and now the Bollweevils (yay!), Naked Raygun (yay!) and the Blue Meanies (meh), all as a part of this year's Riot Fest.
Last year, Riot Fest had a lot of exciting names but ended up underwhelming, with only bastardized versions of legendary bands showing up including a Dead Kennedy's without Jello Biafra, a Germs with actor Shane West doing a Darby Crash impression, and that truly awful mess that calls itself the Misfits these days. The organizers of this year's fest took some of last year's lessons to heart after an overpaid DK was pelted with cans and booed off the stage. This year had a kind of respectability pyramid, which focused more on Chicago legends as headliners, with a strong lineup of old school-but-still-kicking punk bands warming them up (The Business, UK Subs, Youth Brigade), and some more well loved Chicago bands bolstering them (the Effigies, Deals Gone Bad). The fest opened with a diverse group of young angry men, including bilingual skatepunk act Iattack, skinhead fave Fear City, third-gen Pogues retread Flatfoot 56, and psychobilly's The Massacres and The Gravetones, all playing in front of a cavernous Congress Theatre.
That's one of the problems with Riot Fest. If punk rock is about the youth, it really gets shit on with most of the young bands playing to modest early crowds waiting for the big names. Even a sizeable crowd looks disappointing in such a huge arena. Otherwise there isn'ttoo much to snark about this year's festival (last year's fest had a lot of the community up in arms). Sure there were corporate sponsors and too much ska (The Toasters, Mustard Plug, DGB, and the Meanies?) and it's a little shady how Secret Agent Bill and Minority One always get good slots because they put the whole thing together but overall, in a scene that is overly given to cynics, the show was damn respectable.
The last time I was this far from a stage, I wasn't at a concert!
I snuck in because paying over 20 bucks isn't very punk rock and I wanted to keep in line with the ethics of the fest and the first thing I noticed was the diversity in ages of the crowd. Naked Raygun hadn't played in ten years and drew kids in their teens who never got a chance to see and old men with beerguts bragging about how they used to see them all the time.
When I saw Crudos, I was excited, and to be honest, they let me down. They hadn't played in years, and weren't as tight as the bands that preceded them. The only thing that salvaged their set was the crowd response because, to a lot of people at the show, it was as if the Beatles had reunited, and the pit was bedlam. It was the same with all the other reunions I saw this year, and it was the same with Riot Fest, only this time I wasn't disappointed because I knew what to expect.
The Raygun set was weird. Their drummer was keeping pace and playing all the songs slower than he should have. Pezzatti didn't seem to excited and they kept trotting out their kids every time the crowd yelled for "Free shit". This would've been alright if they just did it once, or did it quickly but at one point there were there were over ten little Raygun's standing around waving and throwing things like the world's worst episode of Chic-a-G-Go. I never thought I'd say it but I left early, before Raygun had even finished. It was just too weird.
The Bollweevils spoke more to my youth than Raygun, when I devoted my time to tracking down Achtung! Chicago comps and heading to the Fireside but their sound didn't translate to the Congress, like there was too much of a disconnect. Oddly enough, the best sounding Chicago reunion was the Blue Meanies who were fast and energetic and clear as ever and had my toes tappin against their will and better judgment.
[obviously, this crowd disagrees with me]
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