Sunday was the third and final day of the 20th Riot Fest and they were fixing to go out on a real high note. The weather forecast was threatening rain and storms but none of it happened and instead we got a perfectly warm and sunny day!
Chicago punk veterans, The Effigies got things started at high noon. Sadly we lost lead singer John Kezdy a couple of years ago but the two remaining members recruited a really great new frontman that fits in beautifully. It helps that the band has such an amazing catalog of great songs but man those are hard shoes to fill. Their new guitar player is great too. They played the entire For Ever Grounded album and it sounded amazing! They kicked a lot of ass and even the purist in me who normally is against bands replacing fallen members and continuing on couldn’t resist how great they have sounded both times this lineup has played here! Run, don’t walk to see them if they come to your town, you’ll be glad you did!
Zero Boys have the distinction of being a first wave hardcore band who put out one of the greatest hardcore albums of all time. That album is called Vicious Circle and the band played the entire album as their set! How could you ask for better than that?! You can’t! They killed it, so much energy and so much fun. That album is a timeless blueprint of hardcore punk that still retains melody. They were trailblazers and what a treat it was to have them return to Riot Fest for the first time since the club years.
Chicago’s own Smoking Popes were next. Sadly they overlapped with Pegboy so if you wanted to see both you had to cut out part of the Popes set. At least they didn’t get rained out like they did the last time they played! This band has been around for over three decades, and they’ve never made a bad record. In fact they are one of the most enjoyable pop punk bands to come out of this city. Their songs are catchy as hell and they play pretty much flawlessly every time. You are guaranteed a great time at a Smoking Popes show and this proved it to a large audience. If that wasn’t enough, they played an album set of Born To Quit!
Pegboy returned to Riot Fest for the first time in close to two decades! They played one of the early Congress Theater shows and haven’t been back since. They more than made up for the absence by playing Strong Reaction in its entirety, and if that wasn’t enough they had a really special surprise at the end. For their final song, the band played a cover of “Treason” by Naked Raygun as a tribute to the late Pierre Kezdy (who also played for many years in Pegboy in addition to Naked Raygun), but that’s not all. In what was a touching and memorable moment that brought many people to tears, Pierre’s daughter, Nicole, joined the band on stage to play Pierre’s bass for the song! That girl killed it, she looked so comfortable on stage like she had been doing it her whole life. If there’s a heaven (and I hope there is), I can guarantee you that Pierre was looking down proudly at this moment. It was beyond a special moment, and I’m not going to lie, it even made me tear up a little and that’s not an easy feat!
The Linda Lindas have been getting quite a buzz this past year and have opened for some great bigger bands like Jawbreaker. On this day they proved what the hype was about as they put on an amazing high energy set. They took command of that stage and never slowed down for a minute. They plasted through a 30 minute set that left the audience begging for more! I can guarantee you they will be back and playing longer and to even more people in the future.
Bad Religion is a lot like AC/DC where you know what you are getting with each album and each performance, and you are always guaranteed that it will be good. They played to the biggest sized crowd I’ve seen for them yet at a Riot Fest and they did not disappoint. They played an hour of non-stop Bad Religion hits and some deep cuts too. They are one of the most consistently great, veteran punk bands still at it, and they’ll never let you down. They could play 100 more Riot Fests and everyone would still want them back again for more.
Idles absolutely destroyed a giant crowd that packed in to see them. One of the guitar players immediately jumped down from the stage and into the crowd where he played the first song. The rest of the band never stood still for a moment and jumped and paced and ran around the stage as they pummeled the audience with such intensity you can’t even put it into words, but you felt it while watching them play. Even their slower, more melodic songs knocked you on your ass! They won the day for best performance overall.
Texas Is The Reason has recently reunited to show the world that if you overlooked them years ago you were a fool. Their emo styled indie punk checks all the right boxes and their performance was spectacular. Here’s hoping they stick around as they were really missed by many, and likely won over a lot of new fans with this set.
Riot Fest was responsible for Jawbreaker reuniting, something everyone on Earth wanted and no one thought would happen, so it seems fitting that the band returned to the fest for a third time and played just before Green Day (who closed the show). The band played many of the staples of their recent tours but also played “Fine Day” from Unfun! That alone was worth the price of admission for any long time fan. Please come back again Jawbreaker and bust out “Imaginary War”, if you do I think I may. never stop smiling! It was a great set to end the fest if you weren’t photographing or watching Green Day, who put on one hell of a great performance from all reports.
20 years of Riot Fest seemed to go by in the blink of an eye and the people involved in putting this together should be proud of their hard work. They totally put together a weekend so full of moments that it met the expectations of a major milestone such as 20 years. Now the Riot Fest withdrawal has set in for all of us, and it is going to feel like a lifetime waiting for it to return next year.
