Tour de Warped

Cobra Starship? Greeley Estates? Forever the Sickest Kids? At the risk of sounding horribly out of touch: Who the hell are these bands? In its 14th year, Warped Tour has officially left behind anyone old enough to remember when the annual trek first started. Even the staple acts who made the tour what it is — Bad Religion, NOFX, the Vandals, etc. — aren’t on the lineup, leaving Pennywise the sole representative of the old guard at the Ventura date.

Still, as always there is a handful of artists among the dozens that are likely to pique the interest, for one reason or another, of the aged sect (read: 21 and up).   

Against Me!

It takes a certain amount of gall to slap an exclamation point onto the end of your band name, but Gainesville, Fla.’s Against Me! have gone to great lengths to earn theirs. At a time when punk is increasingly represented by freshly scrubbed suburbanites with $400 haircuts, these dudes look like they just crawled out of a Dumpster — which, of course, is very exciting for critics: Spin named their 2007 effort New Wave Album of the Year. But it’s not just their potential stinkiness that has people buzzing. The quartet brings a smart, folky aggression to a scene that has been lacking in brains and unpolished intensity for a while.  

Angels & Airwaves

Man cannot subsist on fart jokes alone. Tom DeLonge learned this lesson a few years ago when, at age 30, he found himself staring into the abyss of his career as a goofball tweenage idol as his band, Warped regulars Blink 182, decided to go on one of those rock’n’roll retreats known as the “indefinite hiatus.” So he did what every musician does when looking for legitimacy: He ripped off U2. Forming a sorta-supergroup with ex-members of the Offspring, the Distillers and 30 Seconds to Mars, the guy who once donned a mullet wig and fake ‘stache for a video set out to write, in all seriousness, “the album of this decade.” Nothing wrong with ambition — too bad he still sings like a latchkey kid with a cold. Whether Angels & Airwaves has lived up to those lofty proclamations is a matter of debate. What will be more interesting to see is if DeLonge can return to the punkest of all stages after having said stuff like, “it’s really stupid for adults to talk about [punk] because it’s just fashion.” What’s the over-under on the number of batteries that’ll be thrown at him?

The Aggrolites

Otis Redding, Booker T & the MGs, Toots & the Maytals — those aren’t names that get tossed around a lot on a tour where most bands’ influences don’t extend much further back than last year’s headliners. But the Aggrolites are a bunch of old souls, and their music — a highly specific homage to the organ-driven records coming out of Jamaica between 1967 and 1972 — is grittier than anything else on the lineup. It’s what they call “dirty reggae”: raw, street-level rocksteady slapped with a heavy dose of tough urban soul and funk and a pronounced punk edge. Easily the set to catch this year.

Katy Perry

It is certainly a comment on the state of “punk rock” when one of Warped 2008’s most hyped performers is basically Avril Lavigne in heart-shaped Lolita glasses. Katy Perry, a Santa Barbara native, is riding a hit single, tantalizingly titled “I Kissed a Girl” (not a Jill Sobule cover), and currently engaged in a blog war with labelmate Lily Allen (Internet gossip queen Perez Hilton is a big fan). And she isn’t the only pop-tart included on the bill this year: New York singer-songwriter Charlotte Sometimes is also braving the spiky-haired masses. This shift toward a cuter, cuddlier sound is likely to be the source of the biggest rift among the tour’s faithful since Fall Out Boy headlined in 2005. Oh, the dramz!

Reel Big Fish

Speaking of outdated, Orange County’s Reel Big Fish are the ones to blame for America’s brief fascination with ska, the stylistic predecessor to reggae that over the decades somehow evolved into a genre for pop-punkers who felt their music wasn’t quite peppy enough. Sure, No Doubt gets a lot of the credit, but that’s only because they blew up. In truth, RBF are the quintessential late 20th century ska ensemble: highly caffeinated rhythms, buoyant horns, stupid name, even stupider outfits. Of course, it all seems rather quaint these days, but there is something to be said for a group that held firm as most of its peers ditched the brass and got “serious.” What could be more punk than that?    

Vans’ Warped Tour

June 22 at Seaside Park
10 W. Harbor Blvd. Ventura
www.warpedtour.com