By Lillian Baker
After years of anticipation, I got to see my favorite artist of all time, Jeff Rosenstock, perform live. Twice in one weekend, actually.
I will admit, I think the average music listener hasn’t really heard much about Jeff Rosenstock; I heard about him from some friends back in 2015 when he performed at the Sing Out Loud festival in St. Augustine for free. In recent years, he has stolen the hearts of many with his albums WORRY. (2016) and SKA DREAM (2021), both of which gained significant traction on online music forums for his witty and cynical lyricism about the world around us. Time and time again, he has proven to be someone to keep an eye on in the music industry right now.
However, he has always been one of those artists I seem to miss every time he plays near me: vacations, illnesses, and finals seemingly popping up during my only chances to see him. But this time, I decided I had to see him. So, I bought my tickets to fly out to Chicago to see him perform at Riot Fest.
The day finally came, and I was set to see Jeff Rosenstock live, in the flesh (shortly before seeing My Chemical Romance headline later that day). A few sets before, me and Mia Posada (*add link to her profile if you can*) headed to sneak in towards the barricade. To my surprise, we ended up sitting through Hot Mulligan by accident, who I’ve been meaning to listen to for years.
After Hot Mulligan, Rosenstock and his team began to set up their equipment in front of the already-antsy crowd. Throughout their setup, the crowd continuously yelped out the names of his band members while they waved back to us (and sometimes even played rock paper scissors against them.)
Soundcheck was going well, and it came down to the last thing to set up, Rosenstock’s mic. However, as much as they tried, they couldn’t get his mic to pick up anything. As sound people were frantically running around the band, plugging things in and throwing wires around, Rosenstock got a bit restless and started messing around with his guitar. Someone from the crowd screamed “play Wonderwall!” and that’s just what he did.
He and his band began improvising song after song while the crowd sang and danced along to every song he decided to play. We heard covers of songs like “Say it Ain’t So” by Weezer and “Santeria” by Sublime, which proved to be crowd favorites. The show even started minutes late, meaning they had to cut “Caring” from the setlist, but we didn’t care- we got to mess around with Rosenstock before he performed some of his greatest hits.
As soon as his mic connected properly, he launched into “NO TIME,” the banging opening track from his album NO DREAM. It’s at this moment that I believed what everyone had told me about seeing Jeff Rosenstock live: his stage presence is unmatched. This felt like one of the most intimate concerts I’ve ever gone to, so much more than watching a small local band at a dive bar. Even with thousands of people behind me, all captivated by him, I still felt connected to the band. With each song that played, the crowd moshed and danced harder and harder, with dozens of crowd surfers flying over my head at any given moment.
At one point, Rosenstock stopped between songs so the audience could sing “happy birthday” to one of his band members, and for his birthday present the band decided to play one of his favorite songs they don’t play live much- “All This Useless Energy.” They also played one of my favorite songs of all time “Nausea,” in which Gainesville artist Jer, also known as Skatune Network, came onstage to play the trombone for the choruses.
At the end of the show, one of the members of Rosenstock’s band gave me the setlist that was placed on the keyboard. Since then, I’ve hung this setlist up in my room, and now it’s one of my prized possessions.
Now that his show on Friday was done, I still had the remaining time of the next three days to continue going to other shows at Riot Fest. There, we saw bands like My Chemical Romance, The Front Bottoms, the original Misfits, Sunny Day Real Estate and The Academy Is…, arguably one of the best festival lineups I’ve ever seen. However, I had tickets to see Jeff Rosenstock’s SKA DREAM late night show on Sunday, which I was heavily anticipating throughout the whole night.
When we arrived, sleep deprived after 3 days of a festival, we were ecstatic to see Jeff Rosenstock perform the critically acclaimed 2021 album in full. Small Crush, a smaller indie rock act from the bay area of California, opened in the 700-person capacity venue. On top of their captivating original songs, they played covers of songs like “Dreams” by The Cranberries, which the crowd loved.
After their beautiful set, Rosenstock’s band began to get set up, and we decided to get merch to remember the event. To my surprise, Rosenstock’s wife and tour manager was working the merch stand, which made the event feel that much more intimate.
The members of the band walked onstage, once again accompanied by Jer on the trombone, but also with a full horn section this time around. Rosenstock greeted the audience, and then got straight into the first song of SKA DREAM: “NO TIME TO SKANK.” The crowd went wild.
Life was breathed into the room, and every inch of the venue was electrified. Immediately after Jeff Rosenstock’s performance began, everyone was already skanking and moshing along to the first song. Sound bounced around the room, and the speakers could barely outperform the screaming of every lyric by all of the audience members. Rosenstock and his band continued on through the album, but eventually after “The Rudie of Breathing,” they let the mood mellow for a second for Rosenstock to talk to the crowd, and play some other calm songs from his discography, as well as some other ska songs from his solo work and with Bomb The Music Industry!, Rosenstock's DIY ska/punk collective.
After mellowing out for a bit, he starts back up with “Old SKrAp,” and kept the energy high until the very end of the show, when he ended with “Checkerboard Ashtray'' and “Ohio Porkpie,” which left us on a good note to leave. However, after the last note of the song he exclaimed, “I don’t have to do that thing where I walk offstage and act like I’m not coming back, right?”
The band begins to play two covers, one of one of his songs with The Arrogant Sons of Bitches, one of the first projects he was ever a part of. The other was a cover of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ song “The Impression That I Get.” And with that, the show was over, and I was launched back into the sleep-deprived reality that I had a flight to board in 6 hours.
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