Riot Festival
September 13-15
Humbolt Park, Chicago, IL
Leo Pareti Music
Review
The Top 5
Minutes of Riot Festival
5)
The Festival Itself
Last weekend, the acclaimed and
most anticipative summer event called Riot Festival & Carnival rocked
Chicago’s Humboldt Park. Now in its 3rd year running, and 2nd
in Chicago’s Humboldt Park, Riot Festival has proven itself to the biggest punk
rock festival in the America’s. “This is like Reading and Leads!” Pennywise’s
lead singer excitedly quoted on Saturday Afternoon. Indeed, when looking out
form the main stage one can just see a sea of people and always a notorious
mosh-pit. The event was a close if not sold out festival with as many as 20K
plus people flooding the festival grounds.
Rather late in the festival
season, it was held September 13-15 and unfortunately, the cool weather &
down pouring rain Sunday let everyone aware that summer is indeed over and
autumn has begun. Despite many Mohawks and bald skin heads being covered up on
Sunday with rain jackets & umbrellas, the weather for Friday & Saturday
was pleasant enough to have a festival worthy time.
Riot
Festival isn’t part of America’s big four yet, being Coachella, Bonnaroo,
Lollapalooza & Sasquatch festivals, but it may as well be. Even at these
festivals, it was recorded many festival goers asking each other, ‘Well are you
going to Riot Festival this year?” What
made Riot Festival the most talked about event of the summer and Chicago’s most
anticipated party? It wasn’t because of its location-Humboldt Park is actually
in a bad part of town and hard to get to transportation wise. The answer why so
many people flocked to this location, most being from out of town, was because
of the line up. The line up brought legendary punk bands like Blondie, Lou Reed
& Bad Religion to play against modern punk legends like Rancid, Pennywise,
Yellowcard & Against Me. One might be surprised enough to see a band that
hasn’t performed in 25 years called The Replacements sharing the same stage as
Blink 182 & Fall Out Boy, but it happened at Riot Festival 2013, making this
a true punk rock festival. The crowd was a mixture of both old & new fans
alike as they flocked into see their favorite bands at Riot Festival.
One more
thing to add about the festival is its uniqueness. Riot Festival is unlike any
other festival because its actually a carnival. Big Carnival tents &
various rides including a Ferris wheel were set up across the park, and
hundreds of carnival employees like clowns, flame flowers & general weird
costumes flowed across the festival making it extremely entertaining & fun
to look at. This was why Riot Festival was one of the best festivals of the
year.
4) Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
One of
these punk rock legends that performed & Riot Festival & Carnival 2013
was the legendary Joan Jett & The Blackhearts. Across the way, Bad
Religion’s lead singer joked, ‘Man there’s a lot of 80’s bands here today. Oh
wait, were unfortunately from the 80s, I almost forgot.” Joan rocked the
festival Friday night, providing dance friendly tunes the crowd knew and sang
along to during her entire set.
Many older
rock fans might be thinking nowadays Joan Jett might be too old & washed up
to see live. Not true at all. The female rock and roll star performed with
energy & merit, strumming her guitar to familiar tunes like ‘Bad
Reputation’ and ‘I love Rock and Roll’. There was more dancing at Joan Jett
than any other performer at the
festival, and the crowd cheered and swayed as she continued on throughout the
night with her band the Blackhearts. It was a truly pleasant experience to be
witnessing a rock and roll legend.
Halfway
through the set, Joan Jett brought out Against Me’s lead singer, Grace Kelly,
who can also play the guitar splendidly. The crowd cheered with excitement as
the pair tore through a song they had recorded together over the past year. In
a way, Grace Kelly is a modern version of Joan Jett, and the two almost seemed
to duel with guitars as they continued to play.
And of
course, as Kristen Stewart notably acted out to a T in The Runaways, Joan Jett
let out her signature snarl and growl throughout the entire set lit. It was a
concert well worth attending to, and even though she might be getting older
nowadays, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts are still worth seeing.
Riot Festival Score:
3 out of 5 stars ***
3)
Guided by Voices
Another
legendary group performed at Riot Festival Saturday evening. The Ohio band
Guided by Voices rocked the Roots stage, proving that these old guys still have
it. All with grey hair, the band members performed extremely well together with
on centered beats that blended in well with the lead singers melodies as he
sang out and entertained the crowd. Guided by Voices was probably the most
comical of all the acts at Riot Festival as well.
Lead singer
Robert Polland continued to joke throughout the entire set. “Were at a
festival, so let’s play all our hits. No fuck you guys, were going to play
songs no knows,” he said as the set began. Fortunate to this, Guided by Voices
did include many hits throughout the set that the crowd sang along to with joy
and satisfaction. Guided by Voice’s lead singer carried on their performance,
and by the end of the set, one had a little familiar notion of who they were
and who he was. “I’ve always wanted to say up next, Blondie,” he joked near the
end, so of course several times he mentioned Blondie was indeed up next.
Overall, the set was extremely entertaining & one of the best of Riot
Festival 2013.
Riot Festival Score: 3.5 out of 5 stars ***/*
2)
Meeting Kitten & Surfer Blood Backstage
Meeting Kitten & Surfer Blood Backstage
The best
part of Riot Festival for this interviewer wasn’t the festival at all, but
meeting some of the bands actually performing! On Saturday morning, L.A. indie
rock band Kitten, who’s making a name for themselves even before their first
full length album has been recorded, opened up the festival at 11:30. The
performance was full of energy as everyone in the band is under the age of 20.
Lead singer Chloe Chaidez is described as a ‘young rock goddess’ and that title
can certainly be justified watching her live as she jumps around on stage,
doing crazy dance moves, and every other minute seeming to be hugging &
loving the other band members. “I’m for sure going on a carnival ride later
today” Chloe said smiling, displaying that even though they might be an up and
coming rock band, the members of kitten are still of course young at heart.
Backstage
however, meeting the band was a completely different feel. Everyone in the
band, especially Chloe, was sensationally nice and easy to talk to. They might
be kids at heart, and even backstage one could tell how youth full they are by
watching them as they really wanted to be everywhere at once and talk to everyone,
but most importantly, they can also be mature when they want to be.
Surfer
Blood, another young indie band from Florida, were also present at the media
outlet. Lead singer John Paul Pitts was extremely grateful we saw a few songs
of his set before going backstage.
Here are some questions I asked Kitten & Surfer Blood:
Surfer Blood:
Me:
“I noticed you did a lot of crowd inter reaction during your performance and even at one time, you got into the crowd and hugged everybody. Do you feel that necessary during your shows and do it often?”
“I noticed you did a lot of crowd inter reaction during your performance and even at one time, you got into the crowd and hugged everybody. Do you feel that necessary during your shows and do it often?”
John Maul Pitts:
“I love going into the crowd while performing. I try &
do it as often as I can and every one of my shows. You’ve got to do things like
that because it’s so easy just to spread love around.”
Kitten:
Me:
“You guys were the first performers at the festival today.
Your performance was at 11:30AM in the morning, what that like?”
Kitten:
“Brutal! It completely sucks. But this time it was better
than the last morning performance we did, because we had to perform after a
band, so we had very limited time. This time, there was nobody opening, so we
had time to come in, and actually do sound check up & make sure everything
was ready. Riot festival was a lot better than the last performance we did in
the morning because of that.”
Me: “What do you
like about this festival versus some of the other ones you’ve played at?”
Kitten: “The line up!
These are all bands we grew up on listening to during High School, so its
awesome coming out here and seeing all of our music heroes perform at one place
in one weekend.”
Me: “So, you some
of these bands performing here are some of your influences you might say?”
Kitten: “Of Course. Blondie, Dinosaur JR, Pennywise, Black
Flag, Rancid, Quicksand, Mission of Burma, & Against Me were all some of
the influences of our music.”
Me: “Are you guys
staying after your interviews to catch any of the performances?”
Kitten: “It really sucks, but our label has us flying out
today at 7PM, so we have to leave the festival at around 5, even though this is
a one off performance for us and we don’t have anything scheduled for a while.
We really want to stick around for Flag later today, but we don’t think were
going to have time.”
Me: “Is there
anyone playing today that you guys might be able to see?”
Kitten: “Dinosaur JR!
We really want to see them and we’ll be all there for that.”
Me: “So what was
the best tour you’ve guys done lately?”
Kitten: “Opening up
for Paramore. They are incredible musicians, and each show on the concert was
sold out. So it was great exposure for us. Paramore were actually the nicest
musicians we’ve met so far out on tour, because some of the time you are on
tour with somebody and it isn’t too fun, especially when you don’t get along
with them. With Paramore, we actually got to hang out with them almost every
night after the show. It was kind of weird, because all of us (the guys in
kitten) had a huge crush on Haley, so when were with her after the first time,
that kind of worn off and we saw her as a good friend versus someone we had a
crush on.”
Final Question:
Me: “To wrap this
up, What are some of your short term goals?”
Kitten: “We’d really
like to finally record a full length album, which will hopefully be soon. We
only have 2 EPs out now.”
1)
Blink
Blink
Blink 182
is one of those legendary bands that if you have a chance to go see them, you
should. The reason why is because this group doesn’t tour that often, they only
do a full nationwide tour maybe two or three times in a dozen years. Saturday
night, the band performed in true and full form at Riot Festival & Carnival
2013 on the main stage. The band still has unlimited energy, and as always, a
very ‘Fuck You’ attitude towards everything. That is what punk rock is all
about, after all. The performance was powerful and satisfying, despite the
unfortunate & awkward ending.
Does
Blink 182 still have it? The answer is yes, and they clearly love doing it. “Uh
Oh, Travis is taking his shirt off by the 3rd song, you know what
that means people? Let’s not slow down!’ Tom Delonge shouted out in the
beginning of the show. It was surprising to see everyone in the crowd actually
extremely friendly and respected towards one another. Before they came on
stage, almost everyone was talking to other groups and relating concert
experiences. People who ‘rushed forward’
to the stage got an impressive ‘Assholes chant by the rest of the crowd, most
notably because of what happened during Fall Out Boy the previous night as many
people were crushed in front of the stage. So this time, everyone was a bit
more friendly. During the performance, fans clapped each others hands, danced,
moshed and did whatever they did like feeling (some girl was even doing cart
wheels in the mosh pit), while singing along to every one of Blink 182’s songs.
“You guys
seemed tired,” Tom shouted towards the end of the set. What did everyone in the
crowd say? “Fuck you” was the one response, of course. At the end of the
performance, the band played an encore that was met with an intense awkward
feel t it. The band already performed over the time limit (11PM), and Tom
shouted, “Are you ready for a Grand Finale?” Unfortunately, the Chicago police
can be extremely forceful at parks during evening festival performances, and
the band could not play one more tune. That wasn’t the only thing awkward about
Blink 182-the band has free masonry symbols over their speakers, but whether or
not they are part of that group or perhaps the same group that may have caused
the death of Michael Jackson, one can only speculate.
In all,
Blink 182 was exceptionally good, full of energy, and never slowed down from
the beginning of their set to the last of it. They are indeed worth seeing in
today’s musical world.
Riot Festival Rating: 4
out of 5 stars ****
Set list:
1) Feeling This
2) Up all Night
3) The Rock Show
4) What's my Age Again?
5) Dogs Eating Dogs
6) Down
7) I Miss you
8) Wishing Well
9) Dumpweed
10) Always
11) Violence
12) After Midnight
13) First Date
14) Heart's all Gone
15) Man Overboard
16) Ghost on the Dancefloor
17) All the Small Things
18) Josie
Encore:
19) Carousel
20) Dammit
21) Family Reunion
Set list:
1) Feeling This
2) Up all Night
3) The Rock Show
4) What's my Age Again?
5) Dogs Eating Dogs
6) Down
7) I Miss you
8) Wishing Well
9) Dumpweed
10) Always
11) Violence
12) After Midnight
13) First Date
14) Heart's all Gone
15) Man Overboard
16) Ghost on the Dancefloor
17) All the Small Things
18) Josie
Encore:
19) Carousel
20) Dammit
21) Family Reunion
No comments:
Post a Comment