William Shatner and the *uckers

Brain school's been going well but that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk punk rock. Riot Fest Chicago, 2026. I somehow made it 33 years, and over 4 of them in one of the biggest music scenes in the US, without ever having been to a concert. I don't do things by half measures, so yesterday I went in, head-first.

Got to the festival halfway through a Melt Banana set. I've never really listened to them, but they really do the genre of "noise metal" justice. We moseyed around, snacked a little, and saw Angine de Poitrine. Microtonal polyphonic mathcore polkadot papiermâché clown jazz. It was fun. We strolled through a few other sets, but my favorite of the night was Gogol Bordello, even if they didn't sing the only song I knew the words to. The energy was so good.

But really, it was a lot of Type-2 fun. The weather sucked, the air quality was bad, it was so crowded, I was getting grabbed and shoved and manhandled, there was mud everywhere, I was overstimulated. But it absolutely rocked and I'm never gonna forget it. Thank christ I brought earplugs.

After Riot Fest, we went to a venue called Park West, where we saw a certain man's certain 7/8ths life crisis. Did you know William Shatner has a metal band now? He's 95 and just recently announced he'd beaten cancer. They played their first ever show to a crowd of 300-500 folks. We had great seats, the venue was awesome, and most importantly we got to sit down while we listened (hey, am I old????). The backing band, The *uckers, absolutely shredded it. Special shoutout to Britt Lightning, holy fuck. They did a mix alternating between covers of classic metal songs and originals. And honestly? The originals were great.

If you've ever heard Shatner's musical forays before, it's exactly what I expected. There's a scene in Futurama where he does a spoken word version of "The Real Slim Shady". It was like that. I lived that scene in real life. Tempo is a suggestion. Rhythm is someone saying "hey what about-" and the man just shrugs. One thing is for sure: he was feeling it. We were loving it. And that's punk rock: you take a big feeling and pour it out on stage. Sure it was self-indulgent and cringy at points, but the man's having fun and and feeling his feelings I absolutely cannot fault him for that. 10/10, truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

[JK]