Other than Fat Mike, Freeman, and Lars Fredrickson this lineup is a joke. Especially Kevin Lyman. He kicked Guttermouth off the tour for making fun of My Chemical Romance, the Lawrence Arms for stating an opinion of the tour, etc....
Criticism and controversy
The Adolescents.
While many people decry the tour’s rampant commercialism and high concession prices, some defend the changes in the production of the tour through the years. “Warped Tour is a place for teenage kids to go and hear all their favourite bands in one day,†says Rob Pasalic, guitarist for the Saint Alvia Cartel. “It wouldn’t make sense for it to be the same tour in 2007 as it was in 1997. These are the bands that kids like, and the tour is smart enough to grow and adapt to that. You still get bands like Bad Religion playing, so it’s not like it’s lost all its roots.†[3]
Joe Queer of The Queers stated that
"You play music because there’s something inside of you that says you have to play music. Now you get bands like Fall Out Boy that are basically created in the studio. The Warped Tour changed it. Fuck it. I just don’t like that shit. All the guys in the bands remind me of the jocks I hated in high school. To me a punk gig is a small sweaty club with the audience right in your face knocking over the mic stand and boogying off the energy."[4]
The band Propagandhi lashes out at the tour in their song "Rock for Sustainable Capitalism", which contains lyrics categorising the tour's bands as "shitty" and criticising the Vans sponsorship due to the Vans company's use of foreign labor.
Brendan Kelly of The Lawrence Arms said that it kills smaller concert venues, since all the big bands go on one tour together. The band alleges that this also caused The Lawrence Arms to get permanently banned from Warped Tour when Brendan Kelly said this on stage. On The Lawrence Arms' 2006 album Oh! Calcutta! there is a song entitled "Warped Summer Extravaganza (Major Excellent)," a reference to the band's experiences on the Warped Tour.
Keith Morris has stated "These kids that are on the Warped Tour, they should have no choice but to go into the military, and go off to some desert somewhere and spend some time in the desert, rather than having some big, ultra mega record company giving them lots of money and paying for their hotels and buses, making sure their hair is trendy, and that they are wearing the proper clothes that all the kids like and wear, and all that fun shit."[5]
[edit]Band conflicts
K-os.
A few bands have left the tour due to conflicts they had with the tour or with other bands:
The band Guttermouth was supposedly removed from the Warped Tour 2004 for insulting My Chemical Romance. The band later stated that they left themselves due to "that '10 or so' unnamed bands didn't jive with Guttermouth's way of doing business, and in some cases, threatened them with violence."[6]
According to Fat Mike, on the 2006 tour, From First to Last was upset about not being able to play before 2:00pm on the main stage, and refused to play if they were not guaranteed that.[7] From First to Last stated they left the tour due to vocalist Sonny Moore having vocal nodules.
In 2006 NOFX frontman Fat Mike was making fun of Underoath and their religious beliefs and criticizing their stance on gay marriage, but emphasised that he befriended Underoath's band members at the start of the tour, had very civilized conversations with various members right up to Underoath's departure.[8] A statement from the band claimed that the members "felt it necessary to take some immediate time to focus on our friendship, as that’s more important than risking it for the sake of touring at this time." Despite this history between the two groups, Underoath are currently included in the lineup for Warped Tour 2009.[9]
Kevin Lyman acknowledged that on the 2007 tour some of the more seasoned bands were irked by newer bands with rock-star attitudes, and also that there was some tension between punk bands and Christian groups.[10]
Broadway Calls were critical about the number of pop oriented and Christian bands on the 2008 tour stating, "When there are 60 bands a day, and a majority of them are made up of either Christian jocks that play REALLY HEAVY MUSIC for Jesus, or pop bands with the only thing separating them from boy bands like Backstreet Boys are their dropped D tuned guitars hanging from their shoulders, it's hard to be comfortable. I look around, and quickly realize that the only difference between this and a huge frat party is that all these idiots play music. Bad music. Unfuckinglistenable music."[11]
