LAS CRUCES — The people who've been putting on the Vans Warped Tour for the last 16 years like to call it "punk rock summer camp," a nod to the punk, ska, power pop, metal and other musical variations that have been showcased on its multiple stages over the years.
But really, the annual festival-on-wheels is more like a punk rock arts and crafts fair, but instead of potters, painters and photographers selling inexpensive coffee cups and pictures of flowers in the hopes of luring big-ticket buyers down the line, there are booths devoted to everything from cars to to CDs to condoms.
The big difference, aside from demographics, is that music is just a side show at an arts and craft fair (and the local bands they "hire" seldom get paid). It's the other way around at Warped, which came to NMSU's Intramural Field for the eighth straight year Wednesday, a thankfully cooler and more comfortable day for typically one of the typically stops on the tour.
Warped has remained a top draw over the years — it's usually one of the country's 20 best attended tours — because it's so consistently able to plug into what its largely young audience wants. It pays for it with an onslaught of inexpensive merchandise, socially conscious messages and constant marketing of the bands and their labels, including lots of opportunities to meet the bands and get their John Hancocks.
And there are a lot of bands at Warped. Nearly 80 this year at NMSU, the only stop on the tour to boast a stage showcasing local bands exclusively, a nod, organizer Kevin Lyman says, to the kindness and efforts of NMSU staff, particularly booking director Bobbie Welch.
There are so many bands that it's impossible to take them all in, but it is possible to sample a lot of them. The schedule is worked out each morning of each tour stop, and posted on a big inflatable board that lists who's playing, when and where. Nobody plays for more than 45 minutes, some play only 25 minutes or so.
I usually can't spend the whole day there. Once I get done with deadline work at the paper, then I grab my notebook, pens, phone, earplugs, glasses and sunscreen and hit the road, wondering what Warped will be like this year. I don't spend much time hanging out backstage, preferring instead to wander the grounds and check out bands on all eight stages.
Unfortunately, I missed the bands on the local stage, which included El Paso's Ralpheene, a band I've been wanting to check out.
For me, Warped isn't so much about seeing my favorite band. I'm on the tail end of that process, not the beginning like the teens and tweens who made up a big part of Wednesday's crowd of 8,904, which was about the same as last year.
One of them, 12-year-old Alan Ortiz of El Paso, was standing in line with his brother and his girlfriend to get an autograph from Christofer Drew Ingle, the voice and acoustic guitar behind one of the tour's biggest buzz acts, NeverShoutNever.
Judging from the lengthy line he was in, by far the longest I saw when I was there, Ingle may be Warped's next breakout star. But Ortiz was there to see the band whose name was emblazoned on his t-shirt, fellow buzz act Attack Attack.
"They did pretty good," he said.
A visit to Warped is like a state-of-the-state of alternative rock music, at least through the Warped filter. Who's hot? Who's up-and-coming? What are kids into this year?
If the nearly four hours I spent there Wednesday were any indication, I'd have to conclude that the punk element has continue to weaken its grip, heavy metal is in for another power surge and danceable pop and rock, while popular, was as fill-in-the-blank and disposable as the countless fliers littering the field.
I walked up there when Whitechapel, one of the most buzzed about metal bands, was playing the Altec Lansing stage. I'm not lover of death metal. The growling vocals are comical to me, but Whitechapel played with fierceness and intensity that was undeniable. I stood there and watched from outside the fence while the group held a large crowd firmly in its grip.
Judging from the long lines for autographs at theirs and Suicide Silence's merch tents, metal is a forceful presence at this year's Warped.
So, too, is pop-rock and its numerous variations, though I have to say that other than a fun, bratty set by hitmakers All-American Rejects on the main stage, most of the pop stuff I heard left much to be desired. The Rejects know how to write a song, and in singer Tyson Ritter, vary unpunkish in his white suit and bowtie, they have a charismatic, videogenic frontman who's very comfortable working a crowd.
Perhaps the most telling moment for me about this year's Warped tour was when people surged toward the main stage when the Rejects lit into their biggest hit, "Move Along," about halfway into their set. This may be a punk rock summer camp, but kids still flock to the songs they hear on the radio.
They were fun. Newcomer Mike Posner not so much. He's barely out of college and his lack of polish showed, but not so much in a good way. He worked the crowd and he played his internet hits, but got his biggest response for a danced up version of Electric Light Orchestra's "Evil Woman." He really didn't show much obvious talent, so, of course, he'll be a big star in the near future.
I felt the same way about Hey Monday, a likable enough pop band with a good singer, but their music was very formulaic. Here today, gone Tuesday?
I was more impressed by Motion City Soundtrack's main stage set. The Minneapolis band's confessional, heart-on-the-sleeve songs are more mature than your average emo, and in singer Justin Pierre, the band has a slightly nerdy, bespectacled frontman in the tradition of Buddy Holly, Elvis Costello and Rivers Cuomo, who manages to make slightly neurotic sound catchy.
Pierre was wearing a Set Your Goals t-shirt, a band I hadn't heard before. I caught a couple of their songs on the Altec stage and was impressed by the anthemic, activist nature of their music. The two-frontman approach worked better than most.
As usual, there was one band that made me stop, look and listen. That band was K Sera', a Sacramento I'd never heard before. but led by singer-guitarist Michael Caswell, had a forcefulness and intensity, not to mention a level of sophistication, that separated them from the other bands I saw Wednesday. They've only been together a year. I can't wait to hear them 10 years from now.
And that's the thing about Warped that keeps people coming back. It keeps finding acts, new and old, that fit together into a crazy quilt of rock variations that somehow manage to work. Some years are better than others — this year was just average — but it's a great way to buy a coffee cup from that potter who really makes wonderful art.
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