Wow, I can’t believe you mentioned Dead 60’s. This was my white whale for a few years until I finally bought their LP lastI have fond memories of Warped Tour.
I took our kids and their friends to 6 of 'em. We all had equal amounts of fun.
My three best memories -
- Discovering The Dead 60's. Man, were they great. Sadly, only one record and done.
- Watching Dropkick Murphys with the kids during a gully-washing downpour and having a blast.
- The pièce de rèsistance - our son - 13 at the time - was standing along a cordoned walkway leading from the stage to the bus area. Travis Barker comes through shielded by two big bodyguards. "Travis, may I have your autograph?", our son yells. Travis doesn't even give him a look and keeps on walking to which our son snappily replies "You suck!". That was the most punk rock thing I ever saw at any Warped Tour.
I have fond memories of Warped Tour.
I took our kids and their friends to 6 of 'em. We all had equal amounts of fun.
My three best memories -
- Discovering The Dead 60's. Man, were they great. Sadly, only one record and done.
- Watching Dropkick Murphys with the kids during a gully-washing downpour and having a blast.
- The pièce de rèsistance - our son - 13 at the time - was standing along a cordoned walkway leading from the stage to the bus area. Travis Barker comes through shielded by two big bodyguards. "Travis, may I have your autograph?", our son yells. Travis doesn't even give him a look and keeps on walking to which our son snappily replies "You suck!". That was the most punk rock thing I ever saw at any Warped Tour.
I was into punk, pop-punk, hardcore, and screamo stuff back in the early 90s... I saw Green Day play a local skate park during their Kerplunk tour, got the chance to see bands like Fugazi and Drive Like Jehu in their prime, and was lucky enough to get the chance to hang out in basements watching bands like Born Against, Current, Ordination of Aaron, Hoover, Constantine Sankathi, Union of Uranus, Shotmaker, Avail, Rorschach, and many more.
It was very much a DIY scene at the time, and I still draw a lot of personal lessons from the "let's get it done" spirit that drove the scene.
I don't return to the genres very often these days; when I do, I tend to pull out Clikatat Ikatowi's "Orchestrated and Conducted By," the Shotmaker/Maximillian Colby split 12", various Fugazi records, or the stuff put out by my friends' bands when I'm feeling nostalgic (groups like Wallside, Ordination of Aaron, Broken Hearts are Blue, and Jihad).
Are kids still forming bands and buying cheap vans to travel the country to play shows in other kids' basements and garages? Have the various punk and hardcore genres evolved at all, or does the music still sound basically like it did in the 90s?
YES, ABSOLUTELY!!
modern-day hardcore is still embedded in the diy scene thru and thru. rn, it’s obviously taken a hit with covid, but the only way hardcore scene can survive is with local shows. i know for me, in florida, local hardcore bands like Losin it, Blistered, and Axis were popular in the hardcore scene nationwide, but not exactly “ready-to-break-into-semi-mainstream-reach” like hc bands like Turnstile, Angel Dust and Touche Amore. i think the closest instance of something like that happening in my area has been with Gouge Away. I remember seeing gouge away in like their first show in a small warehouse in the middle of suburbian broward county, now Gouge Away have gotten quite popular and were geared to tour with Circa Survive in HOB/fillmore venues across the country last year!!
some videos for reference:
Thanks for the video links, Santi Chacin. It's interesting to hear what hardcore bands sound like today. Your mention of Florida reminded me of one of the times I tagged along with my friends' bands tours; I was traveling with both Thoughts of Ionesco and Wallside, and we played a show with Assuck and Coalesce at a record store somewhere in Florida. Assuck killed it, as expected: they were amazing every time I saw them. It was a good time!
One of the reasons why I eventually drifted away from hardcore in the late 90s was that the scene was quite conservative musically: nearly every band basically stuck to the same formula and there wasn't much creative evolution or tolerance for new sounds. I also got older, of course, and sought out more varied music as my teenage angst receded.
The bands you shared sound almost exactly like what I was listening to in 1995, which I suppose is both good and bad. I'm happy kids still have the outlet I did as a teenager, but I was hoping that the genre would have evolved over the past 25 years.
So here's an interesting question to ponder: why hasn't the genre changed over the past few decades? Most other genres of pop music have evolved in some form during that time period. What makes hardcore and punk different?