For The Record- 07. December. 2024

But nothing ever stays the same. Nothing's explained

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KA~

In September 2017, I saw one of the best shows of my life. Jawbreaker played their first real show in ~20 years. They tore the roof off and played a little bit of everything. For those of us lucky enough to be there, it was a celebration. It was a catharsis.

This was Riot Fest, also known as a place for bands to play one of their records in its entirety. Dinosaur Jr. played You’re Living All Over Me. That Dog played Retreat From the Sun. TV on the Radio was there. So were Nine Inch Nails and Ministry. New Order, too, playing their usual mix of greatest hits. They always end with “Love Will Tear Us Apart”— a song that was 37 at the time.

If that bothered anyone singing along with every last syllable, it sure didn’t show.

Jawbreaker’s was the climax of three days of seeing other “best shows of my life,” crossing bands off my bucket list, and just generally being drowned in my favorite sounds.

In short, it was a bunch of bands playing records from the past, setting an impossibly high bar for any shows I’d go to in the future.

You could argue that Riot Fest mainly functions as an apparatchik in the