Sports Connection

Baby boomers have H.O.R.D.E., hip-hop fans have Smokin’ Grooves and metal-heads have Ozzfest. In an age when the grandfather of annual rock tours, Lollapalooza, is considered mainstream, the competition has gotten fierce for summertime music festivals.

Battling against big names and bigger money, the Vans Warped Tour is carving a niche for itself as the scrappy underdog in the field.

Two years after a rough start, Warped--which lands at the Olympic Velodrome today--has emerged as the only tour with its sights solely set on Lollapalooza’s original audience: suburban male teens.

Combining high-rush rock with skateboarding competitions, rock climbing, BMX biking and in-line skating exhibitions, Warped is like a hard-thrashing, punk-rock Lollapalooza joining forces with the X-Games.

Putting it all together was not easy.

“During the summertime, the market is so crowded,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of Pollstar, a trade publication that tracks the concert industry. “They took a huge risk when they first did it and they hung through some very lean years. Now they appear to have been successful.”

That kind of risk is the essence of the festival.

“It’s aggressive, it’s hard, it’s pushing your body,” tour founder Kevin Lyman says of the sports and punk link. “You look over at the ramps and these kids with their boards, and then you look at the stage, and you see the connection. Punk and skate crowds just gravitate toward each other.”

The tour’s definition of punk has expanded with this year’s bill, which veers away from typical skate-punk faves such as NOFX. It includes everything from ska bands Reel Big Fish and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones to such punk outfits as Pennywise and the Descendents--and even a big-band swing act, the Royal Crown Revue.

Pennywise guitarist Fletcher Dragge, who says that his band turned down a chance to play Lollapalooza’s main stage in 1995, is now preparing for his second stint with Warped. He says that bands benefit from the small scale and less ambitious scope.

He adds that keeping the admission price down doesn’t hurt, either. Tickets were $18.75 for the sold-out Velodrome show, compared to a top price of $27 for Lollapalooza’s Blockbuster Pavilion date in August. (There is also lawn seating for $17 at Lollapalooza.)

“Our fans won’t pay $60 to hear us play [a bigger festival], so no one would know who we are,” Dragge says. “Some people would say that that’s good, but for us, what’s the point? It’s no fun.”

Lyman says that fun--not money--is the point of Warped. An energetic, fast-talking 36-year-old who works out of his home in Claremont, Lyman says that going on the road with the skaters and bands that he considers his friends makes all the hard work worth it. A production veteran, he helped put together the first four Lollapalooza tours. In 1994, while working at Board Aid, a winter music and snowboarding fund-raiser, he came up with the idea of throwing a cutting-edge yet communal sports and music festival.

“I was sitting in the snow and I saw that everyday kids were beginning to live the [skate] lifestyle beyond the hard-core people,” he says. “My idea was about stripping it down to the basics. I knew that if we didn’t do it first, some big company would do it--and not do it right. . . . We knew that we were not going to make any money, but we knew that we’d do it the right way.”

He says that he lost money the first year, and that Warped barely broke even in ’96.

“Basically, it’s a working persons’ tour,” Lyman says. “We’re all out loading the trucks and we didn’t need all the big expenses. . . . Our stages aren’t fancy, but we make the bands sound good.”

Seeing the effect that the first tour had on festival-goers who returned the next year prompted Lyman to include grass-roots organizing. This year, fans are encouraged to gather water samples for a clean-water petition headed by the Surfrider Foundation and to bring cans of food for the Pennywise Food Drive for local homeless organizations. A portion of tour revenues goes to Camp Pacific Heartland, a summer camp for children who are HIV-positive or have AIDS.

His pro-teenager boosterism has prompted friends to dub him “Gandhi Lyman, summer camp counselor.”

Despite Lyman’s altruism, Warped has been criticized for its slew of brand names vying for kids’ attention. Ads for the tour are plastered with logos from 29 magazines, sports drinks, record labels and skateboard manufacturers. Most prominently, Vans was recently added to the festival’s name.

“I say, ‘Look at the ticket price,’ ” Lyman counters. “I’ve got an even more amazing skateboard ramp, the climbing wall, the Epitaph [Records] video room. . . . I say, ‘Let’s use our corporate dollars and have a great day.’ ”

BE THERE

Warped Tour, with Social Distortion, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Pennywise, Sick of It All, Royal Crown Revue, Reel Big Fish, others, today at Olympic Velodrome, Cal State Dominguez Hills, Carson, noon. Sold out. (310) 516-4000.