Warped Tour 1999 @ Randall’s Island, NYC

Live Reviews | Jul 16th, 1999

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Date: July 16th 1999
Venue: Randall’s Island, NYC

It’s that time of year again when people come together to hurt, sweat, fondle, complain, push, yell, at this event called the “punk rock summer camp.” If that’s called that, then why the hell is all these lame hip hop and korn clone metal crap bands on this tour? I mean, if you’re going to get hip hop bands, why don’t get rap bands that are considered punk within the rap genre like Public Enemy, KRS One, and Ice Cube. But if Ice Cube and Ice Tea were on the same bill together, that would look a little strange huh? I’m glad they got Ice T because he was in Body Count and he is a good singer, but fucking Enema, Enimem whitey. whatever. That guy sucks donkey balls!!! Oh yeah! I’m here to talk about the concert.

To start the story, paul was late. We got down to Randall’s Island in an hour which is really good considering it’s NYC and Queens or whatever. We got on line for press passes and waited for ten minutes this time. The line wasn’t that long when we got online for the passes. Paul decided to cut in line in front of all these people that have been waiting awhile. We get our passes at noon and open it up, and there is two passes and two tickets. We knew Paul couldn’t get a ticket but he got dicked out of a pass. So we decided to have Matt and Him share it and go backstage and take pictures with the small camera. Some opening bands played on the local stages and I didn’t know who they were so..They actually had a booth just for the times of the bands go on. So I wrote down the times of bands worthy of seeing.

Royal Crown Revue was playing at 1pm so I had to go over there and take a roll of them for ten minutes and run over to take pictures of Buck O Nine. RCR played “Walking with Brando” first. They were playing good but of course, since I was a photographer and could only be in the photo pit for three songs in the beginning, I had to get over to Buck O Nine. Unfortunately, they didn’t go on for another ten minutes when I got there so I could have seen more of Royal Crown Revue. 1.09 started off with “Round Kid” and then “I’m the Man”, and that’s in the movie The Big Hit. I glanced at their set list and they also played The “Irish Drinking Song,” and “Who Are they.” I didn’t understand why I couldn’t stand still for five minutes watching a band. I guess I was going A.D.D. at this concert.

After Buck O Nine, I had some time to kill till 2 o clock because no one good was playing that I wanted to see. So Matt and I walked around the booths while Paul was sleeping in the shady bushes somewhere having people throw wood chips at him. haha! I went to the ARA table and met Miya from Asian Man Records and the Chinkees. Matt got lots of free shit which was cool plus Fat Wreck Cords had great deals with their cheapo comps. Get three CDs for four bucks! Can’t go wrong there.

After awhile, The Vandals came on. I never really heard a lot of their music but they were really good. During like the second song, in the photo pit, a bouncer went to get a crowd surfer, and flew back nailing a girl photographer into the edge of the stage. Her head basically cracked open and blood went everywhere. I was two people away from this girl and I was freaking out. I was debating whether or not to take her picture but that would have been very mean. Ok, back to the Vandals. They played one of their songs that was on the Glory Days soundtrack. That was basically the only song I knew from them. Toward the end of their set, one of the guitar players/singers jumped on of the speakers and pulled down his shorts and he had on a speedo on. Then he proceeded to wedge the speedo in his ass and was walking around like that the rest of the day. haha, it was gross but pretty funny.

After the Vandals, some crappy band I don’t know came on and I ended up waiting for Dropkick Murphys to come on. During that time, some girl wanted me to have Dropkick Murphys sign her CD and I told her no. COME ON PEOPLE, THEY ARE NOT FUCKING ROCK STARS!!! Go up and ask them your damn self. Before waiting for $1.09, these girls wanted to know if I knew the bands, and if I could meet them. I was like, if I wanted to. Meeting bands isn’t a fucking turn on for me. To me, they are regular human beings supposedly like me. Then when I told her “NO”, she was like, “can you bring me to meet Blink 182?”. I was like “no, why don’t you just go to their tent and meet them.” “oh really, they are at their tent,” the girl said..OPEN YOUR EYES YOU STUPID GROUPIES! Man, dumb teeny boppers. Ok, so D.M played the usual beginning of “Cadence To Arms” and the into” Do or Die.” They also played “Perfect Stranger,” and “Barroom Heroes.” They played really well. I notice Ken had a black eye and I wonder what happened. I recently found that that they ran into some of the assholes of Salt Lake City Straight Edge. I’m Straight Edge and I hate that these assholes are giving us a bad name and have to ruin our name by talking on 20/20 or whatever.

While Bryan and Paul were backstage I made my way over to see Agnostic Front. There was so many people there, and I was mad because they made A.F. play on such a small stage when there’s thousands of people there to see them. They should have headlined and played on one of the main stages. That was one of the big problems of this years tour. Band placement was ridiculous this year. 7 Seconds should have played on the main stage as well, not Black Eyed Peas or Grinspoon, or shitty H-Block. Wake Up Vans Warped Tour! Anyway, Agnostic Front came on and kicked NYC’s ass. They played great but due to the huge crowd and Paul using my press pass I couldn’t stand to stick around. —Matt

Anyway, After Dropkicks was some band I didn’t care for but can’t remember who it was. At 4pm was HC legends 7 Seconds and I wished I saw more of them. I only saw like 6 songs from them. They got the crowd going crazy with stage diving suprisely. I forget what songs they did but I knew that they played a couple of songs from their new album. They were wondering why they went on after Agnostic Front and that they should have had AF headline the show since it was NY. Less Than Jake was the next band I wanted to see and man, did they put on a show! They had like a carnival on stage with people shooting off water guns, yo-yo guys, guys in masks..It was nutty. They played songs like “All My Best Friends are Metalheads,” “Last One Out of Liberty City,” “Sugar in Your Gas Tank?” and other less than jake hits. I thought they were one of the best bands playing that day. A little later was Pennywise and they went on late which I was pissed about. Because I only saw one song of them because I wanted to take yet another roll of Edna’s Goldfish. The song I did see of Pennywise was “Fight Till You Die.” Then after that song I had to go over to see E.G. There was actually a good turn out for them considering Pennywise was playing basically the same time Edna’s Goldfish was. They played some new songs and the usual. Songs like “Instant Message,” “Eventually, Anyway,” “This is Not Here,” and Matt said they finished off with “Veronica Sawyer.”

I was suppose to see Blink 182 at 6 something but they changed spots with the Bouncing Souls. I wanted to see them anyway so I stayed in my spot for awhile while some dumb rap band was getting off. I thought the Bouncing Souls played great! They were just plain old rockin! They started off with “Hopeless Romantic” and played another fav. song of mine from their new album “Fight to Live.” They also played “I like your Mom,” “Neurotic,” and “Kate is Great.”

After Bouncing Souls, was my favorite act of the night and that was ENEMA! YEAH RIGHT! I waited around to see what this fool was all about and on the loud speaker came the “Imperial March” from Star Wars. I was like, oh no he didn’t!! how dare he play that song during his shitty set. Their was mix emotions out there whether or not people liked him. I think there was more middle fingers up then people clapping for him. During his first song, I proceeded with the worst breakdancing in the world and was screaming out, “YO VANILLA KICK IT ONE TIME BWOOOYY!” As we were walking over to see Frenzal Rhomb, Enema was complaining about all the people who don’t like him and the people who were throwing shit at them. they said to them that they got small dicks. yeah that’s mature. You’re just as worst as the people throwing the water bottles Enema. we got to the stage for Frenzal Rhomb and there was no one really there. The lead singer of Frenzal Rhomb was making fun of Enema saying my name is song over and over again. I would be making fun of him to if he drew away most of the crowd to them. The only song I knew was “Run” from Frenzal Rhomb but they played good from what songs I saw of them.

Blink 182 was next and I thought there would be more photographers in the beginning of their set but there wasn’t. They just went right into their songs. Of Course, I can’t remember half of them since they all sound alike but I thought they played well. Their drummer Travis was sick that day so he didn’t play, but numerous drummers did from the tour. That was funny because they kept switching off drummers. And of course right when Paul and I, and the rest of the photographers got kicked out of the photo pit, girls started flashing Blink 182. That pissed us off a lot! So Paul and I walked around backstage listening to Blink play. We decided to leave after them because we all had huge headaches and we don’t like H20 so we didn’t want to see them play last. We waited in traffic for an hour to get on the GW Bridge. We finally got home, took 2 Advil, took a half hour shower and went to get something to eat. Overall, I thought the concert could have been better band wise. I thought last year’s was hell of a lot better because of the type of bands that played. Minus the rap/ metal bands, the heat, and added some bands really worth seeing it would have been a great show. It still was good but not as good as last years.

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