The magnificent minds behind Chicago’s own Riot Fest inlcuding the delightful ‘Riot Fest Twitter Guy’ took questions from fans and festival goers yesterday on Reddit. There was plenty revealed in the open chat including how the team goes about getting bands on the fest and what are the challenges of producing a festival this. Some big info came out of the chat including the dismissal of a rumor that Green Day may play this year’s festival in Douglas Park. We scroll through and picked out the coolest questions with the best answers for you here. Don’t forget to enter to win your Riot Fest 2016 tickets here.
Whats the one big headlining act that got away?
We had tried to book Prince, but unfortunately, things didn’t work out.
Whats the process to get some bands to play full albums at Riot Fest? Several bands on past RF lineups have performed some of their classic albums live and in their entirety like Weezer did with the ‘Blue’ album in 2014.
95% of the time it’s coming from us. We ask the band if they can do it. Like this year Social D is playing White Light, White Heat, White Trash on the anniversary of it’s release. And also Rob Zombie to do Astro-Creep : 2000. But the Hold Steady came to us and asked if they could play it.
One redditor asked about legendary rapper Snoop Dogg reportedly have the length of his set adjusted due some issue.
There are some people who are functional when they are high, and some people who aren’t. We are the former.
Will Riot Fest run in other cities beyond Denver and it’s home base of Chicago? Whats the future for RF?
I would love to do a Riot Fest one day in my own home town of Buffalo, but right now, it’s just not feasible. That’s where I caught my bearings on my early musical influences, they came from their, all my early shows, and my history is in that city. I would be so happy to be able to do that one day.
I also participated in the AMA and as someone looking forward to the mid-September fest here in IL, wanted to know if the Denver Riot Fest would be live streamed online officially so that I could get pumped up for the live show in Chicago?
I think they do a disservice to the band because I have yet to see a live stream that actually duplicate the experience of seeing performances live. It’s something that’s almost impossible to capture even with 100 cameras on them because it doesn’t capture the intangible elements that make an outside live show special. That’s generally has to do with the nonverbal excitement that fans have in front of their favorite bands. If someone shows me a way to capture that excitement, I’ll be the first one to do it. The streaming companies also don’t pay sh** to the bands, so f*** them.
How the heck did they get the original Misfits back together to perform their first show in over 30 years?
About 2-3 years ago
On the recent news that Morrissey might not play Riot Fest this year though he was announced for it in May:
He confirmed awhile back, and if there was any miscommunication it wasn’t from our end. The media put a complete spin on it. There was never a doubt that he was going to play.
Check out some of our interviews backstage at Riot Fest over the years
