Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @ConcertGoingPro
Back in the day, Warped Tour was the travelling festival of the summer. It’s back after a six-year absence, but as a destination festival, with one of its three locations being in Southern California.
Historically, the Bay Area always reaps the rewards of destination festivals like Coachella where bands will book other nearby shows or West Coast tours outside of the festival’s radius clause— so much so that Spinning Platters esteemed Editor even coined the phrase Fauxchella (and owns that domain name!) — and each year keeps track of Coachella bands that make their way up here.
So now, one of the advantages of Warped Tour bringing nearly 100 punk rock bands to Long Beach is that some of them will book in the Bay Area… and in the span of four nights following Warped Tour Long Beach, five of the travelling festival veterans and one LBC newbie made the journey up here.
Dropkick Murphys Photos + Setlist.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey may have taken a hiatus in 2017 after travelling their Circus since the late 1800’s (it’s back again now), and so Less Than Jake and Fishbone decided to bring their Circus to town! Missing though were the animals and high-flying acrobats and in its place was air dancers (those inflatable stick figures attached to a fan blowing air through it), balloons, a homemade leaf blower toilet paper dispenser, a few dancing clowns, and three Warped Tour veterans (and the newbie!) delivering a killer evening of punk rock, ska, and ska punk rock.
Less Than Jake Photos + Setlist.
The only unfortunate festival exception is Aftershock in Sacramento. The geographic radius is too close, so the Bay Area does not usually get many shows from their bands. For the most part though, the San Francisco Bay Area will continue to benefit from those festival radius clauses, and with the announcement of the 2026 Warped Tour Long Beach edition, it appears that now might be the time to obtain another Faux domain name in order to keep tabs on it!
