No Room For Rockstars

If you're reading this, chances are you've spent at least one blazing-hot summer day at the Vans Warped Tour. The annual punk/ska/swing/metalcore/whatever's-popular-at-Hot-Topic tour has become so ingrained in our music culture that it's hard to remember a summer without it, even if your feelings towards it are utter disgust at its crass commercialization of a once vibrant underground force. No Room for Rockstars, a new documentary about the touring behemoth, will do little to alleviate feelings that "Warped Tour was better in year X," instead focusing on the fest's modern incarnation, with a little archival footage thrown in for good measure. Director Parris Patton followed deathcore act Suicide Silence, the Dashboard Confessional-esque Never Shout Never, pop star Mike Posner and upstarts Forever Came Calling (who weren't actually on the tour, just shadowing it in a van, peddling their CDs to kids in line) during Warped Tour's 2010 15th anniversary run. Their stories paint a good portrait of the different experiences bands have on the tour: from Chris Ingle of Never Shout Never's disillusionment with the Warped's commercially-driven side to Suicide Silence's get-in-the-van attitude to Posner's cautious appreciation of the whole thing. Tour founder Kevin Lyman gets plenty of air time and comes across as a genuinely nice guy without Patton ever seeming as if he's kowtowing to any sort of pre-arranged agenda, while tour vets like Pennywise and Bouncing Souls explain what keeps them coming back year after year (it's the band camaraderie). Extras include some generous extended interviews and performances with acts like Bouncing Souls and Andrew W.K. and a bonus Warped Tour Greatest Hits CD that feels more like "here's ten songs we were able to clear in time." Despite its somewhat erroneous title (a number of bands have become rock stars while on the tour, while even more have returned for triumphant victory laps), No Room For Rockstars does an excellent job of summing up Warped Tour's M.O. from multiple perspectives. Yeah, it's not the tour it used to be ― and that's exactly why it's still a going concern, for better or worse.