Time Warp

Spencer Patterson

Friday, July 2, 2004 | 9:11 a.m.

When: Gates open at noon Sunday.

Where: Desert Breeze Skate Park (8275 W. Spring Mountain Road)

Tickets: $12.

Information: 455-8200.

Brian Baker was a 15-year-old high school student when he helped found a little punk rock band from Washington, D.C., called Minor Threat in 1980.

He never could have imagined that 24 years later, critics would toss around terms such as "seminal" and "massively influential" when discussing the group.

"When I joined Minor Threat it was an after-school hobby," Baker said from his home in Washington. "We would rehearse in the basement of the guitar player's mom's house. No one had any inkling that anybody would care about this. We never had a long-term plan.

"And now, it's probably, historically, one of the top 20 punk rock bands ever. A happy accident let's put it that way."

In those days, Baker's primary exposure to punk rock came via slow, expensive overseas mail orders.

"When this train left the station, the only way I could get a punk rock record was to order it from England and wait eight weeks," he said.

Throughout this summer, Baker has a great vantage point from which to appreciate just how far the genre has come since his youth.

As a guitarist for veteran punk outfit Bad Religion, Baker spends a part of each day performing on the main stage at the 10th annual Vans Warped Tour. The rest of the time, he helps register young voters and wanders from stage to stage, appreciating the tour's 60-plus act roster.

The Warped Tour stops at Las Vegas' Desert Breeze Skate Park (8275 W. Spring Mountain Road) on Sunday. Gates open at noon, with music scheduled to run until 9 p.m. Tickets are $12.

"This is our favorite tour to do," Baker said, a few days before setting out on the 49-date extravaganza, which concludes Aug. 20 in Boston. "We're traveling with all these people we've known for so many years. It's like having the best touring party in the world. It's a summer camp for adults."

Bad Religion came into existence the same year as Minor Threat, on the opposite coast, in Los Angeles. That means Baker's current band has been around longer than many of his Warped tourmates have been alive.

Rather than bristle at the term "elder statesmen," the guitarist relishes it.

"I think we qualify as that," Baker said. "Our catalog has more records now than I can count. And I don't think that's necessarily a negative."

Baker even has kind words about the new generation of poppy punk bands, whose MTV-friendly style varies drastically from the hardcore approach of Minor Threat or Bad Religion.

"The entire punk-pop characterization goes back to '93 and '94 with Offspring and Green Day," Baker said. "And my attitude then was the same as it is now: anything that promotes a young person's interest, or old person's interest, in this style of music is a good thing.

"And if Good Charlotte is the gateway drug by which they can discover Black Flag and the Germs and Minor Threat, that's a good thing. I don't think that there's anything gained in trying to qualify what's punk and what isn't."

Still, Baker draws a clear distinction between Bad Religion's politically charged lyrics and the less weighty tact taken by some of the scene's contemporaries.

"That ethic has been the whole Bad Religion thing this whole time," said Baker, who joined the band 10 years ago. "If you go back to their earliest records, when they were 15 in a basement, they were still contemplating things a little bit larger than what they were going to do on Saturday night or if that girl at Hot Topic liked them."

The 14 tracks on Bad Religion's latest disc, last month's "The Empire Strikes Back" -- mostly penned by original members Greg Graffin (vocals) and Brett Gurewitz (guitar) -- are no exception.

As the album's title suggests, the band offers up a scathing attack on the United States' pre-emptive strike against Iraq. But Baker says it goes much farther than that.

"It's the pre-emptive strike, but even more it's characterizing this entire crony capitalism, fundamentalist Christian, nation-building empire that is the U.S. government right now under this administration," Baker said.

"It's not the simple striking pre-emptively and for really no apparent reason. It's an overview of the way all policy has been dictated since (U.S. Supreme Court) Judge (William) Rehnquist decided who the president was in 2000."

Baker also had some pointed words about the upcoming presidential election

"Kerry's going to win. He's not a stupid person and he's not a liar."

You won't hear him express those views onstage Sunday, however. The Warped Tour's stage schedules -- drawn at random and unveiled the morning of each show -- provide each act with only 30 minutes of performing time, leaving little room for banter.

"It's part of this egalitarian thing that really makes the Warped Tour so much fun for the musicians and why it keeps going this long," Baker said.

"I don't care if you're Kiss or a bunch of 15-year-olds from Canada who came down in their mom's van. You play half an hour, and you never know when you're going to play."