Recovery segment – Vans Warped Tour Australia 1998
TAKING IT DOWN UNDER
The tour first expanded internationally in 1998 with tours of Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia. Lyman has called touring Australia one of his “top five Warped moments”.
Warped Tour production manager/site coordinator and native Aussie Kerry Nicholson was instrumental in bringing the tour Down Under. In 1996, Lyman was managing a tour for alt-rockers Porno For Pyros, who were headed to Australia to open for Rage Against The Machine. In search of someone with an Australian bus permit to transport the band from city to city, Nicholson was referred to Lyman by Aussie concert promoters who’d previously worked with him.
Lyman and Nicholson quickly formed a bond and started discussing the global potential of the then-1-year-old Warped Tour. The two conceived the notion of bringing it to Australia and Nicholson soon joined Lyman in America to scope out the logistics of the tour and start drafting plans for an Australian Warped. The tour has been to Australia three times since then, with Nicholson still an active staffer on the US tour.
During its first visit to Australia, Warped kicked off on the Gold Coast on 11th January, 1998 with the aforementioned punk/ska lineup, making its way through Byron Bay, Coffs Harbour, Sydney, Ulladulla, Newcastle and Melbourne, all in the space of 13 days. That year Warped left Australia for the summer festival season in the States and finishing up in Europe.
The Warped Tour last touched Aussie shores in 2002. Australian touring luminary Michael Chugg and his company Chugg Entertainment served as the local partners for the ’02 tour. During a performance in Manly, American band Unwritten Law ended up on the front page of the local news after inciting a massive food fight. Frontman Scott Russo told Music Feeds:
“It was one of the last days of the…Tour in Australia and we were the last band on for the day….’Food Fight!’ I yelled over the microphone, ‘Let’s see it!’ It wasn’t a green light for everyone to go nuts, but that’s kinda what happened.
“People were taking stuff out of the bins…people started ripping up the stage, then the rugby field and, yeah, the whole place kind of exploded and it looked like something from Woodstock; the whole stage was covered in mud and grass and trash.
“The stage manager at the time came and smashed our guitars and slapped our guitar player, who ended up getting into a fight with him on stage… Then we got asked to leave the tour.”
“It was pretty ironic…we were in the newspapers saying ‘Punk Band Gets Kicked Off Punk Tour For Being Too Punk’.”
