A favorite moment from this weekend’s Riot Fest occurred when Luca Cimarusti and I were rehashing the Screeching Weasel set we had just witnessed—it’s just Ben Weasel and a bunch of dudes, but the hits were still the hits—and started to hear Bad Religion songs from the Roots Stage, well over a hundred yards away. It’s all pretty simple: tight and crisp punk rock from tour dogs, like Brian Baker and Greg Hetson, who have never stopped playing a brand of Riot Fest-appropriate anthems and haven’t stopped churning out albums since the early 80s. It sounded exactly like it did in the mid 90s—and probably will ten years from now—with Greg Graffin’s smoky, almost flat timbre cutting through the power chords and the perfect mid-paced galloping punk beat. “Oh, yeah, Bad Religion still rules,” we said as we stood there and acknowledged the nostalgia of a decidedly nostalgia-focused festival. So in honor of our magic moment, here’s today’s 12 O’Clock Track: “I Want to Conquer the World” from Bad Religion’s 1989 classic Epitaph album, No Control.
