Originally posted on 9/20/19 to wluw.org.
FRIDAY —
Caroline Rose
Friday afternoon, Caroline Rose and her band took the stage as one of the few indie pop bands on the Riot Fest lineup. Caroline’s 2018 album “Loner” showcases her intense story-telling songwriting alongside catchy and bubbly beats.
Sporting her signature ruby red sweatband and running shorts, the Riot Fest crowd was unprepared to join Caroline’s contagiously dance-y performance style. Between songs, Caroline joked with the audience, demanding that there be “no smiles, no dancing, no smizing (that’s smiling with your eyes), you must be serious.” It was next to impossible to agree to Caroline’s conditions after she crushed a beer can on her forehead and jokingly announced her and her band as Blink-182, the headliners of the night.
Somehow, though, the audience found solace when she paused from the synth keyboards to sing a stripped back version of the song “Getting to Me.” Caroline explained that performing the song with less instrumentation really gets to the heart and emotion of the song from when she wrote it.
Another highlight of the set included a kazoo singalong to Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing.” As the crowd vaguely recognized the melody of the song, we all began to laugh and sing karaoke to the tune. Caroline then seamlessly dove back into the last chorus of the final song “Money” that drove the song home.
Along with her zaniness, Caroline was grateful toward all of the attention she had drawn throughout the performance. Evidently, many of the Riot Fest attendees did not seem familiar with her music. Nonetheless, she brought a memorable stage presence to the afternoon.
SUNDAY –
Bikini Kill
“We’re a feminist band and we’re headlining a festival,” lead vocalist of Bikini Kill, Kathleen Hanna, said amidst the screams and cheers that filled Douglas Park throughout the closing set of Riot Fest.
Bikini Kill is an American feminist punk band formed in 1990 by vocalist, guiarist and songwriter Kathleen Hanna, bassist Kathi Wilcox, vocalist and drummer Tobi Vail and guitarist Billy Karren. The group is known for their contributions to the riot grrrl movement, a feminist punk movement beginning in Olympia, Washington.
Riot grrrl was a movement which, as explained by Melena Ryzik in her New York Times article on the subject, “allowed women to be sexually free and simultaneously open about harassment and sexual assault, that encouraged them in pursuits traditionally thought of as male, like dancing in the mosh pit or thrashing on guitar.” Today, the riot grrrl movement seeks to be more inclusive to non-binary, LBGTQ+ and minority populations within punk circles.
Bikini Kill, historically, encourages a female-centered environment at their shows. The band was known for leading chants of “girls to the front,” a phrase which literally encourages women to move to the front of the crowd, as well as inspires women to challenge the male-dominated punk scene.
The original band was only together from 1990 until 1997, when they initially broke up, but Bikini Kill has made a comeback this year. In January, Karren, guitarist, was replaced with Erica Dawn Lyle, making Bikini Kill an all-female group – and the only female headliner at Riot Fest this year.
As Bikini Kill stormed the stage at 8:30 PM Sunday, they were met with deafening screams from fans young and old; some audience members were not even born when the band had broken up initially in 1997, and others were present the last time Bikini Kill played in Chicago – at the Fireside Bowl on Oct. 19, 1994.
The easily-recognizable opening chords of “Carnival” rang out, sending the crowd into a whirlwind of dancing and moshing. A buzz of excitement – and perspiration – electrified the crowd. Throughout the entire set, the audience dropped their inhibitions and let themselves bounce and thrash around, in true riot grrrl fashion.
Bikini Kill’s 75-minute set was bathed in hot pink lights, transporting the audience back to the 1990s amid chants of “girls to the front!,” with women grabbing one another by the hand and making their way into the widening mosh pit.
Hanna was 22 when she started Bikini Kill. At 50, her angular and dissonant vocals are equally as powerful as her early days. Hanna introduced a song which she wrote as a teenager in a fit of emotion and anger, calling it “shitty teenage poetry … which isn’t even shitty.” She lamented the tendency of young women to write off their art as not good enough, as “bad,” and calls out everyone’s readiness to accept this.
“Don’t think nobody cares. Don’t think nobody wants to listen … Keep your shit, keep your diaries,” Hanna implored. “No art starts with everything being perfect,” she continued. “How could we see ourselves up here if we started out perfect?”
“It’s the mistakes – it’s the mistakes!”
The band closed their set with “Rebel Girl,” their most popular song. The audience was alive; in every direction women were dancing, moshing, singing, screaming and crowd-surfing as Bikini Kill ripped their set to a conclusion. “Rebel Girl” feels just as central to the lives of self-identifying women now as it did when it was released in 1993, as female roles are still constantly undervalued in the music industry; not only was Bikini Kill the only female headliner, there was a shortage of female artists at all three days of the festival.
Morgan Ciocca and Allison Lapinski
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