The Sights and Sounds of Riot Fest 2015. Douglas Park Chicago Sept. 11, 2015

Riot Fest Finds A New Home.  And they Blow the Roof Off the Sucker
Photo and story by Dan Locke

This years Riot Fest had alot of ups and downs.  First they were kicked out of their old location.  Then they found a new home (Douglas Park).  The hospital (St. Anthony's) across the way from the park, wanted money from Riot Fest, to compensate for disruption due to noise.  It is interesting that there are the are a few other hospitals which are closer to Douglas Park (Mt. Sinai, Schwab Rehabilitation, and Methodist Hospital of Chicago). They finally settled a few days before the start of the fest.  And now we have the start of an all new Riot Fest.   This was the best lineup of any of previous fest I have ever seen.  You had performers such as, Snoop Dogg, No Doubt, Ice Cube, Modest Mouse, Tenaciou D, Cypress Hill, System of a Down and Iggy Pop.

We at Unrated have started to using a new product called Activeon CX Camera for all our videos and some of our photography.   

Some of the feature of the camera include.

• Full HD resolution at 30fps.
• It features a CMOS sensor, F/2.4 bright glass lens and a two-inch color LCD screen.
• Interfaces: microHDMI, USB
• Movie Resolution: 1080p
• Photo Resolution: 5MP
• F/2.4 bright glass lens
• Waterproof up to 196 feet.
• Built-in WiFi
• Live View thru smartphone with app

This is my report on Riot Fest 2015

The first act I saw, was Barb Wire Dolls, was formed in Crete, Greece in 2010 with the members Isis Queen and Pyn Doll.  Over a few short years,  they have been growing stronger

 with their UK Punk sound. I enjoyed them alot and can't wait to see them in a club like the Double Door  or Metro. One of the other bands that I watched but did not photograph was a band

out of Detroit called Death.  A Black Metal Band with a lot of promise with their pure Metal sound.  I actually came across them during their last song.  You can hear a bit of them in some of the videos which I have include in this report.

Also the band Living Colour performed.  One of my favorite bands ever.  They were playing the same time as Barb Wire Dolls,  and Barb Wire Dolls won the throw of the dice.

Fishbone played early during the day.  I watched a few minutes of them.  Wow, have they changed over the years.  I remember seeing them at the Abbey Pub back in 1997.  Back then they were alot wilder.  They seem like they have clamed down after all these years.  The lead singer used to crowd surf.  He did not even get near the end of the stage. Dreamers were boring. Floggying Molly was their usual high stepping Celtic punk sound.

Now back to the bands I have images of.

The biggest surprise of the day was a band called Skinny Lister.  They were almost like a female fronted Floggying Molly.  But more true to Celtic punk sound.

The other surprise was a little known rapper from Chicago,  called Psalm One

At the end of the night you had No Doubt, Ice Cube and Motorhead.  They played within 15 minutes apart from one other. Which one do I choose? As the press we usually get the first three songs.  With No Doubt we had only the first two songs.  With Ice Cube they had some many guest in the pit there were no room for photographers.  And we were only given one song.  That left no time to shoot Lenny and Motorhead.Overall it was a fun day.  And I can not wait to see the rest of the fest.

Share on Google Plus

About UnRated Magazine

This is a short description in the author block about the author. You edit it by entering text in the "Biographical Info" field in the user admin panel.