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Punkadilly circus

Loads of happy campers will descend on Vinoy Park in St. Petersburg to free the repressed masses.

By BRIAN ORLOFF
Published July 29, 2004

	[AP photo:]
	Dave Elkins of Mae
	[Getty Images]
	Sean Mackin of Yellowcard
	[Getty Images]
	Pete Steinkept of Bouncing Souls
	Warped schedule PREVIEW: Vans Warped 2004 starts at noon Friday at Vinoy Park, St. Petersburg. $26 advance, $28.75 day of show. (813) 287-8844 or (727) 898-2100. Here are the eight stages and the bands playing on each. The schedule is set on the day of show; bands are listed in random order. When Coheed met Cambria A Warped Tour headliner explains the band's otherworldly take on things.

This sleepaway camp has no reptile-infested lake or mandatory sports hour. There's no curfew, either. But it does have a mess hall, bonfires and summer romances all around.

For the last decade, punk rockers have been packing their bags for an eight-week traveling summer camp (of sorts) called the Vans Warped Tour. While the counselors might be pesky tour managers and the bunks are air-conditioned tour buses, not rustic cabins, musicians on the bill say that the Warped Tour's camp vibe is what makes it worthwhile.

And that's just what draws the bands.

For a budget-friendly $26 (plus service charges), punk fans can enjoy a nine-hour concert on eight stages and explore a village of tents hawking merchandise, politics, food and drink.

When this year's Warped Tour hits Vinoy Park on Friday, expect an eclectic roster of performers. Main stage acts include veterans Bad Religion, whose brainy frontman Greg Graffin has a Ph.D. in biology from Cornell, Florida's own saccharine pop-punksters New Found Glory, sci-fi rockers Coheed & Cambria and newcomers Rise Against, among many, many other acts.

For you Warped newcomers (or parents), pay attention to these basic camp rules: If you are dying to see your favorite band, come when the show starts at noon or you'll risk missing out. To keep things egalitarian, Warped famously randomizes the lineup and set times for each band; bands don't even know when they are set to play until that morning. While we can tell you which stage each band is playing on, there's no order to the list.

And protect yourself from the sun. There's never enough shade for everyone.

We spoke to Warped veteran Cyrus Bolooki, the drummer for New Found Glory, and first-timer Tim McIlrath, lead singer for Rise Against, about their summers at Camp Warped.

* * *

"The tour is this community of 600 people who are all on the road together, who are all sharing buses and bathrooms and showers and meals," McIlrath said on the way to Milwaukee. "You eat cafeteria style and you all eat at these big long tables. It's totally like a summer camp and it's cool, too, because it takes the ego out of it. If you're the singer of a band that sold half a million records, or you're the singer of a band that sold 10,000, you all wait in line for your food."

Bolooki of New Found Glory carries the analogy further.

"It's like we're going back to the same summer camp that we've been to before," he said from Milwaukee. "There may be new campers. There are some of the old campers. But we know all the counselors now. We know a lot of the people behind the scenes."

Once the "campers" get to know each other, then the sparks start flying, according to McIlrath.

"You have the romances, which are always fun to watch," he says. "The guy from this band gets into the merch girl from this band and then they start dating. And then they break up and it's awkward and weird and she starts dating another guy. It's awesome. It's a soap opera out there, which is exciting for some of us."

* * *

As much as the bands revel in the community environment, they are all serious about the music - which, is, after all, the point of the tour.

Many bands are plugging new albums. Rise Against is previewing material from Siren Song of the Counter Culture, due out Aug. 10.

"The title has to do with punk rock as a counterculture," McIlrath says. "It has to do with that siren song that lures you into that. The whole record deals with that time in your life where your identity is starting to take root and you figure out who you are as a person."

For an established band like New Found Glory, together since 1997, music can also reflect maturity and growth. Bolooki explains some of the risks his band took on its latest album, Catalyst.

"Any idea that came to mind, we wanted to entertain that and see what would happen, whereas in previous records sometimes we had ideas to do things that we wouldn't have done before," he said. "We knew that it was music true to ourselves. We knew that we were really comfortable in the position that we're in, so we just kind of let it all out.

"It's like this record and this whole process has really helped to change us as people," Bolooki says. "There's a lot of saturation out there with the pop-punk genre. It's really hard for any bands nowadays to stand out on their own. And I think we . . . have put out a CD that can show that we have this niche that's totally our own, that is influenced by a lot of familiar styles, but it isn't necessarily one of those styles."

* * *

Punk has always celebrated political activism, and this year's crop of artists is no different. Expect tables promoting social causes and, being that this is an election year, voter registration.

"We realize that we are a band that has a little bit of influence and we can get our messages and our music spread out to a lot of people," says Bolooki, whose band contributed a song to a Rock Against Bush compilation CD.

McIlrath says Rise Against's interest is more global: the AIDS epidemic in Africa. His band plans to tour South Africa in November.

"Reading about some of these things that were going on in Africa, it's really just appalling that this is still such a huge crisis," he says. "We were approached to do a tour out there and . . . really promote the AIDS awareness . . . to the people who keep up with Rise Against and what we do as a band, and kind of bring them along on our journey to learning about what was going on.

"I just want to take it all in and be a student of what's going on in South Africa and then share with our fans and friends," McIlrath says. "There's something bigger than your band . . . and I think it's rubbing off on bands that, in the past, may not have cared about those things. And it's great to see these topics at the forefront of the conversation."

[Last modified July 28, 2004, 10:17:13]