Riot Fest 2012 Sunday Best We have literally thousands of sweet shots from Riot Fest Friday through Sunday that we're editing through and will bring you soon with full recaps. For now, here's a little taste of some of our favs from each day--working backwards. Recognize some famous faces? We'll be breaking it down by the band later this week. We shot all the bands in bold. See if you can match the faces and feet to the following:
The fest was a huge, raging success in the new Humboldt Park digs. We love it's incarnation as a family friendly, carnival feast for the eyes and ears and hope it becomes an annual tradition. The park was spacious, shady and ideal for the Riot Fest day shift. Then the night shows and after parties at all the usual venues kept the fun going well into the morning hours. We shot loads of pit photos but we also made a point to catch the colorful crowd and especially the punk kin and yute. If we can walk together why can't we rock together, indeed. This year with both The Descendants and The Offspring playing....how could we not shoot the actual descendants-offspring- progeny-spawn of the punk parents out there. We know parents and kids rock and the littles are sometimes the purest punks--anarchy incarnate, live in the moment, endless energy....You get the picture.
We also made a point of shooting the fire spinners, burlesque performers, and circus punks like Environmental Encroachment, and UPPERkase stilt crew.We even had another fest sighting of Shreddy Shirt Boy (AKA: Mat with one T) and his twin brother, too! They were rocking out on drums with an ape, on one of the fenced in mini stages skattered throughout the grounds. We'll have video footage up soon. It was like a big family reunion, 30,000 punks strong. We ran into soooo many good friends. These are truly our people. It was great to relax and hear stellar music with some of our favorite friends. Speaking of familiar faces....we saw Coco Loco for I think the 4th or 5th fest this season, and still couldn't resist their rockin' earrings. We left with 2 more pairs!! I've worn two of their pairs of spirals daily for years. They're very comfortable, fun, and distinctive. I still get a ton of comments and compliments on them. Now Sagezilla has a few pairs of her own. She has black wings, black S shaped earrings made of water buffalo horn, and black spirals inlaid with white triangles. Check back in with ChiIL Mama like we vote in Chi, IL...early and often for more Riot Fest recaps in the coming weeks, including video and many more photos. Follow ChiIL Live Shows by e-mail in the right side bar for free downloads, original band video interviews, LIVE show footage, pit photos, tour news, give aways, reviews, and the heads up on great music and theatre coming to town. Follow ChiIL Mama by e-mail in the right side bar for all ages fun, alt punk parenting tips, loads of kindie music/book/toy reviews and more. We'll see you out there.
KICKS-OFF AT HUMBOLDT PARK AND CONGRESS THEATER 8TH ANNUAL FEST FEATURES MORE THAN 30 MUSIC ACTS:
RISE AGAINST, IGGY AND THE STOOGES, ELVIS COSTELLO, DESCENDENTS, THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN, THE OFFSPRING, NOFX, A DAY TO REMEMBER, THE PROMISE RING, DROPKICK MURPHYS, ALKALINE TRIO, THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM, CHIODOS, AWOLNATION AND MANY MORE
ChiIL Mama/ChiIL Live Shows will be there with the kids-Sagezilla & Du-Jay-shooting all 3 days. Last night we shot The Offspring and Congress Theater was raging. We got some sweet pit shots we'll have up shortly! Then we hit up the Naked Raygun after party at Sub T. Two words...Wonder Beer! A few years back, they played a Riot Fest Congress show and brought all their respective kids out on stage to say hey. Punk kin rock!
The eighth annual RIOT FEST--the music festival which celebrates rock, indie, punk and underground artists from every era--storms into its home base of Chicago.
On Saturday, September 15 and Sunday, September 16, the festival is expanding for the first time ever into an outdoor music event and carnival in Humboldt Park which boasts rolling green fields and a majestic view of the Chicago skyline.
The RIOT FEST & Carnival features a wide mix of artists ranging from Alkaline Trio, Built To Spill, Gogol Bordello, Neon Trees, Fishbone, Hot Water Music, Minus The Bear, Frank Turner, Coheed and Cambria, Less Than Jake, Japanther, A Wilhelm Scream, NoBunny and many more.
Beginning in 2005, Riot Fest, Chicago’s and perhaps the US’ premiere punk festival, has grown both in size and reputation since its inception. After six increasingly successful years, Riot Fest Chicago expanded to Philadelphia in 2011. With the subsequent success of the additional city, promoters once again expanded the festival for 2012.
With a lineup that includes acts such as the Descendents, Iggy and the Stooges, Rise Against, and Elvis Costello, Riot Fest stands poised to continue setting new trends and raising the festival bar.
Consequence of Sound caught up with Mike Petryshyn, one of Riot Fest’s promoters, to discuss Riot Fest’s changes this year, both in Chicago and elsewhere, Petryshyn’s “philosophy” of dropping the politics and just having a good time, as well as what it’s like standing just off-stage while the Descendents perform.
Riot Fest is considered one of, if not the, premiere punk festivals. This year includes The Stooges, Rise Against, and Elvis Costello. You’ve earned a reputation for quality lineups that has subsequently attracted higher profile artists each season. Without bringing up names, Riot Fest seems to have partially filled a void left by another once prominent punk fest. What was the impetus behind starting Riot Fest, and do you have a mission statement that keeps you true?
Wow. That’s loaded. I’ve got to be honest with you, when we started doing it in 2005, there wasn’t any reason to do it outside of me being bored and wanting some of my favorite bands to play together. I had a normal, 9-to-5 job, I was going to school, everything like that. It was a couple years down the line where it took on a life of its own. And now, fast forward, it’s going to be our eighth festival. It still is what it is. Implying that we’re filling a void, I guess we are, whether it’s in punk rock, or rock n’ roll, or what have you. I guess we are, but I really don’t view it like that. We just like to put on shows with music we like. If that’s filling a void, so be it. Cool.
Lineups aside, another thing people note about your festival relative to other festivals is the affordability.
Yeah. Listen, these things aren’t cheap to put on. If I look at Lollapalooza or Coachella, I get it, and they have some heavy hitters on there. You’re essentially building a venue outside, so the cost associated with production, all the little things that no one thinks of, whether it be catering, or rentals of port-o-potties, fencing…There’s a million things and stuff’s expensive. But our mindset was that we understand Lollapalooza charging $90 a day or whatever it is, is fine. We get it.
But there is other ways of keeping your festival in the black without making tickets that expensive. It’s not like we’re planning on making millions of dollars or anything like that. That’s not our goal. Our goal is to put on a cool festival. Our tickets, at most, will be $45 a day. It’s completely worth it. Some of these bands charge more just being by themselves. We’re more about volume than just doing a show for X amount of people. We went for the volume side of it and it’s worked.
Speaking of volume, this year the festival is expanding to three days in Chicago. Why this year?
It used to be five, but it was all indoors, so it’s a little bit different. Apples and oranges. We’re doing two days outside on a Saturday and a Sunday, and then we have our opening night at the Congress Theater.
Why this year? What was so big about the eighth year?
Sean [McKeough], my partner in Riot Fest, and I, we’d been talking about this for a couple of years now. Back in the day, I was dead set against it. I kind of liked the hub-less folk feel we had of multiple venues and stuff like that. But that carries its own amount of headaches and you start to really cannibalize your crowd a little bit when you have competing shows, like three or four competing shows at the same time. When we started talking about it a couple of years ago, we were like, “if we’re going to do it, we should do it a little bit differently, not like everybody else.” Not to say that we’re reinventing the wheel or anything like that, but we just want to have a different feel than say, any other festival that goes on in Chicago. I think we achieved that.
So, when last year was really successful, we knew we could have done more. So, last year, our four big shows at the Congress, we treated them like stages. This was all in one day. We’d have Social D close one stage, we’d have Danzig doing Samhain closing one stage, we had the Descendents close one stage, and we had Weezer close one stage. And that was how we treated it last year, and it just seemed that last year was so successful that this was the year to do it.
So, will the expansion be permanent or do you have wait and see how successful this is?
It’s permanent. We’re staying outside.
Last year, the festival expanded to Philadelphia, and this year you added Brooklyn, Toronto, and Dallas. How were those cities chosen and why haven’t you chosen anything out west?
Brooklyn’s Brooklyn. I thought it was important to do something in New York. Same thing with Dallas. Dallas is a really large market, like the fourth largest market in the US right now, but it seems that it’s overlooked by the stuff that we do. We met up with some people from those cities and that’s how it came about. Everybody’s behind, everybody believes in what we’re doing. Toronto, out of all of them, is probably the most special to me, because as a kid, I grew up in Buffalo, and I’d go to shows in Toronto. I’d go to Canada all the time. That’s the one, out of all the cities, I’m excited about all of them obviously, but Toronto’s a special one for me.
Do you think you’ll move out west and do something in California or Washington?
I don’t know. People have talked to us about it, but nothing I see in the foreseeable future.
With the festival branching to other cities and many artists like the Descendents appearing on multiple bills, is Riot Fest evolving to become a traveling festival like the original Lollapalooza?
No. Never say never, but it’s definitely not in the plans. I think back then when Lolla and Warped were in their burgeoning years, what they were doing made a ton of sense. And I still think Warped tour for the new generation of kids makes a ton of sense. It’s still really successful. I know they killed it this year. But for us to be traveling just like Lolla did it…nah. It’s not in the cards. The climate’s changed. At least in my eyes, it’s a little bit more special when you pick cities and embrace those cities, do stuff on the weekends and have the community involved. They’re a part of something. That’s kind of our ethos here and it’s one reason why we’re successful in Chicago. We have this grassroots feel. There’s not that many people working on the Fest. There’s a handful of people, but we dedicate our lives to this stuff.
On behalf of all the fans, I want to thank you for doing it. I look at the lineup of Riot Fest and it makes me yearn for the punk bands of yesterday. I like today’s punk, don’t get me wrong. I like a lot of contemporary punk, but seeing some of these old bands again on tour like the Descendents just really excites me.
Yeah. Listen, I’m 34 years old, so my bread-and-butter is always going to be Descendents, Rancid, that kind of stuff. Look at any Riot Fest in the past. [Naked] Raygun and Screeching Weasel, that’s the stuff I grew up as a kid listening to. But if some kid is listening to the bands that play Warped and considering that the new hardcore, who am I as a 34-year old guy to say no to him. I’m not going to be that guy. “That’s not punk rock.” Because that’d be like the kids that were older than me when I got into the [Mighty Mighty] Bosstones. “That’s not ska. the Specials are ska. Bosstones aren’t ska.” I’m not that guy. There’s no reason to fight it. This is the music that means a lot to people. The Descendents or any of those older bands, they hold a very special place in our hearts because we listened to them during our most influential years. And kids now are listening to A Day To Remember, Chiodos, All-Time Low, and even going back a little bit further with Taking Back Sunday and stuff like that. That’s what speaks to them and I’m not going to argue with that, because when I was a 16-year old kid, the Exploited spoke to me.
Our goal internally is to drop all the politics, all the bullshit that comes with scene points. That stuff drives me bonkers. I’ve always hated it. The music we deal with sometimes has a tendency to be very secluded and not welcoming for whatever reasons. We don’t believe in any of that stuff. Good music’s good music. There’s going to be people rocking out to Elvis [Costello], there’s going to be people rocking out to A Day To Remember. That’s awesome and great. I don’t know if it’s going to be the template for more festivals to come or whatnot because it’s successful. But I just think, drop the politics, everybody have a good time.
That’s a good mantra. When you look at the lineup, it’s almost a history of the genre and you can go and get a grasp of what it’s all about.
Yeah, and that’s something we’ve always done. It’s not like we’re historians of the music, but we listen to a lot of music, we all have our different backgrounds, and I just see a line between all the bands that connects them all. And if other people can’t see that, that’s fine. But we think that if we get to play around with 35 years of music, that’s awesome. That opens up a lot of possibilities for booking some really great acts. We’re not limited like the electronic scene. That’s pretty much the last five years of bands. And that’s why every electronic fest in the US looks exactly the same. I don’t think there’s another fest in the US that looks like Riot Fest Chicago. We just want to be a little bit unique and we’re very passionate about the music too, obviously.
You could probably answer this from personal experience: have the Descendents even aged? They seem like they just continued from where they left off before he [Milo Aukerman, singer] went to college.
Nah, man. They’re awesome, they’re so good. Stephen [Eggerton, guitar] looks exactly the same as he did 25 years ago. Bill [Stevenson] hits the drums just like he did 25 years ago, and Milo, even though he’s a little grayer, once he gets to that unique posture thing he does, where he slams the mic up to his lips, it’s like “holy shit, that’s Milo.” (laughs) And the funny thing is, I did two shows with them last year and at each one the backstage just cleared because every single band, every single staff member was onstage watching them. They’re a band’s band. Everybody loves the Descendents. I’ve never heard anybody say, “fuck those guys, they’re terrible.”
They’re amazing. Everybody has their favorite song, whether it’s “Bikeage”, “Suburban Home”, or “Hope”, or whatever. People just associate with that band. They’re a perfect Riot Fest band because there’s no politics about them. For Christ’s sake, they write love songs that people mosh to. I love it. It’s a great irony about that band, they’re fantastic.
Check back with ChiIL Mama/ChiIL Live Shows like we vote in Chi, IL...early and often. We'll have full blown, photo and video filled Riot Fest coverage all 3 days! Follow our Facebook Pages and Twitter Feeds for all the latest music coverage, original pit photos, original band video interviews, free downloads, give aways and more.
Check out ChiIL Live Shows (free downloads, original pit photos, band video interviews and live show footage) and ChiIL Mama (alt punk parenting) for loads of coverage from Riot Fest 2010 & 2011. Bring your punk kin & banger babies. All Riot Fest shows are all ages unless stated otherwise. If we can walk together why can't we rock together!
Available September 2011, Published by Wayne State University Press
Size: 6 x 9, Pages: 200, Illustrations: 14
"It's a good book. I thank you for writing it." - Iggy Pop
If the MC5 were Detroit's political spokesmen for the disenchanted youth of the 1960s, then the Stooges were the loutish kids, heckling from the back of the room. While conventional wisdom says they could barely play their instruments, the Stooges left an indelible mark on the world of punk rock, and the band's initial three albums-The Stooges, Fun House and Raw Power-are bona fide classics. In The Stooges: Head On author Brett Callwood treats the band's story not just as an early chapter in the career of its famous front man, Iggy Pop, but from the Stooges' beginnings at the end of the 1960s, to its end in the early 1970s, and to its reunion in 2003 through the present.
"Writing a Stooges biography was a no-brainer for me," Callwood states. "My first book is about the MC5 and in researching that while still living in London, I had traveled to Detroit / Ann Arbor and fallen in love with the whole area and its music. I had made many friends and established many contacts that were and are associated with both the MC5 and the Stooges, so that made the process easier to get started. Also, when I wrote this book there wasn't a decent Stooges book on the shelves. There are a lot of Iggy books out there, but mine is the first full Stooges biography."
In compiling this exhaustive account of the band's history, Callwood interviewed all of the central and sometimes Stooges members, including Iggy Pop, Ron and Scott Asheton, James Williamson, Mike Watt, Steve Mackay, and Scott Thurston, and largely lets the band tell its own story in numerous long quotes. Callwood details the band's genesis as teenage friends in Ann Arbor, their time living together in their legendary party houses in the 1960s, and the recording of the three original Stooges albums. He examines the addition of James Williamson to the band on Raw Power and how it changed the band's sound and dynamic, along with the band's fateful meeting with David Bowie on its first British tour.
As Iggy broke out as a solo artist during the 1970s and 1980s, Callwood charts the Asheton brothers' post-Stooges experiences, with Ron's turns in The New Order, Destroy All Monsters, and Dark Carnival, and Scott Asheton's time with the Farleys and Sonic's Rendezvous Band. He also provides an overview of Iggy's solo career, the seeds of a reunion that were planted with a collaboration on Iggy's Skull Ring album, and the eventual reformation of the band and the recording of their fourth album, The Weirdness, in 2007.
Originally published in the U.K. in 2007, The Stooges: Head On has been revised to expand on the original story and also to consider Ron Asheton's untimely death in 2009 and his musical legacy, the band's fate without Ron, and the Stooges' long-overdue introduction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.
"Scott didn't want to talk at all for the first edition... He rarely does interviews," said Callwood. "However, after his brother passed away and I was writing for this American edition, he talked to me and really opened up. It was a very moving, humbling experience."
Wayne State University Press is a distinctive urban publisher committed to supporting its parent institution's core research, teaching, and service mission by generating high quality scholarly and general interest works of global importance. Through its publishing program, the Press disseminates research, advances education, and serves the local community while expanding the international reputation of the Press and the University.
Gotta respect our elders. Our kids were elated to see Iggy Pop live at Lollapalooza after growing up on his music. Continue your punk kins' rock education, or save this one for a parent's night in. With Raw Power Live out on DVD this week, the choice is yours.
Here's a free bonus for everyone, to get you stoked for the DVD.
Iggy & the Stooges "Raw Power Live: In the Hands of the Fans" is the audio document of the reformed Stooges' (Iggy Pop, Scott Asheton, James Williamson, Steve Mackay, Mike Watt) Raw Power performance at the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival on Friday, September 3, 2010.
Of the performance, Ben Ratliff of the NY Times writes, "Iggy Pop, now 63, knew that his body language translated into still photographs resembling Mannerist paintings...The Stooges attacked the album's eight songs, in a different order, just about perfectly."
Iggy and the band sound flawless as they rip through the archetype riffage of "Search and Destroy," "Raw Power," "Gimmie Danger" and more.
"Getting this top-notch performance of the entire Raw Power album by The Stooges realized a life long dream," Iggy Pop "This shit really sizzles and we are so obviously a crack band in a class of our own."
MVD Entertainment Group, an industry leader in producing and distributing music-related audiovisual content, launched the In the Hands of the Fans series with the intention of utilizing the energy and talents of fans, who by means of an online video submission contest, win the opportunity to film a performance of their favorite band in HD and then interview the band members after the performance. The result is a high quality, low cost, unique program that is part concert film and part reality TV show.
