Whenever the music
ebbed you could actually hear the sizzling of the young flesh that piled into DarienLake
for The Warped Tour. I chose to limit my choices to a handful of acts: Gym Class Heroes, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, AFI, NOFX, The Lordz Of Brooklyn, and Helmet.
Gym Class Heroes
offer a vigorous hip-hop/rock cocktail. These guys call Geneva home, and they had a huge crowd of
fans all singing along. Bands like this are gonna
keep it fresh and interesting.
Again on the
augmented hip-hop tip, The Lordz Of
Brooklyn mix hardcore chants with rap rants all while sportin’
keen fedoras. This is what The Beastie Boys wish they sounded like.
It’s nice to see the
grown-ups rock. NOFX brought the kind of old-school punk and wisdom that
embodies what Warped is still about (more or less).
AFI (featuring
Rochester-born vocalist Davey Havok)
were a lot heavier and wilder than I remembered. Havok
wreaked his surname all over the stage in quasi-death throes that lasted the
whole set.
Joan Jett’s band was
as tight and mean as she looked. They took the stage
casually and delivered a powerful set of classic three-chord pre-punk rock. In
an itsy-bitsy black bikini top and leather pants, Jett hit all the hits
including The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb.” She’s so cool.
Helmet closed out the
night with some of the heaviest riffing I have ever seen live. They make most
metal bands sound like foil bands. Just good old-fashioned headbangin’ hardcore; unmatchable and unbeatable.
Stopped by briefly to
see if Senses Fail were still as
melody-less, balls-less, whiny, and boring as I remember. Yup.
I’m generally suspicious if a band has a sentence fragment for a name anyway.
Coolest of all was
meeting Ramones minister of propaganda Arturo Vega running The Ramones tent himself. I mean, this guy designed the crest.
Poised like something
outtaFight
Club, Low Ton celebrated the new
CD Born From A Rainstorm by playing
mostly on the floor of Monty’s Krown this past
Friday. Heavy as ever, the band has definitely gained some speed. But within
the acceleration none of the weight has been shed. Corpulent
and crushing.
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2006.
