tour 2008

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How Warped Tour led the consumerist music festival revolution

The iconic festival was as much about brands as it was about bands.

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Most of what I remember about being 14 involves wanting stuff: I wanted straighter hair. I wanted to seem like a grown-up (or at least like a 16-year-old). And I really, really wanted to go to Warped Tour.

It was the summer of 2004, and pop-punk was ascendant. In Canada, where I grew up, this meant listening to a steady stream of Sum 41, Avril Lavigne, Simple Plan, and Billy Talent — all homegrown acts that got regular radio play thanks in part to Canadian content laws . With that as our gateway, my friends and I began our foray into skate-punk lite, memorizing Taking Back Sunday lyrics, trying (poorly) to land an ollie , and developing extremely unrequited crushes on any boy who bore a passing resemblance to Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge.

To us, Warped Tour — the traveling “misfit summer camp” that merged punk, ska, rock, and emo with extreme sports and a healthy array of corporate sponsors — was the pinnacle of cool. Unfortunately, I never got to attend, on account of being at actual summer camp.

This summer, Warped Tour celebrates its 25th birthday, making it far older than the teenagers it has courted for two and a half decades. Last year was the tour’s final cross-country run — it featured hundreds of bands over the course of 38 stops for which nearly 550,000 tickets were sold, but this impressive turnout was buoyed by the announcement that it was the event’s last hurrah. Attendance the prior year, in 2017, had been down significantly, particularly among the 14- to 17-year-old demographic that had historically been Warped’s lifeblood. The audience was getting older, production costs were rising, and bands weren’t sticking around year after year like they used to. Plus, according to founder and producer Kevin Lyman, he was just getting tired.

But in the era of reboots and remakes , it’s not surprising that organizers would want to honor the tour’s silver anniversary just one year after it shut down. The result is a three-city affair: a single-day event in Cleveland celebrating the opening of a retrospective exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and weekend shows in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Mountain View, California. While not strictly a nostalgia play — there are up-and-coming bands booked alongside veterans, and plenty of fans are first-time Warped attendees — this year, the average age of concertgoers appears to be more than a decade older than it was at the tour’s height (15 or 16, as of 2006 ), and plenty of the once-wayward youth now have kids of their own in tow, keeping them a safe distance from the mosh pit.

This is how, on a Saturday in late June, I find myself on a crowded Jersey beach sandwiched between Caesars Casino and the Atlantic Ocean, belting out Simple Plan’s “I’m Just a Kid” with nearly 30,000 other people — many of whom, like me, were in fact kids when the song came out in 2002. High school may be a distant memory, but at least now I’ve finally made it to Warped Tour.

”Oh, my god, I am 12 years old again,” says the sunburnt guy in checkerboard Vans beside me as the crowd whines along with singer Pierre Bouvier: “Nobody cares, ’cause I’m alone and the world is having more fun than me tonight.”

The lyrics don’t exactly fit the setting — no one here is alone and everyone seems to be having fun — but the feeling’s still there. For a little while, we’re all our angsty teen selves again. Likewise, there’s a twinge of irony when Good Charlotte tear into their breakout single “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” a middle finger to celebrity culture written long before Joel and Benji Madden (the band’s lead singer and guitarist) married Hollywood it-girls (Nicole Richie and Cameron Diaz, respectively).

Warped Tour itself is a contradiction — it’s a punk rock festival that’s also a prodigious marketing machine, sponsored from top to bottom by brands hoping to win over fans in between shows. This isn’t a knock on the tour, really: if it weren’t able to bridge that gap, it probably wouldn’t exist.

The idea for Warped began germinating while Kevin Lyman was working as a stage manager for the alt-rock-focused Lollapalooza in the early ’90s — back when that, too, was a touring festival. He had been immersed in SoCal’s hardcore and ska scenes growing up and wanted to bring some of his favorite bands to audiences around the country with a back-to-basics tour that did away with the music industry’s hierarchies and out-of-control egos: no headliners, no arenas — just a few thousand fans in a parking lot and an average ticket price of less than $30.

Even for the biggest acts, that DIY spirit shone through. “You feel more like a carnie on Warped Tour than you do on any other tour or at any other festival,” says Adam Lazzara, the lead singer of Taking Back Sunday, who are currently in the midst of a 20th-anniversary tour , “just because you’re literally there setting up and breaking down into the next town.” Lyman also tapped a handful of pro skateboarders and BMX bikers to come along, recognizing the crossover between extreme sports fans and punk rock’s moshing masses, as well as the fact that both subcultures were becoming increasingly mainstream.

In 1995, the same year Warped made its debut run in the summer, ESPN aired the inaugural X Games (then called “Extreme Games”), with athletes competing in action sports such as barefoot water skiing, street luge, and skateboarding. The year prior, the Offspring and Green Day — both bands with roots in California’s underground punk scene — released best-selling albums that catapulted them into popular culture.

The time was ripe for something like Warped to exist, though in order to get it off the ground, Lyman needed to buck one of the central tenets of punk and get a few executives to break out their checkbooks. “I grew up with that whole ‘eff corporate America’ mentality,” he says. “And then, for me, I just started looking at corporate America, and no matter how punk rock we were or whatever, we were still supporting it in some way. We were buying their brands; we were using their products.” He looked at the Rolling Stones pulling in millions through sponsorships with Jovan fragrance and Budweiser, and thought: Maybe we can get some money too.

It didn’t go seamlessly at first. After the 1995 run — which featured an eclectic lineup that included the ska-reggae band Sublime, a Tragic Kingdom -era No Doubt, and the grunge pioneers L7 — the tour was in dire straits financially, as the small sponsorships Lyman had landed from brands like Converse and Spin weren’t enough to cover the significant production costs. To keep it going, he was desperate enough to consider brokering a deal with the decidedly not-punk Calvin Klein to become the title sponsor. “I don’t really think that would have worked,” he now says, matter-of-factly.

Fortuitously, the meeting with the fashion brand was delayed by the devastating East Coast blizzard of 1996, and before they could go any further with the arrangements, Lyman got a call from Vans CEO Walter Schoenfeld.

Founded in 1966 as the Van Doren Rubber Company, Vans had engendered strong ties to the skateboarding community, which was loyal to the brand’s sneakers thanks to their grippy soles. The $300,000 check the company wrote turned the Warped Tour into the Vans Warped Tour, giving Lyman some financial runway while securing the festival’s ties to corporate America. (At the time, Vans was owned by the venture banking firm McCown De Leeuw & Co., thanks to a $71 million 1988 leveraged buyout .)

The Warped partnership was led by Steven Van Doren, the company’s vice president of events and promotions and the son of Vans founder Paul Van Doren, who saw an opportunity to give the brand national exposure beyond the Sun Belt states that at the time accounted for most of its sales. He also introduced amateur skateboarding competitions to the tour, giving contestants the chance to win pro contracts with Vans. “Having Steve involved really solidified our partnership,” says Lyman, noting that he turned down bigger subsequent sponsorship offers from the shoe brand Airwalk because he felt Vans was in it for the long haul.

He was right: By 1999, Spin reported at the time, Vans owned a 15 percent stake in Warped and was paying $1 million per year “to strengthen [its] presence with ‘Generation Y’” (or, as we’d call them today, “millennials”). Two years later, it stepped up its investment, paying $5.2 million for a 70 percent controlling stake, according to Forbes .

Today, Vans is a $3 billion brand — current parent company VF Corp bought it for $396 million in 2004 — and a household name for most Americans, including those who have never set foot on a skateboard. Even as it has grown well beyond its fringier roots, though, the brand’s relationship with Warped has endured, and at the 25th-anniversary show, seemingly every other fan is wearing Vans sneakers: Sk8-Hi’s , Old Skools , the ubiquitous checkerboard slip-ons .

(Airwalk fizzled by the early 2000s and was reborn as a Payless brand; its current owners — the same company that recently acquired Sports Illustrated — are trying to stage a ’90s-nostalgia-fueled comeback .)

Even with the Vans investment, Lyman had to hustle to keep the tour afloat in the early years. “We had to raise nearly $4 million in sponsorships to make the ticket price what it was, to give you the show you wanted, to bring all those side stages that developed young artists,” he says.

In 1999, he signed a partnership with the brand new surf label Hurley and got up-and-comers Blink-182 — then still a year out from the explosively popular Enema of the State — to wear the brand’s clothes onstage in exchange for free seats on one of the Warped Tour’s buses, since the band couldn’t yet afford their own transportation. It was a turning point for both band and brand: Blink had just replaced its former drummer with Travis Barker, who’s still with the group today, and Hurley’s founder Bob Hurley had left a successful career with Billabong to start his namesake clothing line earlier that year. Four years later, Blink was selling out arenas and topping Billboard charts, and Hurley had grown into a $70 million business, which Nike acquired in 2002 .

It wasn’t just hormone-addled fans going through an adolescence of sorts at Warped. “I always said Warped was a developmental spot, not only for bands but for crew people to learn how to tour and learn how to be good citizens in the music community, as well as brands,” says Lyman. “A lot of brands got their starts in those parking lots.”

One of those was Monster Energy, which has been a tour sponsor since it launched in 2003, back when it was made by a California soda company called Hansen’s Natural Co. The company set up a portable rock wall, became “the official energy drink of the Vans Warped Tour,” and embarked on a wildly successful rebrand that has seen its stock soar more than 72,000 percent since its public debut that same year. According to Lyman, Monster also came up with the idea of “Tour Water” — specially designed cans of water that make it look like bands and crew members are chugging energy drinks all day onstage without the risk of cardiac arrest; the concept is now an industry standard, and cans from early tours go for more than $75 on eBay .

Another was Jeffree Star Cosmetics. Before Star was a beauty mogul, he was a MySpace-famous scene kid who performed on the tour as a solo artist in 2008 and 2009. In the following years, he came back to host meet-and-greets with his YouTube fans and, when he launched his makeup empire in 2014, set up shop among the merch tents.

The Warped Tour also forced more corporate brands to loosen up a little: After the PlayStation team showed up in uniform polo shirts their first year on the tour, Lyman told them they’d have to change, citing a life motto of his: “Never trust a person in a golf shirt unless you’re at a golf course.” (They’re either a douchebag or they don’t know what they’re talking about, he says.)

When the tour created a “reverse day care” for parents on-site in 2001 — complete with air conditioning and noise-canceling headphones — Lyman convinced Target to put its bull’s-eye logo on top, sans brand name, citing the symbol’s history with ’70s mod bands like the Who and the Jam. He even dug out the Ramones’ tour rider to persuade the makers of Yoo-hoo that the chocolate drink was, in fact, kinda punk rock, and by the 1998 tour, fans were climbing a rock wall shaped like a giant Yoo-hoo bottle and competing for branded skateboard decks .

Walking around the grounds in Atlantic City, there’s a near-endless array of stuff to buy at Warped this year: limited-edition Vans, commemorative 25th anniversary bracelets, T-shirts reading “Mall Goth Trash” and “SadBoy Crew,” henna tattoos, water bottles, skate decks, and beer koozies (plus $14 Pacifico). There are also plenty of freebies: branded coupon wristbands from the teen retailer Journeys, which has been the tour’s presenting sponsor since 2014; T-shirts from Truth, the anti-smoking organization; stickers from PETA.

Among the panoply of shoppable teenage rebellion are booths with a cause, like Hope for the Day , a suicide prevention organization, and A Voice for the Innocent , a nonprofit that offers resources to survivors of rape and sexual abuse, which was brought on board in the wake of a series of sexual assault and harassment allegations involving artists who had performed on the tour.

”The Warped Tour is really interesting because it jumped early on the idea that crowds could be commodified,” says Gina Arnold, a former rock journalist and the author of Half a Million Strong: Crowds and Power from Woodstock to Coachella . “They were able to widen out the notion of the festival as a marketplace — not so much of ideas, but a marketplace of actual things.”

Today, the concept of festival-as-shopping-mall is well established — so much so that this year’s Coachella attendees could have Amazon orders delivered same-day to lockers on site — but in the ’90s, it was still a novel idea. Before then, it was all “bad food and band T-shirts,” as Arnold put it. (The exception: the parking lot of any Grateful Dead concert, long a thriving marketplace of tie-dye tees , beaded jewelry, DIY taco stands, and any drug you might fancy, collectively known as Shakedown Street .)

Band T-shirts still make up the bulk of the merch at Warped, just as they do at most concerts these days. As album sales have dropped off a cliff and services like Spotify have taken their place, paying a fraction of a penny per stream, merchandise has become an increasingly essential part of artists’ income. A superstar like Taylor Swift or Kanye West can gross $300,000 to $400,000 in merch during a single show, according to a Billboard interview with licensing exec Dell Furano. Warped artists aren’t coming close to that, but especially at the tour’s peak, they were pulling in a good amount of cash.

Taking Back Sunday made a reported $20,000 to $30,000 per show on merch on the 2004 tour; My Chemical Romance set the record the next year, selling $60,000 worth of black T-shirts, sinister-looking posters, and fingerless gloves at a single stop. 2005 was also the only year Warped made money on ticket sales, according to Lyman. Headliners Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance were regulars on MTV’s TRL thanks to crossover hits “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down” and “Helena.” Teens who hadn’t heard of most of the “authentic” punk bands the tour had booked in prior years were turning out in droves. By the end of the 48 dates, 700,000 fans had bought tickets, and the tour grossed an all-time high of $25 million .

”That was a pretty wild year, with all the bands exploding,” says Lisa Johnson, who’s been photographing Warped Tour since its first run. “I’m not gonna lie, it was a little frustrating in the photo pit because it was so jam-packed. And a little dangerous, because there were so many kids coming over the barricade constantly. But at the same time, how fantastic is that?”

Of course, not everyone agreed. From its inception, Warped provoked criticism from punk purists who argued — not without reason — that the corporate-sponsored festival was antithetical to the values of the genre. It also ruffled feathers with the bands it booked, particularly as the rise of “mall punk” and emo put bands like Good Charlotte, Blink-182, and My Chemical Romance alongside punk mainstays like Rancid, Pennywise, and Bad Religion.

”You go to the Warped Tour and walk around and you’ll hear 100 bands that try to sound like Green Day or NOFX. It’s just disgusting,” said Mike Avilez, a vocalist for the California punk band Oppressed Logic, in the book Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day . “They’re missing the angst. To me, punk rock is supposed to be angry and pissed off.”

The tour has also caught flak from within over the years. In a 2004 Chicago Reader piece , “Punk Is Dead! Long Live Punk!” the music critic Jessica Hopper chronicled a clash between Lyman and a band called the Mean Reds: “It was only the sixth day of the tour, and they were already on ‘probation’ for running their mouths onstage about what a sold-out capitalist-pig enterprise Warped is, how it isn’t really punk, et cetera.”

Even Adweek, hardly a voice of the counterculture, said in 2005 that the influx of corporate cash “does somewhat undermine the legitimacy of the event, even as it introduces groups of men in tight pants to new audiences.”

Among those who’ve been along for the ride since Warped’s early days, though, ambivalence about the scene’s brushes with the mainstream is tempered by ideas both idealistic — that the tour provided a platform to bands that otherwise might not have made it, and a community for kids who didn’t always fit in elsewhere — and practical.

”There’s always going to be critics,” says Shira Yevin, who’s performed at Warped as Shiragirl since 2004, and for a decade produced a stage at the tour dedicated to promoting women-fronted bands. “But they’re the same ones bitching because they only got paid $100 for the gig and they don’t have enough money to get to the next state, you know?”

In 2019, the idea of “selling out” seems like a product of an earlier generation — one without climate change or student loans or school gun violence to worry about. And anyway, the purists may be getting their way for now, since even pop punk isn’t popular these days. Instead, the top 40 charts are ruled by Lil Nas X’s boundary-pushing country trap, genre-fluid acts like Billie Eilish , and mumble rappers like Post Malone. The loud, fast, guitar-driven sound that Warped is known for? “In top 40, it’s very rare,” says Nate Sloan, a musicologist and the co-host of Vox’s Switched on Pop podcast . “Even the bands that sort of assert that look and that style and may throw a guitar around their shoulder, the actual sound doesn’t necessarily have that.”

On the second day of the Atlantic City shows, in one of the festival’s seemingly endless meet-and-greet lines, I meet 20-year-old Sam and 14-year-old Tori, friends from Philadelphia who made the trip down for their first Warped Tour. Sam has rainbow hair and rainbow gauges in her ears; Tori’s wearing a Set It Off band tee. They met at the Hot Topic where Sam works, a store that itself has transformed from mall-goth central into a haven for geek fashion .

”I basically live there,” says Tori.

”We vibed about the music we listen to,” says Sam.

”I don’t really have any other friends that listen to this kind of stuff,” explains Tori. “I almost kind of get made fun of, because it’s like, ‘Oh, emo music, what do you do, cry all day?’”

At Sam’s high school, most guys listened to trap or rap, while “angsty music” was mostly the domain of girls or “the guys who had a bad upbringing.”

”It was just divided,” she adds. “Like the way the country is right now.”

While genres may separate fans into factions in high school, Sloan says they’re not necessarily as diametrically opposed as they seem. “A lot of the sensibility of rock ’n’ roll has gone into the sound of SoundCloud rap and mumble rap,” he says. “This genre is sort of the spiritual heir to a lot of the acts that first kicked off the original Warped Tour. Sonically, it feels like a world apart in a lot of ways, but in terms of the intense emotional affect, it’s very clearly picking up the mantle.”

Part of the transformation may be technological. “Maybe 20, 30 years ago, if you were an angsty teenager, the easiest way to express yourself would have been by installing yourself and your friends in the garage with a couple of crappy guitars and a battered drum set,” says Sloan. “Today, the easiest way to express your angst would be through a pirated copy of [the music software] FruityLoops and a USB microphone.” This evolution may also help explain why punk’s communal, anti-commercial spirit seems to have fallen out of favor while themes like alienation and disaffection (which Gen Z artists like Eilish mine extensively) have endured.

Shifting musical tastes are just one factor contributing to Warped’s decline. Most people I talked to had similar theories about what’s behind the drop-off in teen attendance: It’s not just that today’s rock bands can’t compete with the colossal forces of hip-hop and pop; they’re also up against YouTube, Netflix, TikTok , esports, and social media, all of which are pouring billions into the race for young people’s attention. Plus, parents are warier about sending their kids to live shows because of tragedies like the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas and the bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England .

Lamenting the changing habits of teenagers has always been an adults’ game, though. For the current generation of fans and artists, the end of the tour is, inevitably, the beginning of whatever comes next. Not Ur Girlfrenz was the youngest touring act at Warped last year, and now at ages 13 (bassist Gigi Haynes) and 14 (lead singer and guitarist Liv Haynes and drummer Maren Alford), the trio is on the cusp of what was once the festival’s prime demographic. They also just released their first EP, the title track of which, “New Kids in America,” riffs off the Kim Wilde hit with bouncy pop-punk energy and lyrics like, “When did the trend of no one ever having fun / Spread throughout the land infecting everyone?”

Still, they’re more optimistic about the future of the kind of music they play. “Kids our age these days just aren’t really exposed to it anymore. It’s not exactly like they just don’t like it. They’re just not exposed to it,” says Maren. She’ll introduce her friends to a new band or tell them to stay and watch whoever Not Ur Girlfrenz has opened for, “And they’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is my new favorite band!’”

Plus, with early-aughts nostalgia already trending heavily among Gen Z (so much so that this year’s VidCon — a conference for online video creators and their mostly teenage fans — featured a meeting room decked out in Lizzie McGuire posters and blow-up furniture), a musical comeback seems timely. “You hear the 1975 bringing back the ’80s sounds, so I think now’s the time to bring back the 2000s,” reasons Liv.

At their Sunday set, it’s easy to see why they’re hoping for another Warped Tour next year — even if Lyman insists that, for real this time, this is the last. Fans are yelling their names and singing their lyrics back at them from the crowd.

”I did the whole thing where, you know, someone points at you and you look behind you and then you’re like, ‘Oh, wait, it’s me!’” Liv says with a laugh.

At a signing at their merch tent after the set, the screaming starts again. “We were like, ‘Is somebody famous here? Oh, my god, is it Blink-182?’” recalls Gigi.

”Yeah, we saw this huge group of people,” says Maren, “and we were like, ‘Ooh, someone important is giving a signing. I wonder who it is.’”

”Nah, it was just us. Psh ,” Gigi sighs.

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Setlist History: Warped Tour 1995

• Setlist History
• Last updated: 3 Aug 2018, 17:58:35
• Published: 3 Aug 2018, 17:58:35
• Written by: Erica Lauren
• Photography by: Jeff Kravitz
• Categories: Festivals Setlist History Tagged:

As we say farewell to the full, traveling stretch of the Vans Warped Tour, we're flashing back to the roots of 'punk rock summer camp.' The Warped Tour, which was first created in 1995 by Kevin Lyman, ran for 26 dates, kicking-off on August 4th at the Idaho Center in Boise, Idaho, and wrapping up a few months later on September 6th in Irvine, California. It wasn't until the following year, in the summer of 1996, that the tour gained a Vans sponsorship, adding their name to be the Vans Warped Tour.

The very first alternative rock filled lineup included bands like Quicksand, L7, Sublime, Deftones, No Use for a Name, Face to Face, Sick of it All, No Doubt, Guttermouth, Swinging Udders, and more. The music festival also featured pro-skaters, boarders and bikers, with a half pipe and street course for the sports. You'd be hard pressed to find this at this summer's final run of the tour. Check out the flyer for the first ever Warped Tour below:

Check out some setlists from 1995's Vans Warped Tour:

Watch No Doubt perform at the first Warped Tour, in this fan-shot video:

The current and final traveling Vans Warped Tour will conclude Sunday, August 5th at West Palm Beach, Florida's Coral Sky Amphitheatre. For ticket info to the final 3 shows remaining in Florida, visit the fest's official website here .

To view live photos from festivals and concerts, follow Setlist.fm on Instagram and Twitter .

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