The only thing louder than the bands at the Vans Warped Tour was the myriad of teenagers screaming for them.
The sun shone strongly on the final day of the Vans Warped Tour, which took place at the Home Depot Center in Carson. Starting at 11 a.m., the five stages started roaring with lesser known bands like Long Beach’s Run Doris Run, a young band that spattered its half-hour set with Weezer covers.
The Maine greeted the attendees early in the afternoon with a performance that kept the hands of their fans in the air. With the catchy hit “Girls do What They Want” from the album “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop,” The Maine pumped its fans to a frenzy and brought a couple of its younger fans on stage to belt the chorus to the Warped crowd.
The 30-minute sets kept both bands and the crowd moving across the blacktop of the Home Depot Center. Following the upbeat frenzy of The Maine, Saosin brought a rougher, harder sound to the stage. Cove Reber, Saosin’s lead vocalist, chewed gum as he bounded across the stage and opened with “Seven Years,” one of the band’s older songs.
With the stages on the periphery of the venue, booths of bands, sponsors and record labels filled the center. Hundreds of teens congested the pathways and crowded around the booths of their favorite bands. A crowd gathered around Saosin’s tent in anticipation of autographs and meeting the band before it left the stage. Several fans indiscreetly stripped off their shirts in exchange for one artfully printed with a band’s name and associated art, while other people in the crowd stripped down to relieve themselves from the unforgiving heat.
The youth in the crowd can be compared to the young bands featured on the tour. The recently signed Denver-based trio Single File went through some growing pains, which are displayed on their new album “Common Struggles.”
Joe Ginsberg, the band’s bassist and guitarist, described the origins of the album as an “identity crisis.”
“We were thrown into a studio, and it was too soon ““ we were making a sound we weren’t meant to make,” Ginsberg said.
The trio that met in their high school’s jazz band write their music together and went through a serious writing block shortly after they were signed to a record company.
“This record is a product of writer’s block and struggles of the band and paranoia ““ when we had to pull through and capture what we were feeling … the self-medication to avoid reality and pretending things are OK,” said Sloan Anderson, who writes most of the lyrics for the group.
As a relatively new band, members of Single File said they had struggles with the grueling tour schedule and publicity.
“We haven’t had the greatest crowds. The people that are there are diehards,” Anderson said as a fan approached with a pair of sneakers she designed herself with the Single File’s album art and the likeness of the trio. The band members seemed both touched and amused by their fan’s creation.
When connecting with their fans, nearly all bands at Warped Tour rely on social media as a platform for their music. In a playlist generation, the concept of the album becomes increasingly antiquated.
“When we grew up, you bought a record and listened to a song you might not value, at first. It’s a record, and it’s an experience,” Anderson said.
Members of VersaEmerge, a band that joined the tour in part because of the Internet, described their music as “cinematic.”
“We want to make every track so good it can be a single,” Jerry Pierce of VersaEmerge said.
Whether speaking in narrative or in a more impressionistic way, it all comes down to the feelings evoked.
“I think we all share the same emotions. I bet you, if someone ever broke up with you, you were really bummed out, and I bet if you listened to a break-up song, you probably go, ‘Oh that’s exactly how I felt.’ When someone writes a song with truth to it, honest to themselves, I bet a million people will relate at the end of the day,” said Tatiana DeMaria, vocalist of the rock group TAT.
The rush and crush of fans pressed against the various stages, reaching for their bands, seemingly attempting to physically connect with the music. The crowd of sunburned youths rolled with excitement when Forever the Sickest Kids took the stage.
“Warped Tour crowds are judged by the number of crowd surfers. This is the best crowd we’ve seen all tour,” a Forever the Sickest Kids band member said.
With reports by Tiffany Cheng, Bruin senior staff.