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Riot Fest has always been a festival with large lines and crowds. Lines to go to the bathroom, to get food, but this year the lines to get into the second day of the festival were obnoxiously long.
Since the lineup was announced, I have been looking forward to seeing Frnkiero and the Cellabration, the solo project of former My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero, the line to enter Humboldt Park was two hours long, causing me to miss the band I was most excited to see, and leaving most festival goers to miss early bands such as The Pizza Underground and Anti-Flag, as well as Frnkiero and the Cellabration.
Fortunately, I was able to make it in to see the last four songs Anti-Flag played including “Die For Your Government” and “This Machine Kills Fascists.” The Pittsburgh-based band spent the entirety of their set (that I was able to make) interacting with their fans who were slipping and sliding through the still-present mud to see them. For their last song, “Power to the Peaceful,” drummer Pat Thetic and singer/guitarist Justin Sane jumped into the crowd to finish their set in the muddy grounds that their fans were stuck in for the rest of the day. They were also one of the few bands to announce a signing, which was held at the Amnesty International booth.
The Dandy Warhols, a powerpop band from Portland, Oregon, played not long after Anti-Flag. I walked up to their performance at the Riot stage as they started playing “We Used to Be Friends.” The song is well known for being the theme song to the mid 2000’s TV show Veronica Mars. The band sounded so sharp I could start to envision Veronica, Logan and Wallace solving mysteries and catching criminals while they were playing.
The next performer to take to the Riot stage was Die Antwoord, a South African rap-rave group comprised of members Ninja and Yolandi Vi$$er. Their music was a fun break in the day put between glimpses of numerous emo bands. If anyone in the incredibly large crowd was unfamiliar with the group beforehand, they might have thought they were attending a concert on a different planet, the dancers and Ninja and Vi$$er themselves are all so bizarre, especially Vi$$er with a voice that eerily reminiscent to the smallest Monstar from the 1996 film Space Jam. To those familiar with the group, seemingly a majority of the crowd who burst out in screams when they played “Baby’s On Fire” and “I Fink U Freeky,” it was a stellar performance, made special by Ninja repeatedly entering the crowd and even taking selfies with fans in the front row mid-song.
I left Die Antwoord before they were finished in order to catch Say Anything across the park at the Rock stage. Before they even started, almost the entire space allotted for the Rock stage was taken up by eager fans, a feat that has not been accomplished by any other band I have seen at that stage including the previous night’s headliner Rise Against. Before their set, I thought of myself as a big Say Anything fan. I learned throughout the duration of their performance that I am a terrible Say Anything fan, as they did not play one song I knew, which I am assuming meant they played mostly new songs, in the thirty minutes I watched them. Although it was incredibly crowded and I didn’t know any songs, Max Bemis and the rest of the band sounded great, and the rest of the audience, the real Say Anything fans, seemed ecstatic.
I left early in order to catch the entire set by the Get Up Kids, and got to their stage early enough to see the last twenty minutes of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, a cover band comprised of members of NoFX, Foo Fighters, Swingin Utters and Lagwagon. They hilariously covered “I Believe I Can Fly” by R. Kelly, as well as “Rocket Man” by Elton John.
The Get Up Kids were another band performing an entire album in honor of Riot Fest’s tenth anniversary, and in their case it was 1999’s Something to Write Home About. The Get Up Kids are one of my favorite bands, and their set was the closest I have been to one of the larger stages so far this weekend. Although I had the perk of being closer to the stage, I was also deeper into the mud than I had been that weekend, and the entirety of my shoes were covered by the time I left. The Get Up Kids performed their most popular album flawlessly, and highlights included when the crowd was singing the chorus of “The Company Dime” so loudly that it was louder than the band, as well as when vocalist/guitarist Matt Pryor accidentally played “I’m a Loner Dottie, a Rebel,” out of order, and when made fun of by his bandmates for it, responded “I just wanted to play ‘Dottie’ real bad.”
After finishing their album around ten minutes early, Pryor jokingly announced “And now we’re going to play all of [1997 album] Four Minute Mile,” and continued to play three songs from it.
After watching The Get Up Kids play my favorite set of the night, and so far of the festival, I headed over to watch one of my favorite bands from when I was younger, The Used. I hadn’t seen them in seven years, and was excited to see what they sounded and performed like after such a long time. Surprisingly, after years of screaming, singer Bert McCracken still sounds great. It seemed that The Used knew a majority of their crowd was older fans watching them for nostalgic purposes. McCracken repeatedly dedicated songs to “the old hardcore Used fans,” and would then lead into an older classic song such as “All That I’ve Got,” and “The Taste of Ink.” I was not expecting to be as impressed with their set as I was, and it proved that even after years, The Used can still rock.
Taking Back Sunday headlined the Rock stage Saturday night. Unlike many other bands at the festival who seem to be catering towards their nostalgic fanbase, Taking Back Sunday opened with a newer song, and continued to play a healthy mix of both old and new songs throughout their hour-long set. The most impressive part of their performance was the vocal range of singer Adam Lazzara. During their last song, “MakeDamnSure,” Lazzara started to climb up the side of the stage, eventually hanging off a railing, 30 feet up, by his knees, and on top of that, belting out the lyrics flawlessly. Taking Back Sunday proved to be a perfect way to end a day that seemed to revolve around nostalgia.
