Hey, I Remember That Day

Today, September 15th, 2017, is the first day of this year's edition of Riot Fest, which has now firmly unseated The Fest as North America's most popular punk music festival. This year's edition of the festival has been notable because it is being headlined by the incredible and influential 90's emo/punk band Jawbreaker. While my non-punk friends will yawn at this, this is the biggest deal to punk fans because for the last twenty years, since breaking up shortly after their 1995 album Dear You was released, a Jawbreaker reunion has been labelled as one of those things "that will just never happen".

Jawbreaker along with Operation Ivy, the Dead Kennedys, the Misfits, Hüsker Dü (A hearty RIP to Grant Hart, who passed away this week, for contributing to one of punk's all-time greats), and The Replacements were seen as perfect bands whose role in important punk scenes and influence on later bands reached legendary status after their dissolution. Each band's break-up was also fraught with interpersonal tension (except Operation Ivy), which meant that any chance of the bands getting back together for later fans to see them would be unlikely. Speaking from my own perspective, this only made them even more appealing to me when I was discovering them much later. I discovered Jawbreaker through hearing other bands cite them as an integral influence on their own music, and the fact that I was living my Jawbreaker experience through somebody else's seem exciting and important.

I also thought it was really cool that there were bands out there who were "too punk too reunite". I still enjoyed it when The Ergs and Descendents came back to give me a chance to experience them again, but the fact that some bands valued their own convictions more than the pay they would receive further cemented my own values. It feels good to know that there are other true believers out there.

A brief aside: I also experience this type of feeling when the golden god Roy Halladay signed a one-day contract with the Toronto Blue Jays to retire at the age of 36, saying that he would rather retire then than continue to play later into life when he wouldn't be able to pitch as well and not live up to his own expectations in competition. Roy Halladay: More punk than Jawbreaker?

The "never-reuniting" myth was pretty much personified by Jawbreaker, as there were rumours that the band had turned down a $2,000,000 offer to get back together, and when asked about it, frontman Blake Schwarzenbach consistently said "No Way." There was even a band tongue-in-cheekly named "Jawbreaker Reunion" for fuck sakes.

A few years ago, Riot Fest started making "Holy Shit!" bands reunions their gimmick. This happened first when The Replacements played their first show in 22 years at the 2013 editions of the festival and then when they somehow got the friggin' Misfits to play a set at the 2016 version of the fest. The Misfits reunion was especially a significant moment, as nobody thought that Gelnn Danzig could possibly hold his chill for long enough to perform with the band.

This was all just an appetiser for this year's announcement of the Jawbreaker reunion, which was so significant that all of my punk friends immediately contacted each other about it. Takes were abound. It seemed like I could feel Riot Fest's self-satisfied "Yeah, we just did this" grin from through my computer screen. It was something I really believed I would never see.

I guess I wrote this whole thing to a prelude to my own thoughts on the reunion, but they're hard to state because I'm still not sure exactly where I stand on everything.

One hand, I hate big festivals, as I find them impersonal and overcrowded, they always have bad sound, and always end up underwhelming. Riot Fest, in particular, was a pretty shitty time the last time I went. I definitely don't like the idea of a payday being the main reason of a band ending a lengthy hiatus. I can't shake the "I don't agree with this" feeling that I get when thinking about big reunions and the more I think about it, the harder it is for me to define.

On the other hand, why should a band not get theirs when they can? I mean, one of the main reasons a band tours , aside from the joy of playing and having fun with your friends and showing people your art (all more important in my book), is to make money. As much as I would like to divorce finance from art, it's impossible. I think there's also something to be said for being in attendance for the reunion and getting to take in a significant punk moment. Much like I felt when first discovering the band, I'm sure that seeing everyone react when Jawbreaker walks out onstage on Sunday will feel important.

I guess I'll close by saying that a lot people are losing it about this, in both ways. Some people are ecstatic that they are finally seeing their favourite band and some people are very mad (I wouldn't characterize myself as "mad" but I suppose that I fall into this category rather than the other). People weren't as polarized when the Misfits reunited last year, but now any uproar about it happening seems so distant in the past. Realistically, I think that in a year or so, the Jawbreaker reunion will be a thing that happened and nobody will really think about it. This reunion doesn't do anything to the quality of their records, which is what really matters.

And when that day comes, I suppose that I can go back to holding up Jesse Michaels and Jello Biafra for sticking to their values, even though I try to have no heroes.

Rolling Like a Cel-eh-bri-tay!

Early last Friday evening I found out that I won tickets to Riot Fest in Toronto. The lineup featured some things that I really wanted to see and some that I just didn't care at all about. Since I got the tickets for free I figured it would be worth to head down for the Sunday of the festival, since I was already committed to watching the Blue Jays play the Red Sox at 4 PM on Saturday (A disappointing game featuring a rare blow-up from Roberto Osuna resulting in a 7-6 loss).

I've become pretty disenfranchised with large music festivals. Before things like Riot Fest and Osheaga and Wayhome and Veld were things, artists used to tour a lot more. A band who were signed would tour Canada in the summer, bringing maybe a smaller labelmate along for the ride to go with a few local acts to fill out the bill. This kind of set up was great because it let me see my favourite bands in a more intimate atmosphere (I mean, even the Kool Haus was more intimate than Downsview Park), but also because it gave smaller bands crucial exposure and allowed them to grow. Nowadays many bands just run a circuit of festivals, Riot Fest ->The Fest->Groezrock->Soundwave->etc, and playing large tours has pretty much become a thing of the past. Though I'm sure that most bands, especially the older ones, love this because it lets them have more down time, for me it sucks and has taken away one of my favourite parts of the summer.

With the influx of large music festivals, a weird (at least to me) culture of people who go to these festivals has popped up. It seems like there are people who buy a ticket to most, if not all, big festivals and make being a "festival-goer" a part of their identity. I've noticed people on facebook who seem to have a new picture of themselves in front of a large banner for each new music fest. Google "Music Festival Guide" if you don't believe me. For every girl in a flower crown or bro in a tank top, there are 5 BuzzFeed lists telling what to wear/eat/drink/do wherever they are.

And whatever, people are going to do what they want/like and I have no control over that, so I shouldn't let it get to me, but something I've noticed is that they people who go to these things don't seem to give much of a shit about who they're seeing. They don't even care about the artists there and that really rubs me the wrong way. They are just there to be at the festival, not to see anybody, if that makes any sense.

Case in point, on the Sunday at Riot Fest was headlined by 6/9 (RIP ODB) of Wu Tang Clan. There were a ton of die-hard Wu fans to see the set. For example, my friend Erik, the drummer of my first two bands, is a huge Wu fan, so seeing the set was of paramount importance to him. But for every one of those, there were two people there who didn't really know anything about Wu Tang Clan. Sure they have the "W" shirt and know that "Wu Tang Clan ain't nothin' ta fuck with" or that "Cash Rules Everything Around Me", but I bet they couldn't name a single album. I bet they couldn't name a single member. They love the brand of Wu Tang Clan and they like the idea of being a person who likes Wu Tang Clan, but they don't really do. Logically, a Wu Tang fan probably would have also been interested in seeing Atmosphere's set earlier in the day, yet his crowd was 1/5 the size. With how much people seemingly have to advertise their interests and themselves over social media now, it seems like having a visual signifier is now more important than the signified, and that's just fucked to me.

Instead of watching Wu Tang, I decided to watch Weezer, who were playing all of Blue (Do I italicize "Blue Album"? I mean, it's really self-titled and wasn't called "Blue" until "Green" came out. Hard to say.). Their crowd was also huge. I expected this and tried to not worry so much about how shitty they crowd was around me, though it was monumentally shitty. I will limit myself to one complaint: A large number of extremely drunk bros doing a "Rosanne singing the national anthem at Wrigley"-level rendition of the falsetto "Hoo-ooh"s during the pre-chorus in "Buddy Holly". Fuck off guys, you actually completely ruined it for me. 

Some assholes aside, everyone seemed to actually be pretty into the set. But the dumb part came in the second half. The singles that Blue is known for, "Buddy Holly", "Undone - The Sweater Song" and "Say It Ain't So", all come early, so as soon as "Say It Ain't So" ended, THOUSANDS of people left the crowd. Guys, the three best songs on the album are left! A first I was annoyed, but I was coming down from a few red wines and uh..., which, combined with the really nice sunset made me really relaxed. The fact that all of the bros and drunks were leaving during the nerdiest song on an already nerdy album made me feel kind of good too. Rivers singing "I've got Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler too, waiting there for me" during an exodus of assholes made me sort of realize that I was who this song was meant for and that made me feel really good.

That didn't last long though, as some dick started yelling "'Beverley Hills'! Play 'Beverley Hills'!" behind me while Weezer played "Susanne". THEY PLAYED FUCKING "SUSANNE"!

After this I walked over to catch my friends Like Pacific and upon realizing that their set had been moved up and I had unknowingly missed it, watched the last two songs of Wu Tang. The crowd was maybe 1/5 of what it had been earlier which I can only imagine was a result of all the poseurs leaving once they realized that they don't even know the songs they thought they did. The being said, everyone who was still there was super into it and there was a giant crowd of people worshipping the stage with the "Wu" gesture.

I hate being right sometimes.