Our 10 Must-Have-Seen Sets from Riot Fest
In honor of its 15th anniversary, Riot Fest showed up and showed out with a star-studded lineup. Their arrangement featured acts of legacy and newcomers last month in Chicago (September 13-15). It was a wild ride, from final band appearances and reunions to full album performances. Here’s a look at the best sets we saw during Riot Fest 2019.
10. Patti Smith
At 72, Patti has still got it! She exudes strength as a performer, showing no signs of slowing down for the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer. She sprung onto the stage with the hit “People Have the Power.” It really started to pick up with her cover of Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush,” which she sang with just Tony Shanahan backing her on piano and had the whole place either singing along or dead silent in admiration. It was all Patti Smith classics from there, first “Pissing In A River” and “Free Money,” which saw Patti channelling the same ferocity she had when she recorded those songs in the ’70s. They were followed by her biggest hit, “Because the Night,” which was of course a huge crowdpleaser, and then she wrapped things up with an even bigger crowdpleaser, “Gloria,” which was the perfect way to end the set. Patti went absolutely wild as she performed “Pissing In A River,” and the crowd was yelling as loudly as they could to “Because the Night.”
9. Pennywise
The SoCal punk band has been around for over 30 years now, and they’re still a raw as ever. Performing on the Radicals stage, they opened with the hit “Fight ‘Til You Die” from their 1997 album Full Circle. Immediately, the crowd chanted the lyrics back. They carried on with other hits from the ’90s like “Rules” and “My Own Country.” They even performed a few covers like Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” and AC/DC’s “T.N.T.”
Lead singer Jim Lindberg, was flaunting middle fingers and playfully taunting the media crew. I couldn’t help but laugh while he sarcastically said, “I’m so popular; look at me,” but then told us to turn around and check out the beautiful crowd. He wasn’t lying; they were lookers. There is really something special about seeing the fans pushed against the rail so tight they can barely breathe and sun-kissed faces so bright from being sweaty and excited about that ten-foot gap between them and their idols.
They perform relentlessly, and so does the crowd, with nonstop waves of crowd-surfers and wild circle pits.
8. The Struts
Where to start? The Struts are a healthy mix of things this generation missed out on and dreams of replicating from music of the 1970s. I’m talkin’ the velvet and sequins, sweat-smeared eyeliner, tousled hair and rhapsodic tunes the crowd can belt in unison. They are the glam-rock band of today.
Lead singer Luke Spiller was donning a bright red jumpsuit with large bat-wing sleeves swaying with his every groove. The gang wasted zero time getting the crowd moving, opening with three of their biggest hits: “Primadonna Like Me,” “Body Talks,” and “Kiss This.” Even with their slower jams, the crowd hung onto every word and every riff. They’re charismatic, forceful and proof that rock and roll is not dead.
7. Glassjaw
Celebrating its 18th birthday, Glassjaw performed their 2002 LP Worship and Tribute in full. This album means a lot to the group as it was their first after a nasty breakout with their previous label, Roadrunner Records, before signing to Warner Bros. The band has only released two other albums since.
Glassjaw performed on the Rebel stage on Friday, and believe me, they sounded absolutely perfect. Which says a lot, because the majority of those who played on the main stage that night had terrible sound issues. They blazed through their set laborlessly. Everything was on point, and talk about the feelings of nostalgia, riffing through old jams like “Cosmopolitan Blood Loss” and “Trailer Park Jesus,” both of which they haven’t performed since 2012, and “Must’ve Run All Day” and “Radio Cambodia” that haven’t been performed live since 2014. The continuity between the band and crowd was a sight – you should’ve been there.
6. Slayer
Slayer’s set was sold as their final Chicago/Milwaukee show, and with that there was plenty of hype that caused a massive crowd. They packed in 20 songs within their 90-minute set time, and it was a rager from start to finish. It was full of screaming, circle pits and, of course, pyrotechnics. Frontman Tom Araya expressed his gratitude for the fans. “I want to thank you very much for being here. I hope you like the show.”
“Temptation,” “Hell Awaits,” and “Raining Blood” are just a few of the tunes they played during their hit setlist. They killed the remainder of their set time with “Angel of Death.” Though they were finished playing, no encore in sight, the crowd remained steady, chanting and screaming.
5. The Flaming Lips
Wayne Coyne and his getup, The Flaming Lips, are a psychedelic rock band from Oklahoma. They released a new album called King’s Mouth: Music and Songs earlier this summer, but for their Riot Fest performance they took us all the way back to 2002 to revisit Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. This album won a Grammy and sold half a million copies in the U.S. It also features their largest hit to date, “Do You Realize.” They performed on the secondary main stage, Roots.
Their set was soulful and mesmerizing, filled with gleaming string lights, blooms of colorful clouds. In typical Flips fashion, there was a plethora of confetti explosions, much crowd interaction, Coyne inserting himself into an inflatable ball to roam around the crowd, and the usual “Fuck Yeah Riot Fest” balloons.
4. Village People
Though Riot Fest is considered a punk and rock festival, there are always a few legacy and feel-good acts on the score. This year there was a handful of them, and one fetured the daddies of disco, the Village People. Arguably, they are one of the most iconic bands in the history of music. It would be hard to come across many people who haven’t heard one of their singles on the radio, a record, at a party, a commercial, or movie. They have sold over 100 million records in their time, and they continue to break impressive records today.
In true Riot Fest fashion, the crowd was feeling frisky when hearing of the announcement of VP on the lineup. Within a short period of time there was a Facebook group made, YMCA Wall of Death at Riot Fest 2019, that racked up over 1,500 RSVPs. The crowd did not disappoint, matching the energy of the Village People by setting up a wall of death and a circle pit during their quintessential hits “Macho Man” and “Y.M.C.A.”
3. Anthrax
Anthrax performed a setlist voted entirely by fans prior to the festival. The group came out on stage repping personalized Chicago Bulls jerseys. They opened with “Caught in a Mosh” pushed into “Got the Time” then into “Madhouse” and more. It was awesome to watch them running around the stage, pouncing on the speaker boxes. They were just having a blast, giving the crowd what they wanted. Frank Bello is quite the character. Watching him perform gives me life. He is a very theatrical rockstar with tons of emotion and facial expression. Joey Belladonna and Scott Ian look like a pair of best friends that you don’t want to mess with but would love to party with. The crowd was rowdy, bouncing around, crashing the rail and screaming every word.
2. The Damned Things
The Damned Things are a super group consisting of Fall Out Boy’s Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley, Anthrax’s Scott Ian, Every Time I Die’s Keith Buckley, and Alkaline Trio’s Dan Andriano. The band’s name is inspired by the lyrics in Ram Jam’s 1977 hit “Black Betty.” Though the super group is stacked with famous rockstars, The Damned Things are still unknown to many of those who didn’t stalk the Riot Fest lineup or give the playlist a listen. They played on the smallest of the five stages, Rebel.
Those who did know of them were sure to show up and show up early. The crowd packed it in between the trees and vendors at the Rebel stage. Buckley commanded the crowd with his theatrics and voice, jumping on the speakerboxes and headbanging. The dude loves to perform, and we love watching him. I’m excited to see where this band goes. I can’t help but wonder if their aspirations are to keep The Damned Things a fun side project or to take it to the next level. It could really go either way.
1. Bikini Kill
You almost never hear of a female artist or band headlining a festival, let alone a punk rock fest, but Bikini Kill headlining and closing out Riot Fest is punk as fuck. “I just wanted to say that we’re a feminist band, and we’re headlining a festival,” Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of the group, said during their set.
At one point the crowd was chanting “Girls to the front, girls to the front,” and sure enough when I looked, on the rail it was 99% women. Hanna brought up the troubled times we’re living in and how exhausting it has been for her but went on to say how great it feels to be surrounded by a mass of people who want to change the world as much as the members of Bikini Kill have always wanted to. Before they performed their ’90s tune “Feels Blind,” Hanna told us the story of how the lyrics were actually taken from a poem she’d written in her teen years, based on a vexing experience she had with a much older man.
The group closed their set with crowed pleaser “Rebel Girl” from their 1993 album Pussy Whipped. The crowd yelled along in unison. It was raw and bright and an incredibly fun way to end the weekend.’