The Collected Life: Warped Tour at the Capitol Ballroom, DC, Summer 1996

Summer, 1996. I'm 17 and this is the first summer I start regularly going to shows. As I check dates from the archives, it seems this is quite the coming-of-age year for me: we navigate through our first experiences at large-venue concerts and festivals (the WHFestival, Lollapalooza, etc.), I try to put the moves on (and am rejected by) a certain local hipster (his status in 'the scene' unbeknownst to me at the time... and a story for another time.), we go to a show at the Loft for the first time and meet a new group of punk kids who are also our age.

As a rather sheltered punk from a small Catholic school in a small town, all this socializing outside of Annapolis was very novel, very scary, and very exciting. When I was approached by the first kid in the back of the Loft, I remember being aloof, cold, and blunt. He was trying to be a wing-man for his friend; I was trying to be hard and not engage with strangers. Well, the new kids were smart and very social and their work-around was to talk to my other friends who were much more approachable and amiable than I was willing to be. They invite us to a party that night after the show. As the driver of our group I put my foot down and say No, we can't come to your friend's house - a person we've never met in a place we've never been to. No, no, no. I'm like Veronica in the 1950's Archie comics: I can't talk to you until we've been properly introduced. So that night we say goodbye to this new group, leave the Loft, and my small group of friends take silly pictures overlooking Annapolis at a monument site off Route 2 before getting everyone safely back home.

Soon after this comes the Warped Tour. We see the same group of kids. In this larger social setting I begin to warm up. We're there for hours, seeing bands like NOFX and the Mighty, Mighty Bosstones. During bands we're willing to miss we chat with these new kids from the Hamilton/Parkville area. Turns out they're pretty nice, they're funny, they're fun, they're fine.

Within a few weeks, guess what? We're partying at their friends' houses. We're getting busted at parties at their friends' houses. We're running from the cops, hiding in the bushes, not knowing what to do in the night around these concrete Baltimore city-suburban blocks. I've never been to a party where cops showed up! We're living in a scene of a poorly written 80's teen movie and I'm sure I was thinking, "Damnit! I fucking knew it!!"

Here are pics from the Capitol Ballroom in DC at the 1996 Warped Tour. Enjoy!