As easy as it would be for a film company to lob out an “Adv-itorial” documentary capturing the excitement, history, high points and successes that The Vans Warped Tour has enjoyed over the festival's seventeen-year existence, fans would rightly balk at such a presentation because every fan knows there's more to the show than just the spectacle. Warped Tour is unlike any other traveling road show on Earth in that, since its foundation in 1995, the show has gone on every year without fail. It is one of the most successful concert tours in history and (by many accounts) it is also one of the hardest; in fifty-two days each summer, Warped Tour stops in forty-three cities and travels 16, 906 miles across the United States and Canada (or further – at the height of the tour's popularity in 1998 and 1999, the tour went intercontinental and included stops in Australia, Japan and Europe). It's a hard run which can be incredibly treacherous (the elements are hard – extreme heat and tornado seasons are an annual concern), and those bands who have played the tour from start to finish wear that fact like a badge of honor; it commands respect.
Fans understand that doing Warped Tour is hard and the spectacle is great, but illustrating that on film isn't easy; trying to present the fact that the tour has managed to remain a hot ticket event for seventeen years by perpetually adapting its presentation is no easy feat either. No Room For Rockstars doesn't exactly present that either; when it started, Warped Tour was a punk rock and extreme sports event but, as of 2010 (when the film was shot) the show is more like a youth culture exposition than a skateboard/BMX/punk rock show – how does one hope to show all that without inadvertently implying that Warped has lost its way?
Well, in the case of this documentary, the angle that the directors have chosen to take is the one which shows that as much as things may have changed musically on Warped Tour (principle acts are Mike Posner – a pop act, Never Shout Never – a tattooed but soft on the ears, girl-appealing singsong act, Suicide Silence – a metal band, and Pennywise – the punk band on the tour with some history which gives the film some credibility with their inclusion), the more things have stayed the same as the length of the tour and elements batter everyone and take their toll. On top of that, the film pays homage to the tour's indie roots by casting Forever Came Calling – a punk band who elected to follow the tour and sell CDs in the parking lots of every stop in hopes of catching tour founder Kevin Lyman's attention – into the spotlight in much the same fashion the Kevin Says stage seeks to give smaller bands some visibility on the tour.
With all of that playing out i the film, some viewers will find themselves getting interested in how Warped Tour exists now (there's pop and metal playing on stage and bands sharing buses to keep costs down), but others will scoff at how far Warped Tour has strayed and how blanched it has become. Conspicuously, Pennywise gets very little screen time with only guitarist Fletcher Dragge piping up to be interviewed for about ninety seconds, and the lack if musical performance in the documentary is surprising; while Never Shout Never, Mike Posner and Suicide Silence all get a few bars of one token song in the film's run-time, most of the rest is taken up by drive footage and interview footage. To put none too fine a point on it, when Forever Came Calling finally succeeds, gets Lyman's attention and is given a slot on the Kevin Says stage at one of the California dates and we see the band blast through a whole song, it feels and looks like a revelation; that is when viewers realize that, for a documentary about a concert tour, there really isn't a lot of music in it. That isn't to say it's a bad film or a waste of time, it's just really not at all what one might expect.
For those who would have liked to have seen more music from the Vans Warped Tour in 2010 and the performances which happened, the Extras on the DVD hold a generous helping of music and interviews didn't make the film (but often turn out to be more insightful) from Andrew W.K., Bouncing Souls, Bring Me The Horizon and those bands on which the band focused. The “Extras” portion of this DVD is the part which really sells the tour, because the onstage moments which don't appear in the documentary look like all the fun in the world and don't feature Mike Posner wondering (as he does regularly at the beginning of the film) why he's playing there. that – Andrew W.K. raving like a maniac next to a personal trainer onstage, hearing The Bouncing Souls rail out “Sing Along Forever” with every soul in attendance singing along on a sunny afternoon and seeing Bring Me The Horizon self-destruct onstage knowing full well that they'll do the exact same thing again the next day – is what people pay to see at Warped Tour and what they get in the Extras portion of this DVD. That's what those who but No Room For Rock Stars are paying for; while the film is okay, the Extras are not to be missed.
Artist:
www.vanswarpedtour.com/
www.myspace.com/warpedtour
www.facebook.com/warpedtour
www.twitter.com/#!/VANSWARPEDTOUR
DVD:
The Vans Warped Tour: No Room For Rock Stars DVD/CD set will be released on May 15, 2012. Buy it here on Amazon .
