ASBURY PARK PUTS ITS FEST FOOT FORWARD

Bamboozle 2012 Goes To The Jersey Shore

By Jim Testa

Lots of people – myself included – wondered if Live Nation and the City of Asbury Park would be able to accommodate Bamboozle 2012. Turns out we had nothing to worry about.

Rather amazingly, everybody involved -- the promoters, the city, NJ Transit, and perhaps most of all, the ninety or so thousand fans who showed up – more than rose to the occasion, and this mammoth festival came off without a hitch. According to the Asbury Park Press, city police reported no arrests and only a handful of minor incidents at the concert site, no reports of vandalism or damage to property throughout the city, and relatively few problems with traffic or parking.

Kudos to NJ Transit for running hourly trains both north and south from Asbury Park during the festival, as well as shuttle buses from parking lots at Monmouth Park. Coming from Weehawken, my trip to Bamboozle-Asbury Park was actually easier and less stressful than the last few years, when the event took place at the Meadowlands.

As with All Tomorrow’s Parties last fall, thousands of people who had never been to Asbury Park (or hadn’t been there in decades, and only remembered it as run down, shoddy, and dangerously crime-ridden) got to experience a safe and spotless resort town with a lively boardwalk, a nice big beach, two attractive hotels, and a variety of both upscale and affordable bars and restaurants. City fathers are hoping the attendant good will will result in a record-breaking summer for the town’s tourism industry, and I think they may be right.



I wasn’t there Friday for Skillrex, but Saturday – a beautiful, bright, picture-perfect Spring day - drew tens of thousands of excited fans, predominantly teenagers and early twentysomethings. Will-call and ticket sales took place at the south end of the boardwalk, at the building that once housed Asbury Park’s famous carousel. Attendees then had to walk down the boardwalk (or Ocean Ave.) to just beyond the Wonder Bar, where the entrance gates were located. (Presumably this pumped up sales on that length of the boardwalk for local businesses.)

The Bamboozle fairgrounds encompassed the north end of the boardwalk – including Convention Hall and the Paramount Theater, the Berkeley Hotel and its nearby park, and a big chunk of the beach at the north end of the city. LiveNation spared no expense in making sure there was enough room to accommodate the number of tickets it sold (a major concern, especially remembering the dangerous overcrowding that characterized the Warp Tour’s tenue in Asbury.) And while things got a little congested around the main stage, especially later in the day, I never had a problem navigating the grounds or getting close enough for a great view at all the side and indoor stages.

The only disadvantage was that there was only room for one main stage; when Bamboozle set up at the Meadowlands, there were two, one at each end of the concourse. So fans would have to shuttle back and forth for the headliners, and in so doing would pass the smaller stages, where they might discover something new or hang out for a bit to see a less famous band. This year, many fans camped out at the main stage with blankets or beach chairs on the sand for the day, resulting in less experimentation and smaller crowds at the side stages. This was especially true on Sunday, when the average age of concertgoers skewed much older (presumably for headliner Bon Jovi) and overall attendance was down from Saturday.

In case you were wondering, fences separated fans from going into the ocean, so there was no danger of accidental drownings (or soaking wet teenagers running from the surf into the mosh pit.)


By mid-day on Saturday, when the All American Rejects took the stage around 4, there were already tens of thousands of fans at the main stage; you really couldn’t get closer than a hundred yards without immersing yourself in a sweaty, mosthing throng of wall to wall bodies for most of the festival. But the excellent sound system and the two giant video screens made watching from a distance a pleasure. Even with those huge crowds, Bamboozle remained a more intimate experience than seeing a band perform in a football stadium.

On Sunday, the day started out pleasantly enough but a heavy cloud cover and a stiff north wind turned the day dank and chilly by mid-afternoon. Vendors quickly ran out of hoodies and sweatshirts as fans bundled up against the elements. This probably hurt the party vibe on the Beach Party Stage (which was set up to look exactly like the old MTV Spring Break, with kids dancing on the beach in front of a metal stage featuring mostly hip hop acts) but helped the acts playing inside the Convention Center (rechristened The Temple of Boozle for the festival) and the Paramount Theater.

My colleague Tris McCall and I filed live reports from Bamboozle to the Star Ledger throughout the weekend; you can read that coverage here. Please take a moment to look over our reports, you’ll find reviews of many of the bands we saw as well as some spontaneous reactions to the proceedings.

Here are a few additional random thoughts –

• Things have certainly changed since Woodstock inaugurated the modern-day rock festival in 1969; back then, parents stood on one side of a cavernous divide, with kids and rock ‘n’ roll distantly on the other. Nowadays, lots of kids share events like Bamboozle with their parents. I’m not talking about getting a ride from mom and dad and then running off on your own, but actually spending the entire day together. Obviously, that’s a nice thing, but it can get a little weird; at will call, I saw one teenager wearing a “Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck” t-shirt picking up his wristband alongside his proper, silver-haired mom.

• It was nice to see NJ stalwarts like Gaslight Anthem, Bouncing Souls, Catch 22, and Folly on the bill; but except for the Souls (and probably a few of the young, local bands on the YuuZoo, or Break Competition stage,) Asbury Park’s indigenous music scene wasn’t represented at all, lending an air of carpetbagging to this otherwise commendable event. How hard would it have been to invite Parlor Mob, Outside The Box, Almost There, No Wine For Kittens, River City Extension, or any of the many excellent Jersey shore bands to play one of the side stages? Instead, several local venues set up counter-Bamboozle events of their own; there was an all-day outdoor barbecue on Cookman Avenue, a mini-fest at SICA Gallery, and shows at The Press Room, all featuring local musicians.

• Several bands had female lead singers, and the all-girl Cherri Bomb (who are basically a gimmicky Runaways tribute act) performed on the Paramount Stage. And yeah, Kreayshawn had a slot on the otherwise all-male hip hop stage. But I don’t recall seeing another woman playing an instrument anywhere during two days and dozens of bands. C’mon, Bamboozle, why such a sausage factory? There have to be few decent bands out there with female guitarists, bassists, keyboardists, and drummers.

• The emo haircut is dead. At previous Bamboozles, the slanted, straightened, across the face emo cut seemed ubiquitous; this year, only a handful of males sported the look, and most of them were in holdover bands. Even the Justin Bieber helmet hair look seems to have waned considerably in popularity.

• The Saints & Sinners Stage was the designated holding area for screamo bands this year, with Emmure, Periphery, Attila, Close Your Eyes, My Children My Bride, North Korea, Alesana, Woe Is Me, Texas In July, Like Moths To Flames, and others. The stage was planted right in the middle of the midway, so if you walked from the main stage to anywhere else, you had to pass it – and I did, frequently, but never saw a single band I liked or wanted to hear more from. Maybe Jersey Beat’s Damien Ellinghaus can refute this, but I seriously don’t get this genre; all of those bands looked the same, sounded the same, and screamed the same inane stage banter. Do too many tattoos make you braindead? (Apologies to Mazmyth, they do not fit the screamo stereotype and were originally included in this rant in error.)

• You can argue about the best act on the main stage, but All American Rejects walk away with honors as the most repugnant. It was brave of the band to open with its two best known singles, but once those were out of the way, frontman Tyson Ritter seemed desperate to remain relevant and hold his audience’s attention. “Dirty Little Secret” and “Swing Swing” made the band popular, but both songs teem with an adolesccent innocence that simply doesn’t fit anymore. Remember that a big chunk of this adoring crowd was composed of girls under the age of consent, which made Ritter’s non-stop F-bombs alone questionable. Frankly, the man hasn’t aged well, and instead of dealing with it, he compensated by wearing metallic skin-tight pants and flouncing around the stage like a Seventies Mick Jagger clone. That part of his shtick was merely lame, but once he started rubbing his crotch and lasciviously licking Nick Wheeler’s guitar during the raunchy “I Wanna,” his conduct veered beyond inappropriate to offensive.

• Lots of musicians spend years touring and recording to earn their first slot at a big festival like Bamboozle. But if you live in New Jersey, all you have to do is sell a lot of tickets and get your family and friends to support you at the Break competition, and you too can play on a Bamboozle stage. This year, the YuuZoo Stage hosted the Break competitors and I tried to check out as many as possible; what better way to discover budding young talent? And many of these bands were young, many still in middle or high school. Some of them were okay, some were terrible, and a few actually impressed me enough to jot down their names for future reference: Valhalla plays teen pop but with a distinct r&b flavor that I found appealing (and kudos to the guitarist for playing shirtless on Sunday for his fans; man, it was cold up on that stage!) The members of Reality Check are only 14 and 15, and the band only formed last December, but their stage presence and poise impressed me, as did their musicianship (especially since they played throwback prog-rock, with a lot of Seventies-styled soloing.)

• The Zumiez stage was the place to be if you like Nineties hardcore and punk, with appearances by Hot Water Music (my favorite set of the festival,) Anti-Flag, Less Than Jake, Promise Ring, the Bouncing Souls, Catch 22, Folly, and the ageless Murphy’s Law. Jimmy Gestapo was simply hilarious, jumping immediately into the pit and goofing on headliner Bon Jovi, the nearby Marlboro trailer (a major sponsor), and the fact that he was playing in New Jersey. I haven’t seen Murphy’s Law in over a decade; the current incarnation includes two saxophonists (and an electric banjo!) and leans heavily toward reggae/ska fusion, but they still put on a helluva entertaining show.