Ahh… the Warped Tour.
I've been going to Warped for a long time. The first one I saw was with No Use for a Name headlining, this was at the CNE, which for you non-Torontonians isn't exactly a large, or good venue. But it was cool, I was used to going to shows in little clubs, and seeing four or five bands at most in a night, generally all of the same genre, so while you might hear a new band, you're not going to hear a great ska band at a hardcore show. So for that alone, it's always fun to go.
This year, many years later, the show has changed a bit. Launch.com bought it for some obscene amount of money, bands like Weezer and Green Day are headlining, and a hell of a lot of more people are going. Don't get be wrong, Weezer is one of my favourite bands, and I wish they had played Toronto, but it's quite odd to see something that started as a bunch of the bigger independent bands being replaced with those same indies on the side stages, while people who have sold hundreds of thousands of records are headlining.
Once again, this isn't to say that this was bad. I really enjoyed seeing Green Day, they were great, played not just their hits, but some old favourites, like Christie Road from their Lookout release Kerplunk!.
Bands like Avail, Hot Water Music, the Planet Smashers, Snapcase and others, who I've seen before lost nothing in the festival-like setting, they were amazing, especially the Planet Smashers, a Canadian ska band who had a great set and really drew a crowd to the smaller stage. Of course, Anti-Flag was amazing as always, and their intense political punk was well recieved, though my girlfriend decided to sit it out rather than brave the swarming crowd of people around the small stage.
On the other hand, some of the bigger bands weren't as great. I have seen NOFX play at least 15 times, and I wasn't all that impressed with their set. The jokes fell a little flat, and they didn't really play to the crowd, it seemed like they were just up their out of habit. This really disappointed me, since I love NOFX, and I haven't seen a bad show out of them before. I'm going to chalk it up to a bad day.
Overall the show was good, but it was crowded, and the biggest problem was not the bands, but the crowd. Generally, it's gone from being a great friendly event, to a social scene like any other, which is the invariable consequence of it's popularity, but it's still not so great.
The whole show left me with a lukewarm feeling. I enjoyed it, but there were definitely some uncomfortable differences that left me uneasy. I'll probably be there next year, but I'm not terribly excited right now.