BrightestYoungThings – DC – LiveDC: Vans Warped Tour @ Merriweather Post Pavilion

all words: Shannon Yazurlo
all photos: Franz Mahr and Shannon Yazurlo
Vans Warped Tour… the one day of summer that is filled with nothing but pop punk bands, good friends & increasing my chance for skin cancer when I’m really old. It’s always worth it, or at least it wouldn’t feel like summer without it. The line-up this year consisted of bands such as Gym Class Heroes, Simple Plan (apparently they are still a band & still have as much angst as they did in the early 00′s.) The Devil Wears Prada, Set Your Goals, and Blood on the Dancefloor taking the mainstage to name a few.

The crowd at warped tour consisted of guys who looked like they listed to that ‘Dear Diary My Teenage Angst Has a Bodycount’ album one too many times… and underage girls looking to get crotch-moshed by the band member of their dreams. The majority of them wearing these Jac Vanek crop tops available EXCLUSIVELY at Warped Tour.

Now anyone and everyone who attended the festival can look like 80′s jailbait barbie. Besides the fact that most people at warped tour look like they still spend a majority of their free-time networking on myspace.com I was still pretty stoked to see a few good bands.

The first band I caught at Warped Tour was The Dance Party, which, as expect was filled with nothing but feel good vibes and sure enough put a smile on my face to last the entire day.

The second band I caught was one of Philly’s finest and my personal favorite pop punk bands… The Wonder Years. The Wonder Years played an energy packed set preforming songs from all of their studio albums which ruled.

After The Wonder Years finished up it was time to see The Acacia Strain take on the advent stage. My only expectation for The Acacia Strains set was to see some bloodshed in the crowd and to have kids get just as violent during ‘Woah! Shut it Down’ as they did when I skipped homecoming in 2007 to see them at The Sterling Community Center in Northern Virginia. The crowd seemed to be filled with just as much vehement hate as I remembered, and Vincent Bennett still spits mad hate with his vocals better than any other band on this tour package… The Acacia Strain went above and beyond all my expectations for warped tour, delivering a performed filled with vitriolic hate, it was tight.

Following the Acacia Strain, it was time to see the Ska legends, Less than Jake. Less than Jake had a fun filled performance filled with dedicated fans that unlike most people at Warped Tour where not too cool to have fun. Every kid was crowd surfing and they even gave a fan a mohawk on stage, which was how warped tour should be.

A Day to Remember took the stage shortly after Less than Jake, the Victory records all star band lived up to their self-proclaimed title of ‘the heaviest pop punk band ever’ performing all the hits and killing it with the posi jumps and group vocals. A perfect way to end my day at Warped Tour.