The Day Ozzfest And Warped Tour Combined In 1998

As a 'skater' kid in the 1990's, the Warped Tour was a must-see every summer for me and my friend group. Whether it was at the Metrodome parking lot, Midway Stadium in St. Paul or (I'm pretty sure this happened) in Shakopee at Canterbury Park's parking lot.

Nothing I had seen from 1995-1997 prepared me for what was to come in 1998: an unprecedented, one-off melding of the Warped Tour with Ozzfest at Float-Rite Park in Somerset, Wisconsin. One venue, one ticket and almost 50 bands.

Oh, and by the way, the ticket for the whole thing was only $37 (yes, after 'fees.') We even had to go to an actual ticket window to buy them.

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We were sixteen years old at the time and our parents weren't too keen on letting us drive from Apple Valley to Somerset, so we were going to have to find an adult to take us.

While I am sure our well-meaning parents intended for some other kid's actual parent to drive us, we instead enlisted my buddy Chris' 17 year old sister to take us. I'm not sure how exactly we got away with that.

THE SHOW 

After a LOT of sitting in traffic we got to the venue late in the morning and found a pamphlet with the stage schedules to plan our day. For me, I didn't plan on checking out the Ozzfest stages much, as I was mostly there for the Warped Tour.

I saw SO MANY bands that day- Tool, Incubus, Rancid, Megadeth, Limp Bizkit, Deftones, Motorhead and dozens more. I remember it being a hot day and I definitely didn't bring ANY money for food and drinks but, I was sixteen- I had a blast!

OZZMAN

While there were up to six stages active between the two festivals at any given time. However, at the end of the night, there would be just one stage active for the night's headliner: Ozzy Osborne.

While I obviously knew of Ozzy, I wasn't familiar with a lot of his music outside of 'Crazy Train.' We decided to stick around to watch the show and Ozzy was quite the showman. Not only was he high-energy, running around the stage and riling up the crowd but he was also telling all kinds of Black Sabbath stories and interacting with the crowd frequently.

For whatever reason, my biggest takeaway from this show was the giant water 'cannons' Ozzy had perched high atop the stage setup near the lighting. At big moments (or at Osborne's insistence) the very hot, very tired and very sweaty crowd would get a refreshing blast of cold water.