Oh KROQ what happened to you? Particularly what ever happened to the annual Weenie Roast?? That’s more of a rhetorical question, as Covid pretty much put a stop to it. However, the pandemic has been over for quite some time and as I write this in 2026, this could easily come back. Let’s take a look……..
I remember when I got one of my first cars and back then in 2004/2005 all I pretty much listened to going back-and-forth to school was 106.7 KROQ. When I didn’t feel like listening to CDs, KROQ was my go to radio station. Now for those that are reading this and are unfamiliar with KROQ it is a radio station in Los Angeles and every summer they used to have an annual music festival called The Weenie Roast. For a while it was called The Weenie Roast Y Fiesta but even then people still referred to it as Weenie Roast. Now the 2005 Weenie Roast was the only one that I was able to go to, but looking back now, I wish I could’ve gone to more of them especially the ones from the 90’s. The one I went to had 2 stages and on the smaller stage there were bands like Transplants, Bloc Party, The Bravery, and Mars Volta and the main stage opened with MXPX but you had bands like My Chemical Romance, Audioslave, Foo Fighters, and Motley Crüe (my only time seeing them). I wish I had this same open-mindedness back then as I do now because I probably would’ve appreciated a few more of the bands, but I remember seeing a lot of these bands for the first time and for some this was my only time seeing them. I remember the year before trying to win tickets to go because I really wanted to see Velvet Revolver and Bad Religion on the same day. But even going back and looking at the early years, they really did try to have a mix of hard rock a little bit of metal and alternative.
Some of these Weenie Roasts had bands like Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against The Machine, Metallica, and even Ozzy Osbourne. Other bands included Garbage, Oingo Boingo, The Pretenders, Korn, Godsmack, and so much more!! I do feel like the 2005 Weenie Roast was probably one of the last really good ones because as the years went on, they started to get less and less bands and really for me personally, there wasn’t really anybody that I would drive all the way out to see. After all, it did take place in Irvine and it is a bit of a trek having to drive from where I lived all the way over there. Sadly the last Weenie Roast was in 2019 and as I said, the lineups really weren’t that great and they had less bands playing. The 2019 lineup included 311, Limp Bizkit, Silversun Pickups, DJ Snoopadelic, The Revivalists, Catfish And The Bottlemen, X Ambassadors, Flora Cash, Smith And Thell, and The Regrettes. Out of the 2019 lineup I would’ve maybe been excited about two of these bands. Hopefully it will come back with a really good lineup, but it’s been a number of years since I’ve listened to KROQ and the last time I heard their numbers were not so great. But who knows what the future will bring?
Sinister Reviews 