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In the long run, a worthy Warped
from: philly.com
by Patrick Berkerey, for The Inquirer
One must approach the daylong Vans Warped Tour like a marathon, not a sprint.
If you spend like a drunken sailor on CDs, sunglasses and Bob Marley tapestries without earmarking some cash for hydration purposes, you'll melt halfway through the eight-plus hours of the show.
One bottle of water per hour - reasonably priced at $2 - was required to combat the absolutely scorching heat Thursday in the Tweeter Center parking lot, where a majority of the action took place.
Another potential pitfall: punk-emo-screamo-hardcore fatigue. Take in too much mind-numbing roar and shriek too soon from the many interchangeable acts on the 83-band bill and you're fried by midafternoon - robbed of the faculties necessary to venture into the far southeast corner of the parking lot during early evening to catch a band you've heard good things about, Philly's mewithoutYou.
As a veteran of four Warped shows, I've learned to keep the fluids up and give the ears a break when possible - such as during the revelation of a late-afternoon acoustic set by Saves the Day (one of many New Jersey acts on the show) inside the Tweeter pavilion. Hearing the group's blustery emo stripped down to its jangling pop roots cleansed my head and recharged my curiosity enough to check on the mewithoutYou tip.
That quintet, led by accordion-playing, tambourine-shaking singer Aaron Weiss, sounded like nothing on this Warped show. Imagine a post-hardcore version of the Doors, vamping on unflinchingly psychedelic swirls of guitar, with rubbery rhythms that were tight without seeming too polished.
Weiss was like a shaman-in-training, pulling off the tricky task of getting spiritual through spoken word without seeming like a pretentious windbag.
Nothing else was as revelatory as mewithoutYou's set or Saves the Day's going unplugged. Though, if you searched, you could hear something satisfying that wasn't cut from that same-old punk-emo-screamo-hardcore mold.
Hirsute heavies Valient Thorr rocked the pavilion without irony, while stylish Swedes the Sounds made a nice new-wave-ish racket that held up in the early-day heat. Hammonton's the Early November distilled the ambition of its new triple-CD, The Mother, the Mechanic, and the Path, into a brisk 30 minutes with punchy songs such as "Money in His Hand."
And punk rock godmother JOAN JETT gave a half-hour crash course in attitude that covered all the bases: her RUNAWAYS days ("Cherry Bomb"), MTV hits ("I Love Rock N' Roll"), and excellent new album, SINNER, with songs such as "AC/DC." (Overheard, one teen to another: "JOAN JETT sounded just like the Donnas!")
As for between-song banter - a good weapon late in the day to engage the hot and lethargic crowd - no one could touch the Don Rickles-like observations of ska-punk vets NOFX. Can't print any here, but rest assured the slogans on the T-shirts donned by many fans seemed positively p.c. in comparison.
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