“How many of you know what a circle pit is?” asked Every Avenue singer David Ryan Strauchman at his band's Warped Tour set yesterday evening in Milwaukee. I was not among those who did, but judging from how quickly fans backed away from the stage as Strauchman began to incite one, I imagined it must be pretty intense—that the singer provoked the crowd with a devious chant of “Cir-cle pit! Cir-cle pit!,” to the three-syllable rhythm of “kill the pig” only supported that impression. As it turns out, though, a circle pit isn't anything like the balled-fist slugfest I was picturing in my head. It's just a bunch of fans prancing together in a wide, counter-clockwise circle, with hands in the air merrily—nothing scary or violent about it; Jews do a variation of essentially the same dance all the time at weddings.
Had I been more familiar with the band, I would have known a beatdown was unlikely—it turns out that Every Avenue is a mostly cuddly pop-punk band (and one, I just learned from a Google image search, with a preferred color scheme that makes the Jonas Brothers look like Sabbath). Not knowing what to expect, though, is a huge part of the Warped Tour experience. With 70-plus acts playing seven stages, even the youngest, more dedicated online punk-fanzine contributor couldn't possibly be versed in them all. And since the tour's stage schedules aren't finalized until the day of each stop, there isn't always an easy way to tell which band is performing when, let alone what kind of music they'll play. Every Avenue could have just as easily been another one of the bill's many, many metalcore bands.
Especially if you're not current on punk and the many flash trends and sub-subgenres it spawns each year, the Warped Tour is a humbling experience—a sea of bands you've mostly never heard of, playing music you barely recognize, even if it wasn't all that long ago that you considered yourself part of this scene. No genre is less sentimental about leaving behind its own fans than punk, so if you're in your 20s and you don't understand electro-punk or crabcore, well, that's kind of the point. Don't take it personal: The bands on the Warped Tour come from a bizarre alternate reality where Black Flag and Fugazi never happened, but they also come from a reality where for all intents and purposes Fall Out Boy never happened, either—the power-pop-leaning emo bands that carried the festival for much of the 2000s have since been mostly written out of its history. This is a scene with a very short memory and a very fast turnaround.
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For the performers, the Warped Tour is not a glamorous gig. Each band competes for the crowds' attention against four or five other bands, some of them quite similar. Shut Up and Deal, an emo-leaning group with a Taking Back Sunday-esque sound, for instance, played yesterday evening at the same time as Terrible Things, the band from former Taking Back Sunday guitarist Fred Mascherino. And there are distractions unrelated to music, too. The pissy metalcore band Acacia Stain chastised its crowd for not paying attention to the beginning of their set, since many of them were more excited to watch security deal with a lanky teenager who'd scaled a tall wall and couldn't get down, much like a cat.
When the bands weren't performing, they were plugging themselves. Some walked the grounds with headphones, offering audio samples of their latest album. Others advertised their set times on desperate signs of cardboard and Sharpee that looked as if they've been borrowed from homeless veterans.
Every band is assigned a tent where they sell merchandise, sign autographs and generally kill time. At the Of Mice and Men tent, a bored bandmember studied a Sea-Monkey castle with a plastic magnifying glass. At least that band had a prime evening performance spot to look forward to. MC Lars and Weerd Science, the day's first performers, had finished their set at noon, which left them with a punishingly empty stretch of seven or eight hours before they could pack up for the day.
I wish I could say I stumbled upon some thrilling new music during my time circling the Warped Tour grounds, something that felt as vital to me as the punk I cut my teeth on, but that didn't happen—mostly I just heard a ton of metalcore. Big Chocolate was probably the day's most pleasant surprise, a 20-year-old California producer who grimes up drum-and-bass enough so that it sounds as fresh as it did in the '90s. Rhymesayers rapper Grieves joined him for his set's closing track, “HiLion,” a punk twist, of sorts, on that old Aphrodite Jungle Brothers remix from the MTV “Amp” days.
Paramore closed the main stage after an obnoxious set from the Sublime-modeled reggae-rock band Pepper (a trio of poon-chasing bros who took endless delight in mocking the Warped Tour crowd and unnerving Paramore's young, mostly female audience).
It's a curious time for Paramore. Last December, founding members Josh and Zac Farro left the band after accusing singer Hayley Williams of being career-minded (gasp!) and insufficiently Christian (her lyrics contradicted John 8:32, they complained in their amazing exit statement). Williams only made a fleeting reference to “the ongoing soap opera that is Paramore,” but her fans were already well aware of the drama. The group has even turned it into a marketing tool of sorts, selling “Paramore Is Still A Band” T-shirts.
I should lay my cards on the table here: I love Paramore. If there's a modern-rock record from the last several years I've enjoyed more than Paramore's Brand New Eyes, I'm unable to think of it off the top of my head. I love the bitter wit of Williams' shit-talking lyrics; I love the sneered, venomous conviction of her delivery; I've even learned to love their cheesy production and the artificial studio heaviness of their guitars. Very little of what I love about this band, though, came across in their tame performance last night, which with its rehearsed stage talk and happy audience sing-alongs felt like a Miley Cyrus concert might if more kids crowd-surfed at Miley Cyrus concerts.
With Paramore's stint on this year's Warped Tour ending the next day, Williams was in a nostalgic frame of mind. She reminisced about the band's first time playing the tour in 2005, performing on a small stage for girl-fronted bands, and she reflected on the many times she's played the tour since. Paramore's audience is big enough that that it would probably be more lucrative and certainly more convenient for the band to just headline their own summer tours, and perhaps on some level Williams understands that her days on the Warped Tour are coming to an end. If so, she's coming to the same realization as so many punk bands and punk fans: The Warped Tour is not a permanent home. You only have a small window before either you outgrow it, or it outgrows you.
