Riot Fest 2009: Part 4 [The Congress Theater; Chicago, IL]

[PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4]

Sunday at the Congress Theater concluded an otherwise marvelous weekend with a proverbial whimper. The deficiencies were due, in large part, to the venue itself. A significantly bigger venue than The Metro, The Congress has a high ceiling that played havoc with the acoustics. Even bands that played well didn't sound great, their crisp guitar lines often reduced to broad, hazy slashes of distortion. Moreover, the fucking security was ridiculous. I know The Congress isn't in the nicest part of town, but do I really need to empty my pockets and get patted down before going to a show? And watching the way they brutally ripped crowd-surfers out of the audience was enough to harsh anyone's rock 'n' roll buzz.

I arrived too late to catch openers She Likes Todd, but just in time for The Arrivals. Their performance set the tone for the rest of the evening. The aforementioned shitty acoustics hit them especially hard, and on more than one occasion their songs fell into complete disarray, the melody lost entirely. Compounding their audio problems was the fact that the band made too little use of the Congress' much larger stage. Chicago legends Pegboy fared better, both in the quality of their sound and in the caliber of their performance, but front-man Larry Damore's constant need to sit down between songs marked the set as an irrefutable nostalgia artifact.

The main draw of the evening (for my girlfriend and me, at least) was the recently reunited Screeching Weasel. Although I never really listened to the band growing up, they were still a fixture of my teenage years. For anyone who moved around in the suburban punk circles, their logos, t-shirts, and music were virtually inescapable. Now, having seen them live, it's not difficult to understand how the band helped shape the direction punk took in the '90s. They burned through song after song, pausing only once in the middle and once toward the end of their set for reflection. They put on a solid show, although in a weekend characterized by so many strong performances, they suffered a little by comparison.

Which brings me to headliners Alkaline Trio. I know it's become a cliché to hate this band. Their story is almost the textbook definition of sell-out: a band puts out a heart-on-sleeve debut that endears them to disaffected teens nationwide, then spends the next decade-and-a-half moving up to successively bigger labels as their albums get progressively dumber and more faceless. Making fun of Alkaline Trio is a little like making fun of that kid who used to fart in class all the time. It's easy to do, but you feel terrible about yourself afterward.

That said, I honestly cannot remember the last time I heard a band that sounded as bad as Alkaline Trio did on Sunday. They began their set with “We've Had Enough” — a song, I want to point out, that I actually like — but it was rendered into a virtually unrecognizable haze of shapeless distortion. “Fatally Yours” fared no better, and when they unveiled a new song titled (I shit you not) “Die, Die, My Darling,” I decided I'd had enough for one night.

Even attending shows on all four nights of the festival, I only just scratched the surface of the wonder that was Riot Fest. There were venues and artists, some big names like NOFX, Murder City Devils, and Cock Sparrer, that I didn't get to see at all. In the end, the fest stayed true to its purpose: to celebrate punk rock's past, present, and future, a chance for fans young and old to check their pretensions at the door and enjoy the abandon of the pits. It's an experience I look forward to repeating in the future.

[PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4]

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