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This year's Warped Tour also includes an independent film tent, promising sports movies and underground cinema that's sure to rival Sundance, or at least the Poughkeepsie Film Festival. Ghettoized because of their lowbrow appeal, bands playing amalgams or purebred strains of swing, ska, surf, rockabilly and punk come together each year under one brand of sneakers, with skating and snowboarding for all, to travel the country as part of the Vans Warped Tour. Should we ignore this rogue nation, allowing it to pass through our town with its half-pipe demonstrations, its chopped, sliced and diced riffs 'n' rhythms, its teeming masses of tattooed youngsters yearning to mosh free? The question merits further analysis, in part because the organizers of the Warped Tour, now in its fourth year, snuck a few trump cards into their seemingly weak hand. The nouveau ska bands Save Ferris and Less Than Jake may be the musical equivalent of cotton candy at a county fair, and the rows of booths dedicated to hawking flashy snowboard and skate equipment will amount to nothing more than 3-D infomercials, but in the spirit of Clintonian openmindedness, let's look at the pros as well as the cons of Warped '98: Pro: Women in attendance can escape the cauldron of testosterone centered on the stage area. It won't harbor the intellectual discourse of Gertrude Stein's salon, but the new Ladies Lounge will offer femme-centric booths (wo)manned by representatives of female-oriented magazines and organizations, as well as guest lectures by professional women skate/snowboarders and video and music presentations. Con: The musical well is not deep. We'll namecheck the worthwhile attractions in a moment, but let's concentrate on some of the bands charged with filling the space before headliner Rancid brings its refried Clash-and-Specials show to the stage. Surprisingly enough, the Specials themselves are among the lot. Well past their prime, they're surfing the ska resurgence, rekindling classics such as "A Message to You Rudy" and "Too Much Too Young" for a generation that was still drooling from its collective highchair when the band kicked off ska's second wave in '79. Another group in the we're-too-old-so-let's-play-brain-numbingly-loud contingent is the punk mainstay Bad Religion, which began its career in 1982 and now must share its backstage mineral water with acolytes such as NOFX, MXPX, CIV and others without such etymological hurdles, Cigar, Sloth, Guttermouth, Bouncing Souls and Unwritten Law among them. Pro: In this multiethnic era of Tibet Fests, Africa Fêtes and Fleadhs, the folks behind Warped have invited a handful of culturally diverse acts. The highlight of the entire shindig will probably be Ozomatli, a Los Angeles collective that features members with Mexican, Japanese, Jewish, Cuban and African-American roots. The band's just-released, self-titled Almo debut barely hints at the feverish blend of dance styles in its live act, which has attracted hordes of L.A. fans to regular nights at 1,000-capacity clubs and turned them into a swayin' and sashayin' mass of flesh and bones. Spain's Def Con Dos and Australia's Frenzal Rhomb and the Living End share punk, garage and metal attributes with their SoCal brethren but at least offer a geographical break from the West Coast onslaught. Con: A disturbing number of the bands here favor a hybrid of ska, punk and swing, suggesting that this is a genuine pop-music movement. Bands with varying degrees of merit--such as Eugene's suddenly successful Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Orange County's Save Ferris and New York's the Pietasters--all look to the past to create their sound, and such regression can only lead to world destruction. Now, let's go back to our earlier question about whether we should leave the Warped Tour to dedicated fans of the featured acts, which also include the Reverend Horton Heat and the Deftones. The answer is yes. |
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