Fall Out Boy Takes a Trip Down Mmry Lane at Riot Fest
Article by Madison Luongo, photos by Finley Harrison
It’s the final fifteen minutes before the headlining set of day one of Riot Fest. The first few rows of the crowd closest to the barricade of the Metro Cabaret Stage look drained yet excited, decked out in Fall Out Boy merchandise, hand-made bracelets, and tattoos, waiting for the act they’ve stood in the scorching heat for more than seven hours for. Excited chatter is heard throughout the rows as snippets of each conversation are overheard, consisting of fans of the band discussing favorite members, albums, and songs. Finally, the lights go down, the screens to the sides of the stage light up with a countdown, and the voice of Fall Out Boy’s frontman, Patrick Stump, is heard, singing a snippet of “Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes,” a song from their 2008 album Folie á Deux.
For the past two Fall Out Boy performances at All Your Friends Fest and Download Fest, the band has been taking fans through their entire musical career, playing a few songs from each of their albums in order starting with Take This to Your Grave up to their most recent album, So Much (for) Stardust, and their performance at Riot Fest was no different. As soon as the band — lead singer Patrick Stump, bassist/lyricist Pete Wentz, guitarist Joe Trohman, and drummer Andy Hurley — entered the stage, the Cabaret Metro was adorned with teal blue lighting and a blue brick wall display on the screen behind them, mimicking the album cover of Take This to Your Grave. The band began playing their first full song “Chicago is so Two Years Ago.” After finishing their first song, frontman Stump gave a speech to the crowd, visibly excited to be playing in their hometown, which he, along with Wentz, Hurley, and Trohman, clearly adores.
“Chicago! God dammit, I love ya! I got a little emotional just now, that was incredible. We’re Fall Out Boy, it’s really good to be home.”
After Stump’s declaration of love for the Windy City, the band began the next and final song off of Take This to Your Grave, “Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy.” After the song finished, the stage, again, went black, and soon after lit up with a different backdrop, symbolizing the show’s transition into their second album, From Under the Cork Tree. The band started the album’s run with one of their biggest hits “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” with a special guest appearance from Tim Mcllrath, Rise Against’s lead singer.
They followed with “Dance, Dance,” “A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More ‘Touch Me’,” and ended the era with “Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying (Do Your Part to Save the Scene and Stop Going to Shows),” a rarely-played fan favorite. The stage followed the same routine of going dark and then lighting up again donning a new era, only this time it’s Fall Out Boy’s 2007 album Infinity on High. The band played “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race,” “Thriller,” “Bang the Doldrums” (another fan favorite), and ended with “Thnks fr th Mmrs.”
The stage lit up with red lights, a sign that they’re transitioning into their previously mentioned album Folie á Deux. The band played “Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes,” this time in full, and “I Don’t Care.” The Save Rock and Roll era followed and the band played two of their greatest hits from the era, “The Phoenix” and “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light 'em Up).” The American Beauty/American Psycho album’s run came after and they played “Uma Thurman” and “The Kids Aren’t Alright.” The band played only one song from their 2018 album MANIA, “The Last of the Real Ones,” which Stump played from a piano. The frontman stayed on the piano for the next part of the set, a medley consisting of a cover of Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago” and Fall Out Boy’s own “What a Catch, Donnie.” The stage transitioned into So Much (for) Stardust and they played the album’s title track, “Love From the Other Side,” and “Fake Out.”
As the show neared its end, Wentz called on Fall Out Boy’s signature of the So Much (for) Stardust era, the “Magic Eight Ball;” During each of the band’s concerts for this era, their stage will don a video of a magic eight ball and Wentz will ask it questions to indicate what song they should play next. The eight ball can “tell” them to play any song in their discography, including the deep-cut songs only the most die-hard Fall Out Boy fans know. Wentz always starts by asking the magic eight ball if they should just call it a night then, receiving a passionate refusal from the crowd.
After that, the bassist asked the eight ball if they should play a “not so old [song]” which it said yes to, which “led” them to play “Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet” from Folie á Deux, another fan-favorite. After the song ended, Wentz brought out the magic eight ball again and asked if they should play a “really old [song]” to which it responded yes and the band played “I Slept With Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me,” a rarely-played track from From Under the Cork Tree.
After the segment finished the band played “Centuries,” a fitting near-end to a show about all of the band’s eras, and finally ended the concert with Take This to Your Grave’s “Saturday,” which has been a tradition for the band since their beginning in 2001. The band bid their farewells to their hometown’s crowd and left the stage, leaving fans with an electric performance of their entire musical career that is sure to, as the band says, be remembered “for centuries.”
Listen to Fall Out Boy on Spotify below!