Warped Tour: 'Punk rock is back'

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."