2011 Riot Fest - Day 3 - October 7, 2011

When we finally woke up after a late nite, we did the annual trek to find Earthdog some Chicago style deep dish pizza.  This year's winner was Gino's East.

We had a bit of time to kill the rest of the day.  For the life of me, I don't remember what the hell we did.  The opening band at the Bottom Lounge came on at 10:15pm.  Prior to that, we met up with some fellow Daghousers - Foxton, Tom M, and we met akissfan for the first time.  It was nice to finally meet akissfan who only lives about 20-30 minutes from me.  I have e-world known him for 6+ years ;).  The crazy thing is the guy was off to Italy the next morning to get married.  He was almost speechless when he sat down at the table and recognized we were chatting with Dave Smalley.



Up first was Holy Mess from Philly.  They were fairly entertaining, but probably spent more time shooting the shit on stage than they did playing.

They were followed by Milwaukee's Chinese Telephones who reunited after breaking up and supposedly are breaking up again before they release any new songs.  They too were fairly entertaining except for their Neil Young lookalike guitar player who kept breaking strings.  They also had an Angus Young lookalike playing bass.

In all fairness to the two opening bands, we were there to see Dave Smalley rock the house.  Finally, Down by Law hit the stage.  It has not been since August 2003 that I have seen them play.  That was the last time they were remotely close to the area.  They played at a VFW hall in Joliet with the first incarnation of Jeff Pezzati's The Bomb pre-Jeff Dean era.

We got to hear "Best Friends", "Gruesome Gary", "Independence Day", and "500 Miles" amongst quite a few others.  The band played pretty well together considering they probably played out less than 10 times in the last 8 years together.  Sam Williams III still rocks on guitar almost like no other in punk rock.  To close the set, they played one of my favorite Dag Nasty tunes "Under Your Influence".  And, by the time they played it, I was under the influence of some Anheuser Busch hops & barleys.

Finally, what we were all there to see, ALL hit the stage.  Dave Smalley was on vocals for the first four songs.  This was the first time I had the pleasure to see Dave on vocals with ALL.  He did not let us down.  As the Cure would say, it was "Just Like Heaven"!!!  Many thanks to Dave and the guys from ALL for allowing this to happen.

After that, Scott Danzig hit the stage.  It was the funniest thing I have ever seen at a punk show.  Scott Reynolds was not to be outdone by Dave so he hit the stage in a Danzig costume.  You will have to catch the tale end of the video below to see the Danzig costume.  I almost believe he took the rest of the band by surprise too.  Scott was great on vocals that night as he has been every time I have seen ALL.  Bug (ALL and Descendents roadie extraordinaire) took care of the band and made sure everything was OK for a great performance too.  Bug has been a roadie with ALL since I snuck into the LnG club in New London, CT to see them play at the ripe age of 20 in 1989 with my college roommate who lived there.  They ended the set with probably my favorite ALL tune "She's My Ex".  An incredible set to cap an incredible night.

Somehow, Earthdog snagged the setlist again.  He was still trying to get back at me for winning the Naked Raygun "Huge Bigness" CD that we fought over at Reckless Records.  That will teach him to pick the Bruins over the Flyers.

Well, that was not the end of the evening either.  We went outside to shoot the shit with Dave some more.  We found him chatting with Stephen who remember Earthdog and I from the night before.  Then out of nowhere, Earthdog spotted fellow Daghouser Mickey who drove from Philly that day with the bass player, Ben, from The Gerunds.  This story is almost as good as my first meeting with Mickey the prior year at Riot Fest, but nothing could top that.  You can read it here - http://daghouse.com/jacopo/viewtopic.php?t=19610.

We got to witness members of Teenage Bottlerocket in the crowd early on as well as Chicago guitar player extraordinaire, Jeff Dean.  He told us about him having to be at the Chicago Marathon to play at 8am with his new band All Eyes West.  Better him than me having to get up that early during Riot Fest.  I ran into James Baker, punk rock legend from Green Bay, and a friend of Waikiki Ted's, Frank, who I have not seen since the Joliet DBL show.  Another night in the books, albiet, we got to bed about 4:30am!!  Checkout my Flickr page for more pics and my youtube page for some more videos.

2011 Riot Fest - Day 2 - October 6, 2011

We took the Red Line to the Blue Line and made it to the show in time for the opening band, Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band.  They were a husband and wife 3 piece band.  The husband sang and played the electric National Steel slide guitar, the wife played the washboard, and they had another guy playing a small drum kit.  I have read about them in an issue of Blues Revue.  They were an interesting hillbilly type band.  If I would have drank more before seeing them, I believe they would have been even more fun.  They had a song name "I Saw Your Cousin on Cops."  At the end of the set, the wife lit her washboard on fire and then smashed it on the stage ala Pete Townsend.  F***ing awesome!!!

Up next were Chicago's celtic punk band The Tossers.  I have seen them 2-3 times before and they usually have a very energetic show.  This time around they did not get energetic until the end of the set when they played "No Booze, No Loot, No Fun" and " Good Mornin Da."

To close out the night at the Congress, Social Distortion hit the stage.  They came out guns a blazin with some early career hits - Story of My Life, Mommy's Little Monster, and 1945.  They also played the hit song of the newest CD, "Machine Gun Blues".  It was great to get to see them again.  We left when they slowed down the set and brought out the female backing singers.  It was time to head back to the Bottom Lounge.

We got to the Bottom Lounge in time to catch Scott Reynolds of All fronting his other band The Pavers who have not played together for a few years.  It was good to catch them play live, but I am not sure I would be a regular listener of their songs.  Besides, we were there to see ALL (with Chad Price on vocals this evening).  I am glad we made it over to see this show.  They rocked beyond belief.  I had never seen Chad sing for them either so it made this evening special.

Earthdog managed to get his hands on the setlist for the evening.



We also got to hang out with Jeff Pezzati, Naked Raygun lead singer, after the show for about an hour.  Jeff let us in on why the last NR LP has not had the remaster vinyl treatment yet.  Apparently, he can't find the master tapes.  I offered to come to his house to help find them as the remaster vinyl treatment needs to be completed.  It made the remainder of the back catalog sound sooo much better than any other format released.

ALL did manage to get me to buy 2 new t-shirts.  We made another trip to the 7-Eleven near the hotel after the show.  They did not have the $0.99 buffalo chicken sticks though, and forced me into buying a more expensive less tasty substitute item instead.  It was a very late night, but we could rest the next day as our first show did not start until 10:15pm.

We also spent some time after the show talking with Stephen Egerton, the guitarist for ALL/Descendents.  Stephen is a really nice guy.  I remember chatting with him before a Descendents show at the New Daisy Theater in Memphis back on April 5, 1997 which was their last big tour in support of "Everything Sucks".