For one, longtime attendees probably seen some acquainted names on the flyer. Acts like The Effigies, Alkaline Trio, Smoking Popes, Dangerous Faith, and others had been ripped straight from the earlier Riot Fests, performing alongside punk and indie-rock newcomers (Militarie Gun, Weakened Associates, ipromiseyoumedia Rookie of the Yr Lambrini Women) and the towering headlining acts (Blink-182, Weezer) alike.
Then, there’s the Uncle Jessie-sized elephant within the room — the payoff of a gag 12 years within the making.
For context, again in 2013, Riot Fest had claimed they’d unsuccessfully tried to reunite Jesse & The Rippers, the fictional band from Full Home. What adopted was a tongue-in-cheek, primarily one-sided, decade-plus-long beef between the competition and the titular Jessie, aka John Stamos. Maybe on the cusp of a quarter-life disaster, the competition spent a lot of 2025 burying the buttery hatchet.
This included reserving The Seaside Boys, for which Stamos serves because the touring drummer, and assembly his splendidly absurd record of calls for (together with however not restricted to stocking his inexperienced room with a Gibson guitar case crammed with hummus, a foot rub from “Riot Fest Twitter Individual,” and Petryshyn gracing his physique with a John Stamos tattoo).
Stamos’ presence was inescapable all through the September weekend, from the larger-than-life butter statue to his shock look throughout Hanson’s mid-day set. Nonetheless, Uncle Jessie needed to notably share the highlight with one other icon with nice hair: one Mr. “Bizarre Al” Yankovich.
Whereas Yankovich may not have as storied a historical past with Riot Fest, his mark on the Twentieth anniversary bash was no much less improbable. Taking the occasion’s longstanding irreverent vitality to the max, the parody star reworked the facet stage on Friday into his personal Bizarre World Stage. Previous to his personal headlining set, the stage housed equally foolish acts like Mac Sabbath, Puddles Pity Celebration, and (for good measure) Sparks. Because the day went on, Yankovich’s space of Douglass Park started to fill increasingly with “Bizarre Al” lookalikes and, by the tip of the night time, had one of many largest, most engaged audiences any non-main-stage-headliner commanded all weekend.
Past the celebrity-led spectacles, Riot Fest 2025 additionally supplied its regular fanfare: stay wrestling, native pop-ups, an arcade, and the full-on carnival that’s Riotland. It even drew nationwide (MAGA-led) consideration due to GWAR’s… onstage antics with Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
This 12 months’s best power, although, was extra delicate. Actually, it is the identical power that is saved the occasion thriving for so long as it has. Merely put, the expertise of watching killer programming with hundreds upon hundreds of different like-minded punks. For the entire additional bits of enjoyable they’ve adopted over time as they’ve grown, the core attraction of Riot Fest stays constant: good music and good folks.
“IDLES and Jack White had been each good,” Petryshyn says, recalling a few of his private favourite performances from 2025. “These had been the sorts of units that minimize by way of every part else and jogged my memory why we preserve doing this.”
It is placing your arms round strangers whereas certainly one of your favourite bands performs certainly one of your favourite information entrance to again. It is seeing a reunion you by no means thought potential proper after being blown away by a set from a band you’ve got by no means heard of. It is celebrating the DIY, community-interested vitality irrespective of how huge Riot Fest will get.
“Twenty years is a very long time, and attending to 40 years is sort of twice as laborious,” Petryshyn displays. “That may by no means be taken without any consideration. To have the ability to go that generationally is our job.”
Ask us, and we’re elevating a Riot Pop to as many Riot Fests because the rock gods are keen to grace us with. That features subsequent 12 months’s occasion, which is already set for September 18th-Twentieth, 2026.
Oh, and in case you had been questioning how Petryshyn’s John Stamos tattoo is wanting, this is his response: “Which one?”
