Riot Fest 2018 - September 14-16 - Douglas Park, Chicago Tour • Page 47

I'm real bummed I won't be able to see Bad Bad Hats and Chris Farren, but I'm going to be at Grouplove and Taylor Swift, respectively. Almost tempted to sell my Grouplove ticket cus I just really want to see Bad Bad Hats.

 

Yeah, there's no way it's happening. Connections to the punk scene or not, they just aren't a fit for the festival at this point. And I doubt they would headline.

That's like saying Fall Out Boy would headline one of these active rock festivals because the two guys in that band were in a band with Keith Buckley and Scott Ian.

 

Honestly, the concept of seeing Limp Bizkit and Father John Misty on the same line of a bill together has me so, so excited.

 

Limp Bizkit played Montebello Rockfest a couple years ago, another "punk" festival. They certainly wouldn't headline but it honestly wouldn't surprise me to see them on the bill.

 

They also first had Korn as a headliner on the festival in 2012. Montebello/Amnesia has catered to active rock kinda stuff for years now. Riot Fest hasn't crossed that threshold yet, but with Chicago Open Air not happening this year anything is possible I guess. LoL.

 

It makes no sense that the hard rock festival in Chicago getting cancelled would encourage Riot to book more of those bands. It's obviously not what the demographic in this area is after. I agree some of it is going to leak into Riot (Bullet For My Valentine, for example), but we're not about to see a big shift in what Riot Fest goes after as a whole. And yea Amnesia definitely skews heavier.

Most those hard rock fests take place in more rural areas. I don't think there's really a huge market for those acts in the bigger urban areas. (At least that's how it seems to me, maybe I'm off).

 

Montebello/Amnesia has always been about a 50-50 split between metal/hard rock and punk.

Like @swboyd said, Riot Fest hasn't quite crossed over into booking many of the acts that would play Chicago Open Air. And there's definitely some crossover, booking Limp Bizkit would be a heavily panned move on the festival's part. They're the early 2000s equivalent of hair-metal.

Acts like A Perfect Circle or Ghost make sense, based on aesthetic alone. But Limp Bizkit is beyond off base, IMHO...

 

Dude Limp Bizkit invented the scene.

 

Well, I think people here have been talking about Chicago Open Air getting cancelled as a reason why certain acts might be more likely to play Riot Fest. But I agree. We probably aren't going to see a big shift. Riot Fest won't pivot and book a bunch of early 2000s hard rock acts simply because they can...

Not unless it fits with the festival's overall vibe/aesthetic (examples: Deftones, Rob Zombie, System of a Down).

 

I'm still not 100% sure this is the case though. Like I said earlier, I don't think Riot will take a full dip into the hard rock/active rock/alt-metal area, but there is definitely a market for this stuff out there in the Chicagoland area. It's the third biggest metropolitan area in the country, and there definitely is a gap now that Open Air isn't happening. This might explain the increase in higher level tours that seem to be playing the ampitheatre in Tinley Park, but there are still a lot of mid-level bands that don't have a festival type outlet unless they want to play the Naperville Rib Fest or the Taste of Lincoln Park.

 

All that said, I'd be perfectly fine if Riot Fest went and booked some of the more extreme acts from the higher echelons of the underground that Chicago Open Air might've booked. Acts like Behemoth, Pig Destroyer, Carcass, Amon Amarth, Corrosion of Conformity, etc.

 

I agree with y'all to an extent. I definitely agree we might see a couple more than usual, and certainly having a few of these bands is typical of Riot Fest. But I just don't think we should assume that we should expect a really significant uptick in those bands because of this. And of course there's some demographic, but you have to ask yourself why Open Air got cancelled - if it was all logistical, it'd make sense, but it seems more like they need time to figure out how to make it profitable. It doesn't make financial sense for Riot Fest to take a lot of these acts when the festival already dedicated to them is apparently struggling to survive, whereas Riot Fest has a long history in the city, even before it switched to an outdoor event, which we are now going into the 7th year of (which is crazy).

There's been a theme in this thread of "well that band probably would've played Open Air so they're probably at Riot now", but I can't see this being the case for more than maybe 5-10 bands.

(I hope none of this is coming off argumentative or rude - I don't mean it that way at all).

 

Limp Bizkit could play, but they would never headline.
Last time they played NYC they did a 2.2k venue and it didn't sell out till the day of. They have absolutely no draw in the US anymore.

 

To be honest, you articulated my thoughts on this way better than I have. We're thinking the same exact thing, haha. I do think we'll see a few more bands of that ilk, and it'll probably be the kind of bands you'd expect to play Riot Fest anyway.

Popular theory seems to be that Open Air was cancelled due to not being able to line-up headliners. And given the dates for the festival (July), I can see that being challenging... Isn't that right around the time a lot of European metal festivals are going down? More than that, I can see them having a hard time bringing in big name headliners every year. You can't go from Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne to like... Korn and Marilyn Manson. They're a bit more pigeon-holed than most other festivals, especially with how big they went so early. Saying they can't deliver the "caliber of event" probably means just that.

 

If they can book Mike D (bless his heart) playing a DJ set of, mostly, other people's songs, then they could for sure pull off booking Limp Bizkit to play an hour of hits.

Besides, it's the 15 year anniversary of Results May Vary, might as well give the people what they want.

 

Nah, man. Limp Bizkit is massive. They just care about their fans! That's why they cancelled their last ampitheater tour. It had nothing to do with poor ticket sales and everything to do with them just wanting to bring people a totally sick concert experience.

 

Ah yea well that makes sense. I truly didn't know that much about what fell apart with Open Air and I just assumed it was finances, but maybe that's not the case. I hope it comes back next year, I was planning to try to go at least a day this year.

 

As for Limp Bizkit, I could honestly see it going either way.

 

There's no doubt that they could probably book them if they wanted to. I don't think anybody's questioning that. But they probably wouldn't...

Mike D is a socially conscious legend that can draw based on name alone, and to people not interested? They would still look at the name on the poster and say "Hah, cool." Limp Bizkit would be a major headscratcher, and not in a good way.

 

I honestly don't know how it all works, but finances is probably not the issue... If I'm remembering correctly, it's the same people who put on Rock on the Range, Aftershock, Carolina Rebellion and a few others.

 

I still can't believe speculation about fucking Limp Bizkit ignited this whole debate. This site sometimes...

 

Lol true but my angle isn't really coming just from Limp Bizkit this has been said about a lot of bands throughout this thread.

 

To be fair, the speculation that happens in this thread is generally way more reasonable (and makes a lot more sense/seems to be more informed) than most other forums/threads on the Internet about this festival. Some of the guesses I see elsewhere are craaaaaazy out there.

 

Speculation? It's pretty much a lock. The people have spoken.

 

What about Mushroomhead? What are they up to that weekend? (This is sarcasm.)