Check out our photos of the bands that played on Friday.
See our previews of acts playing on:
Saturday ·Sunday
Riot Fest main »
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
One of the sharpest contributors to the pop-punk canon is Screeching Weasel from little old Prospect Heights, Illinois. The number one influence on front man and sole constant member Ben “Weasel” Foster is the Ramones—which shows not only in the band’s 1992 track-for-track cover of the punk rock pioneers’ debut LP, but also in Weasel’s own up-tempo and hypermelodic tunes. Since their initial formation in 1986, Screeching Weasel have broken up and re-formed five times, cycling through more than 25 members (including Green Day’s Mike Dirnt and current Black Flag bassist Dave Klein), allowing Weasel to shape his project into a constantly relevant machine: the band has touched on organ-led power pop with 1996’s Bark Like a Dog, offered their take on late-90s skate punk with 1998’s Television City Dream, and tackled the exploding emo craze on 1999’s Emo. Weasel is a controversial figure, and the band nearly collapsed once and for all after an epically shitty 2011 incident when, following an onstage confrontation, he punched a female showgoer. But for better or for worse, the pop-punk legends seem to be picking up steam all over again. —Luca Cimarusti
Bad Religion 6:45 PM Roots Stage
Try to look past everything you know about Glenn Danzig in 2013—the ridiculous musclehead image he insists on holding on to, the absurd French onion soup incident of 2011’s Fun Fun Fun Fest, the North Side Kings one-punch TKO, the hilarious photo of him buying kitty litter, and the fact that he can’t really sing anymore–because before Glenn Danzig was a parody of himself, he was one of the greatest punk rock front men and songwriters of all time. This performance celebrates the 25th anniversary of Danzig’s brilliant and timeless first LP, from the namesake outfit he put together after the dissolution of the Misfits and Samhain—a band that blended those projects’ hokey, gothy aesthetic and melodic sense with sleazy, guitar-solo-heavy Sunset Strip cock rock. —Luca Cimarusti
Andrew W.K., Magas, 11 PM, Double Door, $25.
