More than a concert video, Vans Warped Tour Live 2002 happily captures the top-to-bottom experience of a Vans festival descending on Anytown, USA. The long-running Warped Tour (nine years as of this DVD production) is an annual mosaic of state-of-the-art punk rock, a road show featuring 17 or so acts in various stages of artistic development. Shot in summer 2002, Live features the barefoot, chummy excitement of piano-centered Something Corporate, some first-rate (even vaguely melodic) thrashing on Anti-Flag's "Got the Numbers," galloping folk-punk from Ireland's Flogging Molly, and Reel Big Fish's crisp ska with a Coasters-like sense of humor. The tour's handful of veteran acts--Mighty Mighty Bosstones, NOFX, and Bad Religion among Them--are the tent poles of Vans' moveable feast, and they don't let the rain-soaked crowd down. Breathtaking extras include a visit to the tour's biker-mad Moto-X Park and the half-pipe at the pro BMX skate park.
