I had an absolute blast this weekend! Favorite sets were probably: Friday: Hot Water, Angel Du$t, H2O, Blink Saturday: Masked Intruder, Turnstile, Microwave, TSSF, Avail Sunday: White Reaper, LTJ, AM!, Streetlight Sound was awful for Senses Fail and Starting Line which were probably the biggest bummers. The run of seeing LTJ, AM (Axl Rose) and then making it in time for basically all of Streetlight was my favorite run of the festival Can't wait for next year!!
How close were you for The Starting Line? My wife said the same thing about the sound from the lawn, but up front they soundes amazing aside from Kenny's base being a tad too loud.
I was somewhere in the middle, it started off incredibly rough but ended up sounding a little better throughout the set. His bass was definitely too loud and I couldn't really hear one of the guitars
What a wild ride, holy shit. Friday Highlights - GLASSJAWWWW, anti-flag, Lucero, Blink, pkew pkew pkew Saturday highlight - Damned Things, Grandson, Masked intruder, Cleopatrick, turnstile, The struts, and then actually pulling off a successful rise against/wu-tang -> Slayer/bloc party quadruple split Though wish i had seen a bit more of slayer. Sat night went to the P.P.P.P. and caught the eradicator and ramona, but left before Kali Masi, both were good and the venue was cool, but i think the wind was let out of our sails when we saw the line up with no big surprise and already being exhausted. Sunday highlights - B-52s, Village people (in the thick of the crowd for both), Save Ferris, The streetlight/Against Me split was tough but i got to see a bit of good stuff from both (though wish i could have seen more of both), Ending the night bopping between female legends and new age skate punk was great! teenage bottlerocket -> patti smith -> the ergs -> Bikini Kill. Cant wait to do it again next year.
Settled back at work now and I'm not loving reality. Very glad I had yesterday off to recover. Against Me was the highlight of the weekend for me. It’s pretty cool to see 4 great albums in 16 hours, although the 1 am start time of the aftershow almost ruined me Sunday. Turnstile, blink-182, The Story So Far, and the Flaming Lips were all great too. I don't think I had a bad time at anyone though. (Except maybe B-52s because it was packed and I got stuck basically in a walkway and it was stressful). Safe to say Riot Fest is the best festival in the world. (But now I have post-fest blues, and worse than usual since I can only go Sunday next year.)
i ended up sacrificing the ends of SM/AM to get a good spot for B52s and glad i did because being about 15 rows back was so much fun. i had zero idea how massive the crowd was until i saw friends videos later, that was insane. I think they win the annual award for "band who was on way too small of a stage". They should have been switched with Bob Mould.
I'm sure that was a great time, it looked like it would've been a ton of fun but it was just hard to really enjoy where we were at. But still I got to see them so it's fine
Yeah AM! went on at 1, and the line to get in took insanely long. They only played the two albums though which was slightly a bummer
It was brutal, but worth it. But ya some extra songs would've been nice. And on top of that, waiting the line out in the bar led to one or 5 too many beers/malort shots on my part, which led to a very rough start Sunday morning.
I wish the Taking Back Sunday after show started at 1am. My buddy and I went back to my place for a quick nap after leaving Riot Fest. We both slept through alarms and ended up waking up at 12:30a in a panic and rushed to the venue. At least we made it for half of the set...lol.
Had a really fun time this year, even if there were some tough decisions to make. That’s festival life though. You either have to give up seeing some full sets or seeing some bands you’d like to see. Friday: Angel Du$t and H2O were my favorite sets. Blink doing Enema and the Pkew sets were great. Not seeing Jawbreaker sucked, but I was just too far into the crowd to realistically leave, plus navigate the mud spots. Getting Violence was a nice treat. Hot Water sounded great. It’s nice to see Chris settling in with them. Saturday: Turnstile, Avail, and Wu-Tang were my favorite sets. Hearing some Slayer, Anthrax, and Damned Things was welcome too. I mentioned it over the weekend, but I just don’t understand the appeal to TSSF live. Proper Dose is a really strong album, but that band just stands up there, and it’s not like Parker is a next level singer that makes up for it. Even in the small club days it was the same thing. The drummer brings some heat on the older stuff, but the new songs are more conducive to staying home. The AM after show was awesome and a weekend highlight. Bummed we couldn’t watch Sincere though. Sunday: Seeing just a little bit of the Village People was amazing. Convinced they are a hxc band now and nothing will change my mind. Seeing Love Shack live was also cool. Less Than Jake sounded way too good. The AM album plays were cool. Getting their best two records in one set was pretty special. Seeing White Reaper win over a festival crowd and play a big stage was a treat. It wasn’t that long ago I saw them play a maybe half full townie bar in Pittsburgh, where most people attending were sort of indifferent. The Ergs used to tour with my friends, so seeing those songs live again was a trip. The Starting Line was fun, even if the sound was less than ideal, and the keyboardist maybe could have dialed it back a bit. At least the band was into it. Bob Mould and the Raconteurs doing Steady As She Goes were also fun. The Avail after show was everything I wanted it to be and more. It was like I got transplanted back to when I saw them live in the past. Truly memorable stuff for me. I also got to run over and catch several Teenage Bottlerocket songs at Cobra. Just a really fun weekend with a good group of people.
I ended up napping unexpectedly and woke up at 9pm lol. If i slept the night i would have been so pissed.
I ate McDonald’s for lunch Saturday morning because I was hung over and then McDonald’s again that night because I was drunk.