With the announcement of the 2016 Vans Warped Tour lineup on March 22 we can hear the faint cheers of underground music fans. Vans Warped Tour is a road music festival that has been on tour since 1995. The festival allows underground, punk, alternative bands to create a foundation for themselves.
Vans Warped Tour is more than just a music festival. It is a home for all kinds of unique people to express themselves through music. This genre of music allow us to have an exit with our emotions. Whether we are dealing with a breakup, loss of a friend, stress of life or depression, these bands help us through the hard times. We view these bands as more than people who occasionally scream incomprehensible words.
This year’s lineup will be one to remember. With the announcement of the Monster Party Zone stages, we will see more bands in the harder genre. This is great for those who prefer to vent through that sub-genre. We will be able to rock out with amazing bands such as Chelsea Grin, Motionless in White, Crown the Empire and all the others in the same day. This year’s lineup will cause all of us to use our summer to become a roadie, because just one day isn’t enough to see all of the amazing bands.
That is just the Monster Party Zone stages though. The Journey’s stages are going to cause most of us to stay right in the middle for the whole day. Bands all of us have found ourselves venting through will be on that stage. Bands like The Maine, State Champs, Sleeping with Sirens, We the Kings, Falling in Reverse, and my personal favorite, Mayday Parade.
Older bands will be on that stage as well, like Less than Jake, Yellowcard and Sum 41. These bands are arguably some of the more influential bands of this genre. These bands help us explain to our parents what this music means to us because they were some of the bands they vented through. That may be an exaggeration, unless you have parents in their thirties.
Not only are there the bands we all know and love but there are new bands that we always discover at Vans Warped Tour. There is a stage just for discovering some of the upcoming bands. The Full Sail stage will have these potential bands like Dash Ten, Old Wounds, With Confidence and a bunch more.
There are so many other bands that will be there for us to share the experience with, but there is more to the Vans Warped Tour than just the music. We are surrounded by many others who use the music for an escape. I may just be speaking for myself, but some of the best people I know were people I met at concerts. The people in charge of the merchandise booths and charity booths are some of the greatest people who make the event what it is all about.
Vans Warped Tour truly is more than just a music festival. Whether it’s our escape from a bad breakup,
“If you never break, you’ll never know how to put yourself back together.”
- “Late Nights in My Car” by Real Friends
or the loss of a friend,
“What will you do on the weekends when your best friends become your dead friends?”
- “American Candy” by The Maine
or when you don’t feel comfortable in your own skin,
“It’s all in my head, there’s not much I can do.”
- “Nerve” by The Story So Far
we know that we have our Vans Warped Tour there for us.
