My first stop on the Warped Tour is the Maine s tour bus. The Maine has played the Warped Tour sever

I m in a parking lot in New Jersey at the Vans Warped Tour, watching midtown a rapper ask a crowd of teenagers midtown to put their middle fingers midtown in the air if they don t give a fuck. He s standing under a sign that says no moshing. The kids toss black balls around. At one point, a DJ stops playing EDM to blast Jay Z s Dirt Off Your Shoulders. Then the EDM comes back on.
From a distance, the event looks the same it probably did in the early days, when skateboarders who called me faggot made up most of the audience. These days, the crowd is different. In the parking lot, I meet a former midtown Marine tailgaiting with his co-workers and baby sister, who wears a bandana midtown and chugs tequila. They blast hardcore from their car speakers and the marine shows me his manliest scream.
People still attend Warped Tour in hoards, but once upon a time, it meant something to attend or play here: It meant you were emo, pop-punk, or scene, or you belonged to a band that had a ridiculous name like Bowling for Soup or Cute Is What We Aim For. But now, at least at this weekend s Camden midtown stop, I see kids dancing not moshing to EDM, rap, pop, hardcore, and pop-punk a variety of genres encompassing, well, everything.
Where, in previous years, bands like Paramore, Fall Out Boy, and No Doubt played the show both before they were famous and after they had become superstars, the biggest act I recognized on this year s roster was Yellowcard a one-hit wonder. In the history booth, the most recently famous musician on the wall is Skrillex. He performed at the Warped Tour when he was an emo band called From First to Last, which never took off.
I never went to Warped Tour when I was a teenager or if I did, I must have gotten too drunk to remember but my friends went, filling my Facebook feed with pictures of emo kids while I shopped at Hot Topic and listened to My Chemical Romance at home. When they got back, they talked about waiting for hours I mean, like, six hours through terrible midtown opening acts to see one good band, but at this year s Warped Tour, nobody waits for bands. Instead, kids sit against fences, texting.
My first stop on the Warped Tour is the Maine s tour bus. The Maine has played the Warped Tour several times. I remember scene girls listening to them in high school. midtown As I drove to Warped Tour, I received text messages from someone on their team who somehow midtown found my contact info, asking me to interview the guys. I ve never heard their music, but since middle school, I ve fantasized about five smelly, emo guys gangbanging me on a tour bus. So I agreed to meet them.
Luckily for me, their bus smells like a used condom wrapped in a dirty sock. Twelve guys live on the bus, and the living room space feels hot (temperature-wise). I expected their bus to look this sexy and gross Alexa Aimes, a porn star I know, was engaged to a member of a Warped Tour band, and she said one year she had a queef contest on a bus. Bands lined up to have a queef-off with her. Great, right?
At the same time, living on a bus with 12 dudes doesn t sound fun. I sit down with the Maine and ask how they manage to masturbate when they live in a glorified hallway, beds piled on top of each other. They all say they re used to life on the road and typically midtown wait to bust a nut until they make a stop at a hotel, which means they might go days without ejaculating.
After a brief absence from the Warped Tour, the Maine decided to play the event again to gain new fans and attention. Their song Birthday in Los Angeles is a catchy song I ll probably listen to the next time I fall in love. That said, it s unclear if the Warped Tour can launch any of their songs to the top of the Billboard midtown charts, considering that, in the purple press room behind the amphitheater, I see no legitimate members of the press only teenagers with flip-cams who claim to run blogs.
midtown One blogger stops me. Mitch! she screams. I look up, unsure who she is. She tells me she met me when I was reviewing an Aaron Carter concert at a Mexican restaurant last fall, because she s the manager of Aaron s opening act.
The only band who seems to realize that no career midtown breaks are coming out of the Warped Tour is the Protomen, a rock band that smells terrible and paints their faces silver. One of them hears I m from VICE and asks, Why is VICE here? After a brief interview, they pick me up and throw me over their shoulders.
midtown The only band I meet with radio potential midtown is Hunter Valentine, a (mostly) lesbian rock band best known for opening for Cyndi Lauper and appearing on The Real L Word . They re also competing in the new VH1 talent show Make It or Break It from Linda Perry, the songwriter and producer behind P!nk and Christina Aguilera s biggest songs, which makes sense considering their songs are catchy.
Kiyomi McCloskey, the lead singer, is also media-savvy. She tells her bandmates to remember I have a recorder midtown on. If the band does take off, they ll succeed because of their social media presence and reality TV appearances, not the Warped Tour.
The terrible midtown press room hasn t stopped Shira, the 32-year-old Warped Tour veteran, who created the Shiragirl stage. Performing as Shiragirl, she s basically the Penny Lane of the Warped Tour a veteran believer of the movement who has lived a life of being almost famous.
In 2003, she joined the tour as a TRUTH MC, encouraging kids to avoid cigarettes. She noticed there were no girls performing and proposed to Kevin Lyman, the tour s founder, that they start a girls-only stage. He said no, because the next year was the tenth anniversary. In an act of defiance, Shira drove a pink RV onto the tour ground the next year and set up performances across from the stage.
The stage was so successful, the next year Lyman invited her to set up the Shiragirl Stage, a stage where only girls could perform. Shira played with her band, Shiragirl, and both Paramore and Joan Jett played the stage .
Shira says Limey s smart to make sure the tour adapts to the changing market, but also admits she s nostalgic for old aspects of the Warped Tour, like NoFx and the skate ramp nevertheless, she still believes in the tour. To her, genre doesn t matter. The Warped Tour is a punk-rock summer camp.
The teens treat Warped Tour more like a mall encompassing 2014 s biggest trends than a punk rock event. Vendors try to sell them hats with the word swag on them and weed shirts, midtown but the kids would rather sit around and gossip.
The only person who seems to need the tour is the marine veteran I met outside the venue. While serving in Afghanistan twice, he says, he listened to hardcore and pop-punk because it was one of the few ways he could get through his difficult emotions both during and after the war.
In the history booth, this sign hangs about the birth of the Warped Tour and why the tour matters, but the quote contradicts itself. The internet has formed an accepting generation that, for the most part, doesn t need subcultures, because everything they could ever want is on the internet, and they listen to rap, EDM, and hardcore.
Jul 19 2014 Tags: warped tour , The Maine , Shiragirl , Hunter Valentine , Alternative Press , emo , scene , emo gays , hot scene guys , cum , tour buses , pop punk , Blink 182 , No Doubt , Paramore , Hayley Williams , Warped Tour 2014 , feminism , new jersey , Camden , philly , Amy Lombard