With an enormous 1-800-COLLECT banner hanging limply to his right and a Vans logo painted on the half-pipe to his left, Social Distortion frontman Mike Ness stared straight into a mosh pit teeming with Washington, D.C., teenagers and proselytized about the evils of corporate America. But the overwhelmingly young, white and male moshers were too busy beating the hell out of each other to notice the irony.

\\Welcome to the Vans Warped Tour, where the line between apathy and aggression is thin, concert-goers without tattoos are rare and anyone who has a driver's license is probably a chaperone. Featuring 25 bands and about as many sponsors, the third annual traveling festival is an adrenaline-fueled celebration of 'boards, bikes and rock & roll (in teenage wasteland circa 1997, sex and drugs are things your parents did) that's as much about demographic marketing as punk rock. The agenda is simple: Display cool products, showcase extreme sports and try to squeeze in some music.

\\As though four full stages of music wasn't enough, concert organizers also assembled a giant half-pipe between the main stage and the Club Stage. The fact that they happened to do so under a giant billboard for U.S. Healthcare (not a sponsor) seemed especially ironic when a biker or skateboarder took a nasty fall. (Apparently, such rush-producing stunts can be as dangerous as drugs.) Also wedged in the show's semicircular layout were a rock climbing exhibition and a handful of merchandising tents hawking everything from attitude-heavy stickers to angry T-shirts to painful piercings. A few years after punk rock went to the mall, the mall has apparently come to punk rock.

\\Concerts are generally centered around music, but the actual performances were one of the weaker parts of Warped. For starters, the sound was atrocious. Thanks to a bit of poor planning that had the Club stage set up next to the main stage, the day turned into an unwinnable battle of the bands. The only way to really hear the music was to take your life in your hands and venture up close to one of the stages.

\\As far as highlights go, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Reel Big Fish drew large, flailing crowds with tight, souped-up ska, but Social Distortion performed the strongest set of the day. An energetic "The Creeps" was unfortunately marred by a local act banging away on the Club Stage, but a galloping "Ball and Chain" was powerful enough to transcend its overly sponsored surroundings. Just as Ness growled, "I'm lonely and I'm tired