Spud media

Let’s address the elephant at any festival: booze. It’s just a given that buying beer at the park is going to be unreasonably expensive, as is food, merch, etcetera. Them’s the breaks. Remember, Idahoans- this is Chicago, not the affordable, affordable West. Considering that solo cups were $8 at the bar the night prior, $12-$16 for a pint can ain’t nearly as much as I was expecting to pay for festival booze- in fact, that strikes me as not bad at all. As someone who despises all things IPA, I opted to slurp on some 312 Wheat Ale, which I liked so much that it became my drink for the rest of the trip. Our delicious golden sponsor Rainier was nowhere to be found.

You could order the smallest shots of liquor I’ve ever seen for $13 (and I’m from Utah!), or be like the smart kids and smuggle in a flask. The folks scanning for metal at the entrance were not there to work very hard and I saw plenty of people hitting their hidden hooch in the crowd. Thanks to Illinois’ wonderfully lenient liquor laws, you can snag a fifth of Jim Beam at 7-Eleven for about $20.

Riot Fest also branded their own hard seltzers for the event called Riot Pop. Riot Pop comes in 0%, 5% or 8% ABV options and even has electrolytes for “hydration.” These 12 oz cans are cheaper, but not enough to have an economical advantage over the beer. I tried the Purple Nurple flavor for the sake of journalism: yep, it’s a White Claw.

As for sustenance, the festival was equipped with your standard carnival fare, from corn dogs to hot dogs to enormous slices of pizza. It was just as generic and overpriced as you would find at any State Fair. Thank God for Mexicans. Industrious taco jockeys set up shop on the easements around the enclosed park with way better food at way better prices. One guy, who lived across the street, was taking orders from the sidewalk and sending little Niño back to the kitchen to tell Mamá the order. Capitalism was never so wholesome. This made eating at Riot Fest very easy: grab some tamalés on your way in, grab some hot dogs on your way out, don’t eat inside because there’s no re-entry.

Sidewalk vendors were even hocking ice cold beer, shots, and edibles; all of which are apparently legal to sell on the street in Chicago. The nearby swarms of cops didn’t mind, anyway. I even scored a Riot Fest 2023 hoodie, which is totally official and certainly not stolen, for less than half of what they were charging at the merch tent.

Hopefully you got a good idea about what the festival was like from Part I of this series, because I don’t really want to waste your time or mine with all the minutia. Festivals are all more or less the same when you get down into the details, and I hate to say it, but so are hour-long sets. Aside from the headliners, every band had a finite amount of time to bang out the hits and make way for the next, so I’ll just give you the Sparknotes.

Riot Fest Day 2 started off horny with the Viagra Boys. These guys are one of my favorite recent discoveries, with their thick and slimy basslines pulling you through a soundscape where there is plenty to see and hear. They are opinionated and nihilistic and masters of the uncomfortable. They bring noisy, groovy, jazzy punk with weird lyrics that crawl across your goosepimpled flesh.

Steve Ignorant, founding member of the original anarcho-punk band Crass, is looking these days like a retired yacht salesman. He was there with his backing band doing a full Crass set, which is probably as close as I’ll ever get to seeing the legends themselves, so I’ll take it!

Death Grips are the worst band in the world. They sound like a refrigerator falling down the stairs. There were a bunch of propeller hats bobbing around in the mosh pit, which a guy on the train said comes from a meme on the Death Grips subreddit. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. I hate Death Grips, and I hate Reddit.

I remember Death Cab for Cutie’s whiny and acousticy crud from the mid aughts. I can’t remember why I listened to their new album Transatlanticism, but I actually kind of liked it. Maybe they’ve gotten better, maybe I’m not twelve anymore and have learned that there’s more to life than Slayer. It was nice to sway to some moody music for a while before spending the rest of the night moshing my nuts off.

Pennywise brought the punk spirit to Riot Fest better than any other band present. They got a gnarly pit going with their Fuck Authority energy, then brought out Tim and Joe from Rise Against to join them for NOFX and Minor Threat covers. It was an endearing reunion of the 1990’s West Coast punk scene reminiscent of unknown local bands jamming with friends for friends. For their last song, they told security to pound sand and let all the VIP backstage fans storm the stage.

I couldn’t get within a quarter mile of Queens of the Stone Age, but they definitely won the Spud Award for Best Light Show. It was an ultra-bright neon rig that looked like robots having a lightsaber fight, then ended on a giant white triangle that might have been literally brighter than the sun. My following trip to the beer tent was like a free trial of being legally blind.

Mr. Bungle was the final show of Riot Fest Night #2, as well as my favorite of the whole weekend. I was not prepared for super-technical math thrash to end my Saturday, or for Mike Patton’s Coolio braids, or for a toy pig which oinked along to 80’s pop songs. Their song “My Ass Is On Fire” was a great preview for the next day after I processed all that 312 Wheat Ale.

The festival ended at 10:00 sharp, as per neighborhood regulations, but Hemorage is a death metal band from San Francisco that doesn’t give a flying fuck about your noise ordinance. As Riot Festers were shuffling their way home, Hemorage pulled up in their trademark minibus which they’ve converted into a mobile stage. They opened the doors and windows and let loose. A bonus mosh pit formed on the sidewalk by the portable shitters. Police tried to shut this pop-up down, which I’m sure the band is used to, because they kept on playing until the fuzz gave up and walked away.

There were so many people trying to take the Pink line back to the Loop that the police had to hold people at the door to keep the station from being overcrowded. Because of that, I wound up being first in line for the next train. I didn’t hit the town that Saturday night, I had to go home and get some rest, because the next day I would find myself completely fucking lost in Chicago.