In the words of my friend J.R. Nelson, a local punk writer, “Teenagers are geniuses. I think the teenage me, the infantile and deeply stupid suburban milk baby who resented the entire world and just wanted a pair of Air Revolutions because they were expensive, was the purest me to ever grace this rotating shit orb.”
I spent a few weeks on the 2004 Warped Tour, doing research for a book and hanging out with my boyfriend, who was performing. I got to spend a lot of time among the genius teenagers–the fans’ average age seemed to be about 16. I remember 16 as a pretty grim year, but from the safe distance of a decade or so, 16-year-olds are completely fascinating. I was surrounded by thousands upon thousands of kids, a rushing tide of adolescent self-concept run riot, of bad tribal tattoos and rapturous infatuations and questionable hairstyles, all reeking of the pungent desire to simultaneously transgress and fit in perfectly.
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On July 20 in Milwaukee, I hung out with a friend who ran the Alternative Press autograph booth while he got ready for a Taking Back Sunday signing. (The band’s sets were always so mobbed that I never managed to see them from less than three-quarters of a mile away, but I did hear that TBS’s kickball team with Thursday–aptly named Taking Back Thursday–was the one to beat on this year’s tour.) My friend set up stools, laid out fresh Sharpies, stacked posters into huge piles, and shooed too-eager fans back into the quarter-mile line. In front was a boy in a homemade Taking Back Sunday T-shirt: with colored markers he’d written the date, the band’s name, some lyrics, and the name of the venue in careful capitals, and along the bottom edge in alternating colors was a repeated rickrack ribbon of “Taking Back Sunday * Vans Warped Tour * Taking Back Sunday * Vans Warped Tour.” The homemade Warped Commemorative Shirt, Pants, or Hat was common enough to be a phenomenon on the tour. That public display of affection, that preemptive sentimentality pivoting on this exact moment, is what emo has instilled in the culture of punk fandom: advance nostalgia for the peak experience.
By the time Warped reached Minneapolis, a little more than three weeks later, the Mean Reds had been kicked off the tour. Their labelmates the Rolling Blackouts had gotten the boot after their singer pissed next to a stage while another band was playing, and Anzalone pissed his pants during a Mean Reds set in solidarity. The Mean Reds are more like the Warped audience than they know–confused, idealistic, angry, and furiously trying to slap the world awake and tell it who they think they are.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Jessica Hopper, Aaron Settipane, Dan Monick.
