LONG BEACH, Calif. — The stages at the upcoming Warped Tour revival will reportedly be placed 100 feet away from the all-ages audience in order to comply with national sex offender laws, according to festival organizers.
“This measure is unfortunate, but we see no other solution,” said Jeremiah Reeves, head of public relations for Warped Tour. “Would we prefer to run a tour that doesn’t have at least one sex offender on every stage? Of course! But this is the music business, after all, and it has a rich legacy of creeps. This is basically why we had to stop doing the tour in the first place. But the safety of our attendees is the number one priority and that’s why we will keep everyone as far away from band dudes as possible.”
Organizers reportedly brainstormed for hours in order to come up with a solution that delivered the best musical experience for the consumer, while keeping underage patrons safe from potentially dangerous musicians.
“Initially, the idea was to have an all-sex offender stage,” Reeves continued. “But that basically comprised 75 percent of bands in general, so it was a scheduling nightmare. An intern suggested we hold an ethics seminar for our musicians on how not to abuse their power as rock stars. But none of the bands showed up because it was scheduled at the same time as our post-show wet T-shirt contest behind the Hot Topic tent.”
Longtime Warped Tour stagehand Erik “Dirt” Welch expressed disgust at this generation of band members taking advantage of young fans.
“Seriously, why can’t these scumbags control themselves?” Welch said while loading dozens of fake amp shells into a storage unit for the fest. “I’m a 48-year-old man who’s spent most of his adult life working music fests, and I can concretely say that an 18-year-old girl is just as hot as a 17-year-old girl. These bands today have no morals.”
Photo by Colyn Emery @ColynEmery.