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Music

Warped Tour Changed My Life

It was a rite of passage that helped me feel empowered enough to defy other people's expectations and follow my own instincts. Every teenager needs something like that.

The author with her best friend at Warped Tour, 2005. Photo courtesy of Erica Euse

It might sound silly today, but ten years ago, Warped Tour changed my life.

Before I was baptized in the church of teenage angst, my life was steeped in suburban repression. I grew up in a small city northeast of Cleveland, Ohio that was so staid, you were considered a freak if you shopped at Hot Topic and listened to music with breakdowns. I had just finished my freshman year at rigid Catholic high school where my older brother was the all-American football star. Everyone called me "Euse's little sister"—I didn't even have my own name. I was just an extension of his thriving social status.

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At first, I tried to fit into the mold laid out for me. I was the popular girl, a cheerleader on the sidelines. But secretly, I envied the kids who wore the Against Me! T-shirts and didn't give a fuck about what anybody thought. At that point, I was too scared to step outside the box, even though I spent hours on MySpace admiring emo scene queens and looking for music that sounded different than the popular Eminem and Justin Timberlake tunes I was surrounded by.

I would camouflage myself in Hollister polos and Abercrombie graphic tees, while covertly burning mix CDs with Panic! at the Disco, Every Time I Die, and Brand New. Before Warped Tour, the only legitimate concert I had been to was N'Sync's in 1999. So when I heard there was a thing called Warped Tour that had all the music I'd been digging on the low, I knew I had to go. It was my time.

My first pilgrimage to Warped Tour may have been a little more than a decade ago, but I certainly wasn't the first teen to attend. Kids all over the US have been going to the traveling festival since 1995, when it was first launched by Kevin Lyman and Vans as a way to showcase punk and alternative bands. The debut tour attracted 25,000 attendees, with acts like Sublime, No Doubt, and Deftones.

My Warped Tour, however, looked different than that inaugural lineup. Acts like Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, and Underoath brought poppy emotional ballads and the guttural howls of screamo to the festival that had previously been defined by punk and ska. I came to the festival when it was in the midst of a changing of the guard of youth culture, one that would happen time and time again.

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After saving up my allowance for a couple weeks, I had enough to purchase the $25 ticket. I toiled over what to wear for the special occasion, eventually deciding on corresponding outfits with my best friend, who shared the same yearning to break out of what was expected of her. We settled on the edgiest items we owned at the time: matching bright pink Converse sneakers and studded belts.

We woke up early on July 21, 2005, and my friend's uncle drove us 25 miles to downtown Cleveland, which felt like a completely different world. The tour had set up its seven stages in a huge cement lot on the Cuyahoga River. We left behind my friend's uncle, who spent the rest of the day in the designated parent's area, and we walked over a bridge to the entrance.

The first time I saw the huge crowds of people, I was in awe. Enormous tents covered the elaborate steel stages and groups of kids with septum piercings and teased jet black hair piled in by the hundreds.

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Once we got in, we stood in front of a list of the time slots for each act, and strategically planned which bands we would see since it seemed like everyone we loved was playing at exactly the same time. Finally, we joined the crowd and weaved our way around each of the stages.

Fall Out Boy was one band we made sure to get to the front for. We pushed through the throngs to get as close to Pete Wentz as possible, and sang along to every word of "Where is your boy tonight…" from Take This to Your Grave, an album we had listened to countless times.

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As great as the music was, I was just as fascinated by the crowd. Most of the boys had long spikey hair and girls wore heavy eyeliner and thick bangs. They all wore skin tight jeans with studded belts and there were a lot of lip piercings. Most of the coolest kids I'd known at my high school were alternative at best, listening to 40 oz. to Freedom and wearing Dickies. But I had never seen so many emo kids in one place. It was exciting community I knew I wanted to be apart of.

In between sets, we waited in long lines to meet the musicians who were signing autographs and buy T-shirts at the merch booths in the "punk flea market." It was the first time I had access to the bands whose music I had spent hours burning onto mix CDs and memorizing.

Before the day was done, I carried crowd surfers, helped a girl find her lost shoe, and took a few elbows to the face in Underoath's mosh pit. By the time we met up with my friend's uncle to go home, I was covered in dirt and sweat, sunburned, and had dropped my cell phone in a filthy shit-stained toilet. I looked like hell, but it was all worth it.

My first experience at Warped Tour impacted the way I felt about myself and who I wanted to be. I was connected to all the angsty kids around me, who just wanted to listen to music and didn't give a shit about what other people thought.

Following Warped Tour, I immersed myself even more in the scene. I spent every weekend going to shows. I chopped off my hair, I lined my eyes with black eyeliner, and I never went anywhere without my fingerless gloves. I became my brother's weird emo sister, and my family struggled to figure out what the hell had happened to me, but for once I felt completely comfortable being myself.

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Gym Class Heros performing in Cleveland at Warped Tour, 2005. Photo courtesy of Erica Euse

By the following summer, at my second Warped Tour, I had evolved from an inexperienced outsider into a true scene queen. I danced to the songs, I screamed all the words, and I moshed until I could mosh no more.

I had my final Warped Tour experience when I was 18 years old. Some of the bands I had seen three years before were still embedded in the lineup, and the crowds were still filled with teens who were eager to get near the stage—but I opted to hang in the back. I can remember hearing Katy Perry sing "I Kissed a Girl," live for the first time and thinking that the festival wasn't the same. It was changing.

Erica and her friend in 2007. Photo courtesy of Erica Euse

For teens that attend Vans Warped Tour today, the experience is different than mine. Large signs hang on the stage to remind the crowd that there is no moshing, or crowd surfing—some of the best things about the performance when I went. Not to mention, many of the bands are playing electronic dance music focused on drops instead of breakdowns. But, every summer the kids still come. The attendance grew to half a million in 2013, so the folks behind Warped Tour are doing something right. Even if it doesn't appeal to me, it's bringing young people together around new forms of expression and that's really what it's all about.

Now, the tour is in the midst of its 21st year, and remains the largest traveling festival in the United States. It will continue to make its way to over 40 locations, with thousands of kids raging at each one. Even though I might never go back, Warped Tour is still one of the most influential experiences of my life. It was a rite of passage that helped me feel empowered enough to defy other people's expectations and follow my own instincts. Every teenager needs something like that.

Follow Erica on Twitter.

Thumbnail photo via Flickr user Ted Van Pelt