Latest news with #LessThanJake
Forbes
27-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
How Vans Warped Tour Tradition Engages Music's Youth Market
Chris Demakes (L) and Roger Manganelli of Less than Jake perform during the Vans Warped tour at Pier ... More 30/32 on June 27, 2009 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by) After a five-year pause, the Vans Warped Tour is making a nostalgic and novel comeback. Marking its 30th anniversary this year, the tour kicked off a three-city jaunt June 14-15 in Washington, D.C. followed by shows July 26-27 in Long Beach, California, and Nov. 15-16 in Orlando, Florida. Returning artists Falling in Reverse, 311, Ice Nine Kills, Simple Plan, Asking Alexandria and Black Veil Brides join new acts Avril Lavigne, Body Count and Better Lovers on stage. An 88-page Official Vans Warped Tour Guide this year features a foreword by Warped founders Kevin Lyman and new interviews with Avril Lavigne, MGK, Simple Plan and All Time Low. The guide also includes "Warped Memories" comics illustrated by Luke McGarry and stories from Warped Tour regulars Mark Hoppus and Hayley Williams. In partnership with Z2 Comics, the nostalgic festival is spotlighting comics at performances to engage younger fans. Humor resonates with newer generations seeking out more authentic, immersive live shows built around real-life experiences. This offers artists new opportunities to design creative programming beyond the recent rise in virtual concerts, live streaming engagements, and concerts featuring design installations. Z2 Comics President Josh Bernstein says, "Warped Tour was an amazing rite of passage for so many bands and fans over those years, and so probably many people's first concert experience. Kevin built 'a little festival that could' back in 1996 with Sublime and others. And we're talking about it 30 years later; it's incredible." Most Warped Tour attendees this year are first-time festival-goers, illustrating the success of blending tradition with innovation. Festival community engagements like food and blood drives are growing community engagement and new connections among socially responsible fans. More than 250,000 complimentary zines were distributed to attendees wanting a lasting memory of the event. Jeffree Star performs during the Vans Warped tour at Pier 30/32 on June 27, 2009 in San Francisco, ... More California. (Photo by) Warp Tour tickets sold out for the first two events before bands were announced. Tickets are fairly priced at $149.99 per two-day event compared to most festivals that cost upwards of $600 for general admission weekend access. According to Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman, personal interactions between fans and artists are vital to the festival brand's long-term cultural relevance and success. The first show received positive reviews, he says, crediting nostalgia of the tour and its future focus on community and bands. Lyman says that as a professor at the University of Southern California, he has noticed among his students over the past few years that concepts like zines are becoming important again. He notices that students burned out from constantly scrolling and using social media enjoy slowing down to read and absorb content on paper. "Those moments and touchpoints like zines are becoming important to young people again. They also serve as a foundation for building community," Lyman says. "If you can find that microcommunity to relate with, it's a foundation for rebuilding the things we need as a society to be whole." Black Veil Brides founder and lead vocalist Andy Biersack considers the Warped Tour the most significant event in his life and says, "As a kid, it was my everything and my safe haven. As a young teen, it was my dream to be a part of it on stage, and as an adult, it was the single most vital and transformative thing for my career." Biersack, who considers Warped Tour production staff and artists his family, also met his wife, fellow musician Lilith Czar, on the Warped Tour. The pair serenaded each other from converted truck stages in amphitheater parking lots and spent evenings walking the festival grounds. Now future generations are carrying on the tradition in a new style.
The Guardian
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It fully altered my taste in music': bands reflect on the awesome power of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater soundtracks
When millions of parents bought their kids a Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game in the late 90s and early 00s, they couldn't have understood the profound effect it would have on their children's music taste. With bands from Bad Religion to Papa Roach and Millencolin accompanying every failed spin and grind, these trick-tastic games slyly doubled up as the ultimate compilation CD. While the Fifa games have an equally storied history with licensed music, those soundtracks feel impersonal – a who's who of whichever artists EA's associated record labels wanted to push at the time. Pro Skater's soundtrack, by contrast, felt like being handed a grubby and slightly dog-eared handmade mixtape, still battered from its last tumble at the local skate park. 'Most of the bands were chosen because I heard them growing up at the skate park. I would say most of the original punk stuff – even the early hip-hop – that was my soundtrack to skating in the 80s and 90s,' Tony Hawk says. 'I never imagined that I would be a tastemaker but, that was really just a byproduct of staying true to the culture.' 'Tony was very involved in punk rock,' says Chris DeMakes, frontman of Less Than Jake, before his set at this year's Slam Dunk festival. 'Ultimately, he had to approve the bands on his soundtrack … So that always kind of made me feel good about it.' The band's Roger Lima adds: 'The culture of skating and music is so meshed, it made sense for them to have a real soundtrack to it.' For the bands that made it on to these games in those years, the impact was immeasurable. 'I remember playing earlier versions of THPS and hearing some of our contemporaries … I hoped we'd get an opportunity like that,' says Hunter Burgan, bassist of AFI. 'But I don't think I really understood how big the impact was until after we actually were on the soundtrack. I can't tell you how many people have come up to me over the last two decades and told me that THPS3 was their first introduction to AFI.' 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater made All My Best Friends Are Metalheads a hit – as big a hit as if we would have been on 60 major rock stations in America … Probably bigger,' says DeMakes. 'I talked to John Feldman [of Goldfinger] about this recently, and with Superman it's the same thing for them. That wasn't a worldwide hit, but it became a hit for them because of that game.' When the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater came out in 1999, those grey PlayStation discs served as a punk rock Trojan horse, sneaking a killer introduction to the world of alt and punk music to millions of unsuspecting kids. A quarter-century later, new artists are featuring on modern remakes of the Pro Skater games, alongside the bands that shaped their taste. 'Those games fully altered my taste in music!' says Sammy Ciaramitaro, vocalist of hardcore band Drain. 'They brought punk rock (and a lot of other incredible music) to my childhood bedroom.' Drain are now one of a handful of new artists that were chosen to be added to the soundtrack for the remakes. 'I think our inclusion represents the growth of hardcore,' says Ciaramitaro. 'I'm honored that we now get to be a part of this with Turnstile and End It, too. I hope that maybe some young kids will hear our songs while playing and it will motivate them to do a deep dive into punk rock music, like we all did when we were younger.' Other bands who weren't quite big enough to get on Tony's radar at the time, such as the Ataris, spent their careers dreaming of making it on to the next Pro Skater game. 'We were coming of age the same time that Pro Skater was,' says bassist Mike Davenport. 'In 1999/2000 was when we really started to take off as a band and we didn't even feel as if we belonged with the bands that were featured [on the games].' The Ataris' track All Souls' Day eventually made the soundtrack for 2020's Pro Skater 1+2 remake. Davenport says that the band used to play Pro Skater constantly on tour in the back of an RV – even, once, in the middle of a car accident. 'My merch guy and I were playing in the kitchen nook one night when we heard the driver yell 'look out!' and then the TV flew at us, and we both literally batted it down with our hands so as not to have it smash us in the face,' he remembers. 'Sadly the TV and PlayStation were killed, but luckily not us.' Even though Less Than Jake reaped the rewards of being on the game back in 2002, returning with a different song on the Pro Skater remake decades later still felt like a badge of honour: 'We're a band that's been around for 33 years, so we love anything that can propel us and get us in front of a new audience,' says DeMakes, 'Everybody has social media. Anybody can upload their song to YouTube or Spotify or Apple Music now, it's a different playing field. So how do you get noticed? Getting asked to be in a video game is perfect.' 'As long as there are people playing video games there will be an avenue to connect them with music,' says Burgan, 'Skateboarding, punk rock and video games were a huge part of our lives growing up and were inextricably connected, so it seems like a natural continuation of that. For bands, I think the cultural impact is far more important and lasting than any financial benefit.' Such is the lasting impact of the Pro Skater soundtracks that there are cover bands dedicated to playing it live – among them the 900. 'We were really annoying when we first started the band, just tagging Tony Hawk in every story and Instagram post,' frontman Harry Shaw tells me. 'When he followed us [on social media] we thought: 'That's it, we've made it.' We never imagined that he'd actually come on stage with us.' In a video that's since gone viral on Instagram, Tony Hawk hopped on stage unannounced with the 900 in east London, covering Bloodstains by Agent Orange and Superman by Goldfinger, to a rapturous crowd. '[We're] eternally grateful for him doing that show, and also just not being a dick about bands covering songs from his game, either,' says Shaw, 'He doesn't have to do this stuff, his name is so big within pop culture – like Ronaldo or Messi – he's almost like a living meme.' 'There are five bands that only play covers from our video game series, and I've sang with three of them. But that one [the 900] was really fun,' says Hawk. 'My appearance was a surprise, and they were kind enough to choose songs that I was more into. Yes, I'm proud of the soundtrack, but I can't sing every song nor could I remember the lyrics!' In the decades that have passed since the original Pro Skater games, their soundtracks have been the gift that keeps giving for the bands who make it on. 'I actually just met Tony a few weeks ago at a music festival,' says AFI's Burgan. 'He is a true music lover and that makes being included in THPS even more special.' While Pro Skater has gone down in legend, Less Than Jake believes that it could have very easily gone the other way. 'How many stars do we know that have made products or endorsed things that weren't good?' laughs DeMakes. 'But in Tony's case, he had a really cool game that kids embraced and loved.' 'Pro Skater could have been a flop, it could have just not really worked out in the long run,' agrees Lima. 'But every element of it was just super effortlessly cool and it was huge for us … I can't count the amount of times someone has said: 'I found out about you guys through Pro Skater.' Just look at the YouTube comments … thousands and thousands of fans that probably never would have heard of us otherwise.' Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 is out now
The Guardian
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It fully altered my taste in music': bands reflect on the awesome power of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater soundtracks
When millions of parents bought their kids a Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game in the late 90s and early 00s, they couldn't have understood the profound effect it would have on their children's music taste. With bands from Bad Religion to Papa Roach and Millencolin accompanying every failed spin and grind, these trick-tastic games slyly doubled up as the ultimate compilation CD. While the Fifa games have an equally storied history with licensed music, those soundtracks feel impersonal – a who's who of whichever artists EA's associated record labels wanted to push at the time. Pro Skater's soundtrack, by contrast, felt like being handed a grubby and slightly dog-eared handmade mixtape, still battered from its last tumble at the local skate park. 'Most of the bands were chosen because I heard them growing up at the skate park. I would say most of the original punk stuff – even the early hip-hop – that was my soundtrack to skating in the 80s and 90s,' Tony Hawk says. 'I never imagined that I would be a tastemaker but, that was really just a byproduct of staying true to the culture.' 'Tony was very involved in punk rock,' says Chris DeMakes, frontman of Less Than Jake, before his set at this year's Slam Dunk festival. 'Ultimately, he had to approve the bands on his soundtrack … So that always kind of made me feel good about it.' The band's Roger Lima adds: 'The culture of skating and music is so meshed, it made sense for them to have a real soundtrack to it.' For the bands that made it on to these games in those years, the impact was immeasurable. 'I remember playing earlier versions of THPS and hearing some of our contemporaries … I hoped we'd get an opportunity like that,' says Hunter Burgan, bassist of AFI. 'But I don't think I really understood how big the impact was until after we actually were on the soundtrack. I can't tell you how many people have come up to me over the last two decades and told me that THPS3 was their first introduction to AFI.' 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater made All My Best Friends Are Metalheads a hit – as big a hit as if we would have been on 60 major rock stations in America … Probably bigger,' says DeMakes. 'I talked to John Feldman [of Goldfinger] about this recently, and with Superman it's the same thing for them. That wasn't a worldwide hit, but it became a hit for them because of that game.' When the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater came out in 1999, those grey PlayStation discs served as a punk rock Trojan horse, sneaking a killer introduction to the world of alt and punk music to millions of unsuspecting kids. A quarter-century later, new artists are featuring on modern remakes of the Pro Skater games, alongside the bands that shaped their taste. 'Those games fully altered my taste in music!' says Sammy Ciaramitaro, vocalist of hardcore band Drain. 'They brought punk rock (and a lot of other incredible music) to my childhood bedroom.' Drain are now one of a handful of new artists that were chosen to be added to the soundtrack for the remakes. 'I think our inclusion represents the growth of hardcore,' says Ciaramitaro. 'I'm honored that we now get to be a part of this with Turnstile and End It, too. I hope that maybe some young kids will hear our songs while playing and it will motivate them to do a deep dive into punk rock music, like we all did when we were younger.' Other bands who weren't quite big enough to get on Tony's radar at the time, such as the Ataris, spent their careers dreaming of making it on to the next Pro Skater game. 'We were coming of age the same time that Pro Skater was,' says bassist Mike Davenport. 'In 1999/2000 was when we really started to take off as a band and we didn't even feel as if we belonged with the bands that were featured [on the games].' The Ataris' track All Souls' Day eventually made the soundtrack for 2020's Pro Skater 1+2 remake. Davenport says that the band used to play Pro Skater constantly on tour in the back of an RV – even, once, in the middle of a car accident. 'My merch guy and I were playing in the kitchen nook one night when we heard the driver yell 'look out!' and then the TV flew at us, and we both literally batted it down with our hands so as not to have it smash us in the face,' he remembers. 'Sadly the TV and PlayStation were killed, but luckily not us.' Even though Less Than Jake reaped the rewards of being on the game back in 2002, returning with a different song on the Pro Skater remake decades later still felt like a badge of honour: 'We're a band that's been around for 33 years, so we love anything that can propel us and get us in front of a new audience,' says DeMakes, 'Everybody has social media. Anybody can upload their song to YouTube or Spotify or Apple Music now, it's a different playing field. So how do you get noticed? Getting asked to be in a video game is perfect.' 'As long as there are people playing video games there will be an avenue to connect them with music,' says Burgan, 'Skateboarding, punk rock and video games were a huge part of our lives growing up and were inextricably connected, so it seems like a natural continuation of that. For bands, I think the cultural impact is far more important and lasting than any financial benefit.' Such is the lasting impact of the Pro Skater soundtracks that there are cover bands dedicated to playing it live – among them the 900. 'We were really annoying when we first started the band, just tagging Tony Hawk in every story and Instagram post,' frontman Harry Shaw tells me. 'When he followed us [on social media] we thought: 'That's it, we've made it.' We never imagined that he'd actually come on stage with us.' In a video that's since gone viral on Instagram, Tony Hawk hopped on stage unannounced with the 900 in east London, covering Bloodstains by Agent Orange and Superman by Goldfinger, to a rapturous crowd. '[We're] eternally grateful for him doing that show, and also just not being a dick about bands covering songs from his game, either,' says Shaw, 'He doesn't have to do this stuff, his name is so big within pop culture – like Ronaldo or Messi – he's almost like a living meme.' 'There are five bands that only play covers from our video game series, and I've sang with three of them. But that one [the 900] was really fun,' says Hawk. 'My appearance was a surprise, and they were kind enough to choose songs that I was more into. Yes, I'm proud of the soundtrack, but I can't sing every song nor could I remember the lyrics!' In the decades that have passed since the original Pro Skater games, their soundtracks have been the gift that keeps giving for the bands who make it on. 'I actually just met Tony a few weeks ago at a music festival,' says AFI's Burgan. 'He is a true music lover and that makes being included in THPS even more special.' While Pro Skater has gone down in legend, Less Than Jake believes that it could have very easily gone the other way. 'How many stars do we know that have made products or endorsed things that weren't good?' laughs DeMakes. 'But in Tony's case, he had a really cool game that kids embraced and loved.' 'Pro Skater could have been a flop, it could have just not really worked out in the long run,' agrees Lima. 'But every element of it was just super effortlessly cool and it was huge for us … I can't count the amount of times someone has said: 'I found out about you guys through Pro Skater.' Just look at the YouTube comments … thousands and thousands of fans that probably never would have heard of us otherwise.' Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 is out now
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Warped Tour Pulled Off the Impossible and Took Fans Back in Time
There is nothing quite like the music people discover when they're in high school. It's these songs that soundtrack first loves and heartbreaks, and all the moments that feel like they're the end of the world. It's these songs that act as a salve in teen bedrooms and hit even harder live, sung with a sea of people. This weekend, the Vans Warped Tour in Washington, D.C. transported about 40,000 festival attendees right back to those high school summer days filled with sticky pavements, sweaty mosh pits and, if you were lucky enough, crowd-surfing to the songs that mattered the most. In this brief moment of time traveling, everything else felt far away— even our increasingly alarmingly political times, marked by a paltry event disguised as a military parade that our eerily authoritarian president was hosting just a few miles from the festival. At Warped, the only thing that mattered was the music. More from Rolling Stone Warped Tour to Head to Washington, D.C., for Second Consecutive Year Cartel to Celebrate 'Chroma' 20th Anniversary With Re-Recording and Fall Tour Sublime Will Play DC Warped Tour 30 Years After Headlining First Edition Many bands across the Warped Tour lineup also shared they felt like they'd been sent back to their teen years for the weekend, from Warped Tour veterans and ska-punkers Less Than Jake or mid-2010s stalwarts like State Champs. 'We feel like we're going to yet another high school reunion where we know everybody, but we're not sure if we're going to be invited to the party or not,' Less Than Jake vocalist Chris DeMakes told Rolling Stone. 'I kinda feel like a senior in high school,' State Champs lead guitarist Tyler Szalkowski said. With their headlining set on Saturday, pop-punkers All Time Low fully brought Warped Tour back to high school, complete with a marching band and cheerleading squad to join them onstage. But this wasn't just any squad or band; the Maryland natives made sure to honor their hometown and celebrate marginalized voices by inviting the American University cheer squad and DC's Different Drummers marching band to join their set. DCDD is a nonprofit LGBTQ+ marching band dedicated to building pride and community through music. 'We also wanted to make sure that this is a celebration of absolutely fucking everybody out there,' lead singer Alex Gaskarth told the audience. 'You are safe here, you are welcome here,' he said before adding a pointed comment in reference to Trump's military parade: 'This is the place to be tonight in D.C., I'll tell you that.' Machine Gun Kelly closed out the first night of Warped Tour D.C., which some people didn't seem to understand. But up onstage with his larger-than-life persona, it was clear why. MGK embodies the core principles of Warped Tour: an eclectic spirit built from the ground up. The genre-blurring musician came up on the famous Kevin Says Stage at Warped Tour, a stage meant for platforming up and coming acts that founder Kevin Lyman took a chance on. MGK ripped through his wide-ranging catalog from pop-punk tracks like the Halsey-assisted 'Forget Me Too' and his rap-focused 'El Diablo.' He event performed his new pop-leaning single 'Cliche,' in its live debut, singing it to a little girl in the audience in a sweet moment. During her Warped Tour debut on Sunday night, even Avril Lavigne felt that same energy as she asked the audience if they wanted to go back to high school with her. The pop-punk princess knew just how to shuttle the Warped Tour audience back to bygone years: She surprised everyone with a cameo from Sum 41's Deryck Whibley, her friend and former partner, who played the band's Warped staple 'In Too Deep.' Whibley and Sum 41 were not on the lineup at all, making the surprise extra special. Throughout her dazzling set, Lavigne delivered a string of hits from 'Girlfriend' to 'Complicated,' and even included fan-favorite 'I'm With You,' which hit so much harder in the rain. One of the main elements of Warped Tour is the camaraderie between bands that roughed it out together amongst cramped vans and tents for years. This same energy was alive and well, both backstage as bands caught up with each other and during performances as multiple acts invited each other to perform fan favorites for their sets. From Machine Gun Kelly bringing out fellow Warped self-made artist Modsun up for 'Concert for Aliens' to smaller acts like The Wonder Years bringing out Knuckle Puck's Joe Taylor for the Philly emo classic 'Came Out Swinging.' For those who were in high school in the mid-2000s, the highlight was when Derek Sanders from Mayday Parade joined All Time Low for the scene-defying track 'Dear Maria, Count Me In.' The best of these occurrences were when goliaths of the scene welcomed newbies: Boys Like Girls invited viral sensation Brendan Abernathy to sing the band's hit 'The Great Escape' and All Time Low pulled up new pop-punk outfit the Paradox's lead singer Eric Dangerfield for a rendition of 'Hate This Song.' One of the most unique facets of Warped Tour has always been how the festival showcases non-profit organizations. From To Write Love on Her Arms to Fuck Cancer to Music Saves Lives and Headcount and Peta, various organizations that became synonymous with Warped Tour brought their tents back out at Warped 30. In between sets, festival-goers could sign up to vote with Headcount or write down how music had life-altering impact on them with Music Saves Lives. At the heart of Warped Tour has always been its incredible ability to launch new acts and introduce attendees to their new favorite band. For its 30th year, the festival made sure to bring back the Warped Unplugged stage for acoustic performances from emerging artists. There was always a crowd under the Unplugged tent, and it wasn't always to take cover from the heat. It was clear attendees were genuinely curious to learn about new musicians they might not have heard of yet. Early in the day as people flooded into the venue, smaller bands like nu-metal rockers Silly Goose were self-promoting in the same ways from Warped's past, handing out CDs and holding up posters with their band's set time. In the age of Spotify, live music discovery is a rare occasion and that makes warped tour that much more special. Something Kevin Lyman has always understood is that people are hungry for these experiences. As long as music fans exist, they will constantly want to discover new music in person. But few places are able to provide a space like that because of the challenges that exist, from ensuring attendees safety to bearing the cost of the event. It's clear with the support of a mega live event production corporation behind them like Insomniac, Warped Tour could give it not just another go, but a successful one. There were a lot of differences: the sponsors, the locations, the DIY nature has changed with the time, but none of that made the festival feel like a corporatized shell of itself, like some competitors that have cropped up in Warped Tour's absence. Lyman is just as involved as ever before. If you watch the founder for five seconds, festival goers and artists alike are instantly coming up to meet the mythical man that started this all. On Sunday morning, as Lyman stood around the famed half pipe, multiple festival goers came up to speak to him. One father brought his two sons to their first Warped Tour and informed Lyman it was his 20th year going to the festival. For their 30th anniversary, Vans Warped Tour managed to do what it envisioned: to somehow conjure up the best pieces of its past self and bring it into the future in a way that didn't feel outdated or misplaced. And though Warped Tour 2025 was a time machine, no one's perspective was the same. It's a swath of different people and distinct voices. Everyone comes for a different band a different goal. Lyman acknowledged this very fact when he spoke to Rolling Stone back in October: 'Everyone has their own experience when they go to Warped Tour, but they're part of a greater community.' The D.C. edition proved he was right. Launch Gallery: The Best Photos From Warped Tour 2025 Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked
