‘You’re witnessing history,” Glenn Danzig kept reminding tens of thousands of onlookers — a mix of the hardcore and the curious. The singer was presiding over a reunion of the “Original Misfits” on the final night of Riot Fest on Sunday in Douglas Park, and there he stood with his band of make-believe ghouls from long, long ago flanked by two giant, glowing Halloween pumpkins.
Alongside Danzig were his old Misfits sidekick, bassist Jerry Only, and guitarist Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein (presumably not the name on his birth certificate, but that’s just a guess), plus a couple of ringers, guitarist Acey Slade and former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo. It was only their second show together since breaking up in 1983. Danzig is now 61, and the Misfits were essentially the band he dreamed up as an alienated kid (is there any other kind?) growing up in New Jersey while nurturing a fascination for horror comics and rock ‘n’ roll.
The Misfits dressed like monsters to emphasize how different they looked and felt from just about everyone else in their dead-end town. The look wouldn’t have mattered if the music wasn’t catchy as all get-out. Danzig wrote impatient songs that came and went in 90 seconds or less. The lyrics were beyond terse — haikus of teen aggression, sci-fi fantasy and cartoon violence.
On Sunday, Jerry and Doyle still dressed like a couple of the shirtless, war-painted desert marauders in the “Mad Max” movies, and Danzig packed his muscles into skin-tight leather. Lombardo, using perhaps a tenth of his protean ability, gave the songs an air-tight wallop, and rampaged gleefully when given a little more room to maneuver in “Earth A.D.” and “Green Hell.”
As seen and heard from a football field away when the set started, the music felt unfocused and the pacing uneven, as Danzig spent minutes between songs catching his breath and chatting up the audience. The oddest comments had to do with his ongoing obsession with the Kennedy family — the subject of at least two songs in the set, “Bullet” and “Who Killed Marilyn?”
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Things finally started to pick up as the curiosity-seekers drifted off and left only the deeply committed to bellow along to songs with punchy choruses and dozens of “Whoah-oh” backing vocals. “This one’s about wanting to kill your boyfriend or girlfriend,” Danzig cackled, and the fans threw themselves into “Die, Die My Darling” as if they were 16 again.
Nostalgia played a major role in the weekend’s festivities. Riot Fest focused on mostly ’80s and ’90s punk and alternative sounds sprinkled with a bit of hip-hop, as more than 100 bands performed over three days on seven stages. A few outliers spruced things up a bit Sunday.
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The agit-rap trio Death Grips played just about its entire set in shadows and blue light, an eerie glow that turned MC Ride into a pogoing ghost from a distance — visible only when there was a splash of strobe lights, then disappearing anew into the darkness. Shirtless drummer Zach Hill hammered away with a mixture of precision and fury that rivaled Lombardo’s dexterity in his Slayer years. And keyboardist Andy Morin rained terror on the crowd with an array of otherworldly noises. The set slammed nonstop for 30 minutes before pausing and then resuming its relentless clip. It was a beatdown that should have come with a warning label: This speeding vehicle is not equipped with brakes.
Earlier in the day, the Julie Ruin provided a forum for riot grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna to dance, dish and generally have a ball. Though she has a reputation as an intensely serious artist — and she delivered a withering putdown of a fake feminist in “Mr. So and So” — she also exuded a goofy, free-form charm. Her loose, bashy, scrappy co-ed quintet played everything from noisy drone epics to ESG-style funk, and Hanna threw down her best Danceteria moves. She ended the set by executing a cartwheel into a split. Could the floor exercise at the 2020 Summer Olympics be next? Now that would be truly historic.
Original Misfits set Sunday at Riot Fest:
Death Comes Ripping
20 Eyes
I Turned Into a Martian
Where Eagles Dare
Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?
Vampira
All Hell Breaks Loose
Hybrid Moments
Teenagers From Mars
London Dungeon
Earth A.D.
Green Hell
Devilock
Horror Business
We Are 138
Hollywood Babylon
Who Killed Marilyn?
Halloween
Die, Die My Darling
Astro Zombies
Skulls
Last Caress
Encore:
Bullet
Night of the Living Dead
She
Attitude
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