By Chris Varias
The Cincinnati Enquirer

A strange mix of music converged at a certain spot within the Riverbend concourse Thursday afternoon. From this location you could watch a bagpipe player march onto a stage and hear a punk band blaring on another stage behind you. A trumpet sounded on the left, while DJs rapped on the right.

These are the sounds the Warped Tour makes. It's still the premier annual punk summer package, but now it's also the premier annual summer package, period.

Many such summer festivals have come and gone because they drifted away from what brought initial success, but the Cincinnati stop showed that Warped branches out wisely, hitting on a perfect balance of punk sure-things and complementing not-quite-punk and not-at-all-punk acts.

This year's edition featured seven stages of music. Most were along the concourse, which was book-ended by the two main stages.

The pavilion stage was divided in two. A band would play on one half while another would set up on the other side.

Punk was still the dominant style, and the bill was filled with pop and emo punk acts that have gained commercial success like the Used, Less Than Jake, the Ataris, and Mest. But it was Rancid, the group with the most classic-punk sound on the bill, who put on the show of the day.

The Bay Area band's unrelenting half-hour set opened with "Journey to the End of the East Bay," "Ruby Soho" and "Roots Radicals," all from their best album, And Out Come the Wolves. With these songs and others like "Time Bomb" and the new "Red Hot Moon," Rancid was somehow simultaneously channeling the Clash and staking a claim to the current title of America's best rock 'n' roll band.

AFI preceded Rancid, and the successful goth-styled California group came off like a Glenn Danzig side project - with all of the banshee screams and none of the muscles.

Later on the same stage, Andrew W.K. played to a crowd thinned out by late-afternoon rain. His high-energy hard-rock anthems, beefed up by three guitar players, brought to mind a mix of the Ramones, Meat Loaf and a high school pep rally.

A smaller side stage hosted several local bands, including Scallywagon, Caruso and One Side Red. The Bottom Line closed the stage, and unfortunately for them, their overhead cover did little to shelter them from a driving sideways rain.

There were more locals on the tented Code of tha Cutz side stage, which hosted hip-hop acts. As Cincinnati's Abiyah began her set a crowd formed, initially looking to dodge a soft drizzle. Abiyah's brainy lyrics, which she rapped, sang and delivered in spoken word, kept the crowd hanging around after the skies dried up.

E-mail cvarias@enquirer.com