The Warped Tour sold out.

That’s right, after drawing about 11,000 fans to Pomona last year, attendance for

Friday’s punk-rock carnival was 21,000, Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman said. He cut off

ticket sales at noon.

"Punk rock is back," he said. "As of a week ago, we’d sold 9,000

tickets. Now I felt bad; I had to turn kids away. I said, ‘C’mon kids, you should’ve

bought a ticket a week ago.’"

The strength of Pomona’s lineup — which included punk torchbearers Pennywise and Bad

Religion and veterans the Circle Jerks and the Adolescents, along with radio-friendly

acts such as Tiger Army, Yellowcard, Paramore, Circa Survive and the Red Jumpsuit

Apparatus — had a lot to do with it. But the crowd already has Lyman thinking ahead to

the end of the 45-date nationwide tour. The finale is Aug. 25. at L.A.’s Home Depot

Center.

"I’m already thinking about how we can reconfigure it to get more people in

there," he said, noting that 7,000 advance tickets have been sold for that final

date.

A bit later, Bad Religion capped Friday’s show in the waning daylight — with Lyman,

no doubt, among the thousands shouting along to the lyrics of "American

Jesus."

[Technical problems delayed these final two posts; today’s festivities are

necessarily quieter — than Pomona was on Friday:]

Saw snippets of a lot of bands in the late afternoon: Victorville’s Loraine Drive

rocked with the sun bearing straight down on the band and the crowd; the U.K.’s Gallows

spewed out a caustic brand of punk; Bleed the Dream blasted off from a tiny stage; and

Long Beach’s I Am Ghost rattled ears with a goth/hard-core hybrid. If I interpreted the

proceedings correctly, singer-violinist Kerith Telestai read an emotional statement from

the stage late in the set resigning from the band.

But nothing prepared me for the hometown outing by the Desperation Squad — who were

kicked out of their own tour bus on Warped ‘01 and were voted Most Annoying Band on the

reality show "America’s Got Talent. People like to throw things at this bunch of

’80s leftovers, led by the wildly entertaining but very profane Mr. P (who apparently

once ran for mayor of Pomona).

It started

before the set even began, with empty plastic water bottles and other small detritus

being thrown at the stage. When Desperation Squad started playing, Mr. P might as well

have been wearing a bull’s-eye instead of a shirt bearing an obscene phrase (I had to

edit the following photographs carefully). After a water bottle dinged a security guy in

the forehead, the yellow-clad guards moved to the side; it seemed to be all in good fun.

Then a flying hot dog hit Mr. P square in the bridge of the nose, causing his sunglasses

to cut him below the right eye. He carried on, even distributing tortillas to the crowd

to give them ammunition for the band’s song "Taco Truck."

When the first entire wastecan of trash hurtled toward the stage, though, things got

interesting. Other trashcans — 3-foot-square cardboard affairs — followed, showering

fans upfront (and a few brave photographers in the well) with litter.

Warped management pulled the plug on the set as the band began its fourth song.

Top, Desperation Squad takes the stage (yes, that’s some sort of, er, doll, behind

Mr. P). Above, Mr. P during the set.

Above, a plastic bottle sails toward the singer.

Above, Mr. P throws a hot dog back at the crowd.

Above, the aftermath.

Paramore kicked up more than some late-afternoon dust. They had a "Riot!"

– the title of the Tennessee band’s new album — which a good portion of the crowd

copped to already owning during their main stage set. It was hard to get close, but you

could spot the buoyant Hayley Williams, with her bright orange hair, from a long way

off.

It was clear than Paramore had won its fans, and the Utah quintet Meg and Dia

(below), their voices cutting through the afternoon clamor, showed they were well on

their way.

On the way

to the other end of the field, I checked out O.C.’s New Year’s Day on a sidestage.

They’re a band you might want to meet — if for no other reason than to find out what

its stylist had in mind with singer Ashley Costello’s get-up. What to make of her

tattered look? Lovelorn? Love-torn? The music, to say the least, was well-worn, spiky

pop-punk delivered with the requisite energy and an excess of vamping by Costello.

Linger not, however, for Pennywise was about to hold forth on the main stage. The

South Bay veterans acted like they owned the place, which they essentially do. They

ripped through a greatest-hits set and sparked at least three moshpits, one so far from

the stage you could barely hear the music.

It had been a couple years since the band had played the Warped Tour, but one thing’s

for sure: They work as well here as sunscreen.

Below, a long-distance moshpit.

And below: Pennywise, ground foolish.

Dude, it’s all about the music.

You fight through the crowds of spiked haircuts, tattoos and roasting flesh, and you

get hungry. The food’s reasonable — finding a place to eat it is another story,

especially since the merchants look askance when access to their goods is blocked by a

minefield of collapsed bodies. It’s almost worth becoming a vendor here because your

tent gives you shade.

So we take this opportunity to nod at the folks from Substratum, a San Fernando

Valley-based shirt company that is hawking its wares on its second Warped Tour. Simple

concept, theirs — make shirts without company logos or band names or other

surreptitious forms of marketing. I’m sure there’s a term for their designs’ artistic

sensibility, but I can’t think of it. Most of the people who stopped by merely said,

"cool."

That moshpit that the Briggs started at noon was a dustbowl by the time the Circle

Jerks went on around 2:30. Dust and punk rock flew, with the requisite shout-outs to

their South Bay brethren. There was a bit of a beef, too — apparently the Jerks’ pals,

the Damned, were only lukewarmly received on the last Warped. So the Circle Jerks

brought them back in spirit with a cover, along with some paternal advice for the

masses: "Be nice."

After wandering through the band-merch area, where T-shirt design seemed to have

reached its all-time loud, I popped into the MySpace tent, where many bands are

performing acoustic sets in addition to their plugged-in madness. It’s cozy in there.

And the generator that supplied the juice to the tent was down, delaying the set by

Riverside faves Panima (that’s Justin Canela, right) — who are slugging it out despite

voice problems encountered by their vocalists.

Then, after a quick stop at a side stage because Emily Whitehurst, the lead singer from

the Action Design,  sounded so nice, and after a welcome romp through a parade of

squirt guns (who knew that a grown-up would find them so welcome), and after a slight

intrusion on one of the many photo ops fans were getting with the Energizer Bunny, it

was on to Yellowcard.

As the kids say, they killed it. Fans crushed toward the main stage, crowd surfers

went nuts, and the California-via-Florida quintet powered through a set of their

anthems. You got the feeling you’d be expelled from the Pomona infield if you didn’t

sing along. It was perfect summertime stuff.

That’s Ryan Key and Yellowcard, above, and, below, the fans:

Buzz Bands looses his inner teenager at the

Vans Warped Tour, where the principal mission seems to be to move bodies and move

merchandise. Under the scorching sun at the Fairplex in Pomona on Friday, "punk

rock summer camp" kicked off, seeming more like a carnival with a punk-rock

soundtrack. You can look at this two ways, it seems: This is either where suburban teen

angst goes to simmer under the summer sun, or this is where true punk goes to die, lost

in sea of the crass commercialism doing bustling business under the scores of tents

hawking energy drinks, mall fashions and those absolutely necessary sunglasses.

Vitamin Water is only 3 bucks, though.

Things move fast here, so there won’t be a lot of typing today. Bands play 30-minute

sets, and it’s really heaven for the ADD-addled masses. Without taxing your legs too

much, you can see three bands in an hour.

Like we did.

One of my

L.A. favorites, the Briggs got a moshpit going in front of one of the mainstages in the

noonday sun — and crammed nine songs into a 30-minute set. Nice job, lads. The sweat

and choruses were flying, and none rang truer than "Somehwere in this city /

Walkin’ the streets / Waiting in the shadows."

A bit later, the Adolescents blasted through a set on the other main stage, even

though their veteran humor was lost a little bit on the young admirers: "Some bands

work their whole lives to get on this stage. Not me. I worked my whole life to sit over

there (pointing at the Fairplex grandstand) and watch the horses."

Then

it was on to the Vincent Black Shadow, a Vancouver, B.C., five-piece that’s doing its

best to make ska-punk interesting again. They were impressive, with vocalist Cassandra

Ford’s detached cool (and how hard is that today?) working much better than any bubbly

manufactured optimism.

Back to the Pomona infield …

music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties — and "an anything-goes type of

mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You’re not getting an album

when you happen upon "TOCA," the

debut from the L.A. band of that name. You’re getting paraded through every department

of your mental record store. It’s not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The

album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs — the work of musicians with

impressive resumes as collaborators and session men — didn’t reflect such a passion for

those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the

likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny

Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have

produced is a collection that’s bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even

this one:

Download: "Liar."&nbs

p; Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here’s the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it

literally — thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy

Allstars’ album "What Happened to Television?" Oh … (inserting my best

announcer’s voice) … if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by

the Living Sisters — the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own

right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad

I Am."

If hearing Entrance doesn’t

seem like time travel enough — listening to Guy Blakeslee is (delightfully) like

slipping through a psych-rock wormhole — there is the video for his song "Grim

Reaper Blues," off the album "Prayer of Death."

Entrance, along with Six Organs of

Admittance, performs tonight at the Silent Movie Theatre (611 N. Fairfax). It’s

a benefit for the recently resuscitated counterculture magazine Arthur. There will be readings, poetry and an

appearance by Ruthann Friedman. Tickets are

$15.