The Cure’s penchant for topping festival bills continues as Robert Smith and Co. were announced this evening as the headliners of all three Riot Fests — set for Toronto, Chicago and Denver this September — joining the band’s appearance at Bottle Rock in Napa Valley, Calif., this month.
The Replacements reunion continues to be a festival-only affair, with the band following up three Riot Fest dates last year and two upcoming Coachella shows with an appearance this May at Atlanta’s Shaky Knees Music Festival, where they’ll share the bill with fellow reunion act Violent Femmes.
The two-weekend Sasquatch! Music Festival — set for Memorial Day and Fourth of July weekends outside of Seattle — will feature performances by New Order, Kraftwerk, Soundgarden, Bob Mould, Violent Femmes alongside the likes of OutKast, The National, Queens of the Stone Age and many, many more.
The Violent Femmes have only played a handful of shows since reuniting this past April, but the band’s already experienced a major lineup shake-up: Drummer Victor DeLorenzo — who promised the band’s Coachella reunion would be a “monstrous thing of beauty” — is out, replaced by Brian Vigilone of The Dresden Dolls.
The Violent Femmes are taking a somewhat low-key approach to their recent reunion, having followed up their appearance at Coachella this past April with only a few more scheduled, mostly festival-type shows. But the band has just announced a concert in New York’s Central Park.
Chicago’s Riot Fest — set for Sept. 13-15 in the Windy City’s Humboldt Park — tonight unveiled its jam-packed lineup, which includes Violent Femmes, Blondie, Black Flag spinoff FLAG, Motorhead, Bad Religion, Dinosaur Jr, X, Bob Mould, Bad Brains, The Selecter, Mission of Burma and more.
The reunited Violent Femmes — Gordon Gano, Victor DeLorenzo and Brian Ritchie — played their first show in five years Saturday when the band used its Coachella slot to perform its beloved 1983 debut album front-to-back. You can now watch the full set via this capture of the festival’s webcast.
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