Refreshing Music Couldn’t Save Show

The Vans Warped Tour Thursday, July 10, The Gorge

The Warped Tour in quick review: Good bands, lousy show.

Now for the longer version: Crackling punk tossed with some snappy ska dominated the eight-hour Warped Tour Thursday which featured some of the best bands in the genre.

But poor organization of the show cast a pall over refreshingly raucous performances.

As a few thousand people - a fairly small crowd for The Gorge - milled about, The Descendents took the stage early in the day. They whipped out some speedy pop punk goodies with songs like “I’m The One” and “Sour Grapes.”

Face to Face powered nicely through a variety of political punk anthems ranging from their debut album “Don’t Turn Away” to their most recent self-titled release.

With zesty horns and a dance-goofy beat, Reel Big Fish added a nice splash of ska with tunes like “She Has a Girlfriend Now” and “Turn the Radio Off” from their latest album.

On the second stage, Zeke roundhoused the audience with blistering rock. A grin on his face and fingers muscling his bass, Mark Pierce romped across the stage, clearly enjoying walloping the fans.

The two top performers, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Social Distortion, administered an energy injection to the crowd.

With veins sticking out on his neck, Bosstones front-man Dicky Barrett growled out the lyrics to punk-heavy songs like “1-2-8” as well as bouncier ska tunes like “The Rascal King.”

Ben Carr - the Bosstones’ take on a go-go dancer - spent the set tirelessly jumping, hopping and swinging his arms to the beat. It prompted one concertgoer to ask: “Is that all that one guy does is dance?” Hey, why not.

Sandwiched between mosh-inducing covers of the Stones’ “Under My Thumb” and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” Social Distortion offered up an excellent barrage of buzzy-cool punk tunes such as “I Was Wrong” off their new album “White Light, White Heat, White Trash.”

Did I say good bands? Let me rephrase that. Mostly good bands.

Posing and posturing, Limp Bizkit hit the main stage with a hip-hop/metal cross-breed that should have been aborted long ago. The audience responded with appropriate sullenness. By the end of the set the band was spitting expletives at the crowd as one member dropped his pants and manhandled his crotch.

The Alkaholiks, scheduled for the second-to-last performance, also played a hip-hop bit that hit the audience with a thud and ended the festival with a whimper. Their set found so much of the crowd heading for the exit that the last scheduled band didn’t even play.

Which brings us to the lousy show aspect of concert.

The band order made no sense. Social Distortion and the Bosstones should have played last.

And, I’d like to tell you about the Royal Crown Revue’s set.

Unfortunately, although both press releases and the tickets said the festival started at 2 p.m., those of us who showed up at that time found we’d already missed four acts.

The festival billed a lineup of more than 20 bands on four stages. Not so. There were only two stages, each divided in half. While one band played, the next act set up on the opposite side of the stage and then started with no break between them.

And, while some concerts bog down because of too much time between sets, the onslaught of non-stop music Thursday was overkill. Time between would have allowed for much-needed breath catching.

Some of the non-musical activities - skateboarders catching air in a massive half-pipe, a climbing wall, an inflatable playground and video games - offered a distraction for those tired of the pummeling.

, DataTimes