Now marking its 14th year, the Van’s Warped Tour made its way through Cleveland, Ohio on a recent sweltering yet beautiful day.  The punk rock festival continues to go strong with many bands fueling the ever popular almost summer vacation highlight event to that many music fanatics look forward to.  I found it funny this year that the festival was almost older than some of the attendees. 

Even if the heat was enough to just about melt the pavement concert goers would be walking on for over nine hours, the turnout was of almost sold out proportions.  A giant crowd consisting of youth (and youth at heart), were already piling into the Tower City Amphitheater by the time I arrived.  Unlike most attendees I chose to park a little over a mile away to avoid paying ridiculous parking prices with some prices being equal to a tank of gas.  Anything to make a buck I guess, at least I got some pre-game exercise.

While walking though the parking lot of the venue I was greeted with my first of many festival followers, many who traveled with the entire tour promoting their band independently or trying to enlist new voters.  The burnout who came up to me asked me if I was registered to vote. After I said I in fact was he offered to sell me acid. I looked at him and just shook my head laughing and continued my way in.

One of the unique things about Warped Tours is that the performance times are not decided until the day of the festival.  Every stop that the tour makes has different time slots for the bands so there is really no way to plan in advance for who you wanted to see. I performed my Warped Tour ritual of finding a schedule and planning my day accordingly, making sure to check out a couple new bands I might have heard a snippet of, while at the same time showing love to some old school favorites.

My first stop was the Hurley Stage to check out the new wave punk act Beat Union but I found myself standing in front of The Lordz, a hip hop/rock act from Brooklyn, New York who have been around for years.  I discovered after a couple of songs that Beat Union was at the Hurley.Com stage and not the Hurley stage (doh!).  Although The Lordz put on a good show I felt bad for them as there was hardly anyone checking them out as it was still a little early in the day and possibly because The Academy Is… was playing around the same time on another stage.  Still the band kept positive attitudes and performed to those who chose them over other acts to start out the day.  

The Lordz had a good sound to them but it was not what I really was looking for so I went to the stage I initially set off to and managed to see a few songs performed by the talented Beat Union.  The Beat Union brought their UK rock and really impressed me with their sounds that mixed up new wave with punk rock.  I liked these guys a lot more than I thought I was going to.  It was a shame I could not find their merch booth though as I would have liked to have picked up one of their albums.