Jawbreaker At Riot Fest: The Moment I Stopped Hating Pop Punk

Sometimes, a live music moment catches you off guard and hits you so hard that you are overcome with the feels- a band or a song that summons a moment in time, a relationship, a victory or a defeat- you are instantly transported to that time and place with a chord, or a riff or a melody. As a reliable concert crier, I typically have a pretty good idea when that moment is coming. Before the show starts, before I get to the venue and even before tickets go on sale, as soon as a show is announced, I know. But The Misfits as the marquee headliners of Riot Fest 2016 and up to this past Sunday when Jawbreaker were the belles of the ball known as Riot Fest 2017, it redefined the criteria for the eligibility of what makes those moments and what don’t and redefined how I reconciled my musical identity- yeah, Jawbreaker were that good.

*note- album, not band

One faithful summer night visiting my sister in college at SDSU for the weekend while my parents were going through a dramatic and at times abusive divorce, my sister’s boyfriend, who was in a punk band that played a gig at an apartment complex my first night in town, put on the recently released Megadeth album called Rust in Peace on cassette tape at the after party.

After 6 minutes and 35 seconds, song one of the album, “Holy Wars… The Punishment Due” ended and the raucous party of maybe 30 people stood dead silent, with only a sort of shell shocked look on their faces- some from complete awe and curiosity about what type of masterful fuckery could possibly come next on the album and others hoping that this wasn’t what the vibe of the party was going to be.

I was in the former demographic. I already had a casual relationship to skate thrash starting in 1987 when an album called Join The Army came out but back to 1990- it was also the year of Lights, Camera, Revolution, Seasons in the Abyss and the time I dropped acid and took a train back down to the San Diego Sports Arena to witness the Clash of the Titans tour.

… and then there was “Emo.”

The entire music industry was scaled and predicated on classifying and labeling music to bolster sales with terms like “Emo”, when “Pop Punk” was perfectly sufficient enough label and MUCH less annoying, (but only slightly less so). Another example of this- not one “Grunge” band from Seattle sounded anything like the other…

Not. A. One.

Now that brings us up to speed to Sunday, September 17^th 2017 at Riot Fest in Chicago.

Abby and his wife Sarah flew in the previous night but I was busy Buzzcocking at the Cobra Lounge and fielding emergency calls from drunk, phone losing friends stranded at Douglas Park. It was the earliest I had gotten to the park in the three days of the festival so that I could catch two young bands that I love, Downtown Boys and Culture Abuse.

It was after this set that the family converged together, 123…

Two generations were represented, with the matriarch and patriarch thousands of miles away, unfortunately. Adam’s daughters whom I hadn’t seen since before puberty, some of their friends, some of Kembra’s friends and then I met up with Abby and Sarah backstage just a few minutes later.

I could tell you that the excitement from this point of view was still almost as exciting for me as the build up to seeing the original lineup of The Misfits last year. The Misfits are a “top 3” type of band for me but that excitement was based on fantasy and people placed on pedestals who don’t deserve to be up there at an elevated status for a grown ass man like me (*cough cough Glenn Danzig*). In 25 years I had never seen Glenn Danzig play a bad show, including the Danzig Legacy tour which was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen in my life (yup, cried at that one). But The Misfits performance at Riot Fest Chicago in 2016 left me feeling empty inside- like being betrayed or finding out you weren’t going to make rent this month- they were awful.

Jawbreaker absolutely CRUSHED it live.

The band was tight, REAL tight. Seeing the faces in the crowd, seeing the faces in the wings of the Riot Stage of both Adam’s family and other musicians that played the fest that weekend, seeing one lonely tear roll down the cheek of a stranger when Jawbreaker started playing “Accident Prone” gave me that familiar feeling I didn’t think would be possible without a lifelong, intimate connection to their music that is typically required for me to tap into those feelings I tried to destroy for so long and that come to the surface in these moments.

Adam Pfahler’s daughters seemed suddenly awestruck and I could see them re-evaluating what they know about their dad in their eyes, borderline balling because their whole lives they have listened to their dad talk about a time before they were alive as most parents do, they watched their dad hope beyond hope and probably become somewhat bitter when the other two members of Jawbreaker couldn’t get “it” together to do what he has always wanted to do- which is to resume playing music in a band he KNEW was iconic to so many anonymous people he’d never meet and just drop the drama already.

But the drama is a part of Jawbreaker lore and the tension in the ranks contributes to their art and let’s face it, if they had reformed 10 years ago, they probably wouldn’t be one of the most anticipated and probably one of the most well paid festival acts of the decade, the latter of which is pure speculation on my part.

It was an interesting behind the scenes look at the biggest marquee bookings on the competitive festival circuit and two years in a row, Riot Fest has stolen the thunder from Hurricane Coachella (recently downgraded to a tropical, post pop depression) and the punks from Punk Rock Bowling. The Stern brothers are so punk that their one stage festival refuses to compromise their distaste for Emo, even if it allows them to grow big enough for multiple stages that would draw a crowd and a ticket price that could compete for bands like the Misfits and yes, they would’ve booked Jawbreaker in an INSTANT.

I’ve seen this story many times before just not to this magnitude. The reformation and resurgence of bands like Neutral Milk Hotel and Sleep have propelled those bands to heights they had never looked down from in their prime songwriting years. That phenomenon is directly related to the internet and the fact that kids of every age will always want to collect things- things like rare vinyl.