McKenna Howenstine|Marlin Chronicle
Warped Tour is back, so what?
Aiden is a sophomore studying Media & Communication. He is the Community Editor for the Marlin Chronicle.
Warped Tour was once one of the most highly successful cultural events for bands in music genres that went under the mainstream radar. The lineup featured punk, pop-punk, ska, metalcore and hardcore bands. Bands like Paramore and My Chemical Romance, now household names, were given platforms through Warped Tour.
Warped Tour was steeped in controversies during its existence, injuries, lawsuits and numerous allegations of predatory behavior of bands while on the tour. It may have been better that the tour came to an end in 2019, but it’s undeniable that the tour was a special thing for people who attended. It gave kids a chance to see many of their favorite bands perform on one day, for a cheap price point, and discover new, smaller bands in the process. Attendees could take music lessons from band members on the tour and meet band members. Small bands had the chance to perform on the tour through the Warped Tour’s “Battle of the Bands” competition.
The price for one-day tickets to Warped Tour one-day events in 2019, the last year that the tour ran, were $50. The tour has come back now, as a two-day event only happening in three cities: Washington, D.C., Long Beach, California and Orlando, Florida. Warped Tour now seems to be more of a traditional festival than anything, with prices for general admission tickets starting at around $150 for two days, and being very limited in geographical scope. The areas where the tour is going already have festivals, and with the price of Warped Tour now being similar to that of a festival, what’s the point at all of bringing it back?
The tour seems to have abandoned its values of accessibility regardless of location and income in order to sell a lazy nostalgia-fest to maximize their profits. With the controversies surrounding Warped Tour and the gradually increasing exclusivity of it, it seemed better that it ended, and bringing it back now with even more degraded values, seems to spit on the already-tainted legacy of the tour.
Music fans have access to festivals, regular tours and their local music scene. Warped Tour is no longer providing a unique contribution to this ecosystem, so the return of it just seems to be a manufactured ploy for increasing profits.
By Aiden Croghan
accroghan@vwu.edu
