Last week, the gigantic punk-centric festival Riot Fest announced the lineups for both its Denver and Chicago festivals, and Morrissey was right up at the top of the Chicago lineup, alongside the reunited Misfits, Ween, Death Cab For Cutie, Rob Zombie, and a whole mess of others. Last week, Morrissey disputed that claim; a post on his True To You website claimed, "As of this date (May 23), Morrissey is not a part of this year’s Chicago Riot Fest." But whatever issues Morrissey had with the festival promoters have been resolved, at least for now. A more recent True To You post says this: "Morrissey is confirmed to headline the Chicago Riot Fest on Saturday, September 17." There's also, for whatever reason, a photo of Bruce Lee kicking a ceiling light.
So hey: This means there's now a slightly greater chance that Morrissey will actually play this show! But if you were betting that Morrissey would play all his planned concerts, you would've gone broke years ago. This whole thing sure smells like a money dispute, but knowing Morrissey, it could just as easily be a negotiation about how many animal products will be for sale at festival concession stands. In any case, we can now imagine a world where we'll see Morrissey and Gwar in the same weekend, and we can only see that as a good thing. The Chicago Riot Fest goes down at Douglas Park 9/16-18.
