Vans Warped Tour
Sunday, July 15, 2001
Tweeter Center, Tinley Park

By Deena Dasein

"Where's the cash machine?"

That was the first thing I heard as I walked through the Tweeter gates into this year's installment of the Warped tour. It was such a right-on ironical remark for a punk festival, a genre dripping with anti-commercial sentiment. But as I shaded the blazing sun from my eyes and checked out the scene, I realized that there was no irony in the comment -- the guy really was looking for an ATM.

The asphalt was chock-a-block full of tented shops selling all manner of this and that. If it weren't for the screaming brand signs, you'd have thought you were in some oriental bazaar. The Pavilion, with its cool shade, and as the day wore on, tantalizing seats, was off-limits to the heat-challenged crowd. (It would have made for a thoughtful no-cost chill-out area.) And while I'm complaining, the $3 bottles of water and $10 veggie burritos were way out of line. Motocross and skateboarding experts were doing their things on the outskirts of the area, barely noticed.

Randomly strewn about this labyrinth were various stages around which the audience could crowd. Few patrons knew who was playing where or when, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to which bands played earlier in the day or at dusk. Rancid finished their half-hour set before 2 p.m., before I could even find where their stage was. But even random shuffling about would get you some pleasure, shade be damned.

The best set of the day, or at least my day (in which I caught 10 acts), was from The Business. It's not only mad dogs and Englishmen who go out in the mid-day sun. These Brits had a whole batch of us pogoing to a blistering set of old school oi.

Trying to get from one stage to the other, you couldn't avoid the mall rats, some attired in Abercrombie & Fitch shirts, others in torn rags and neon-spiked mohawks, shopping away as if that is why they came. Indie labels and even bands had sales tents. Most of the bands on the tour weren't paid, so they made their money -- or at least hoped to -- selling merch. But one tent had a band called Bottom playing good low stoner-stuff. (I learned later that they were playing again that night at the Double Door, keeping to a punishing pace of two shows a day all summer.)

More pleasures came from The Misfits, when, after pounding out a few of their well-known tunes, they welcomed Marky Ramone to bash drums for them while they played a swell homage to his former band with a set of Ramone songs starting with "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker."

Punk was alive at this shopping-mall festival, but you had to be lucky and plucky to find it.