Ceremony Played Asbury Lanes with Ed Schrader's Music Beat (PHOTOS), 8/14/13

Hysteria

Asbury Lanes has some really excellent shows on their schedule in the coming months, including this weekend's show featuring The Obvious / Ether Sunday / Black Wine, a show on 8/25 with TWIABPAIANLATD / Modern Baseball / Pity Sex, Labor Day's So So Glos / Diarrhea Planet (featuring the last-ever area performance by Toms River's Elevator Art) show, Laura Stevenson on 9/20, and Screaming Females / Waxahatchee / Tenement on 9/28. What looks like it will be my personal, two-month residency at the venue kicked off last night when Ceremony and Ed Schrader's Music Beat brought their tour to Asbury Park.

I'd actually been to Asbury Lanes on Tuesday for Tuesday Night Trivia at Asbury Lanes, so I wanted to stay home for a bit last night and spend some time with the family. I made dinner. CoolMom and I enjoyed the cool summer evening, eating out on the patio. Once the cooldaughters were going to bed, I headed down to Asbury Park. I arrived too late to catch the opening set by Philadelphia's Luther, who also opened this year's Stone Pony Summer Stage on Memorial Day.

I did manage to catch the set by Washington, DC's Give. The five-piece turned in an aggressive set of their combination of hard rock, hardcore, and pop punk. At the end of the night, I caught Screaming Females' King Mike stocking up on Give vinyls at the merch table.

Ceremony's tour mates, Ed Schrader's Music Beat, were next. The duo of Ed Schrader on tom and Devlin Rice on bass, illuminated only by the light coming from Schrader's drum during songs, were friendly and funny during their between song banter. Once they started playing their songs about sugar addiction and weekend train rides, though, Schrader took on a stressed, almost paranoid persona.

"We're from Baltimore, and we're weird," said Schrader. The crowd fed off of the duo's paranoid weirdness, clapping along with songs and trading jokes with the band.

After a quick set up, Ceremony took the stage at about 10:30. The Bay Area band have progressed from their early powerviolence days (their 2006 classic Violence Violence consists of 13 songs and has a running length of 13 minutes) to the more widely accessible punk of 2012's Zoo. They opened with a more recent track, and the crowd reminded me of what I saw throughout Ceremony's set opening for Titus Andronicus at Maxwell's back in December: into the song, bobbing in time, but calm. At the opening strains of the next song, however, all hell broke loose.

Fists flew. Guys started climbing on stage and screaming into frontman Ross Farrar's mic. A huge circle widened on the floor to accommodate the violence, leaving just a hardy row or two at the edge of the stage. Stage divers risked life and limb, leaping from the stage onto a no-longer-that-crowded floor. For my part, I made my way to the safety of one of the bowling lanes at stage right.

Things continued this way for the remainder of the 45 or so minute set. At one point, the entire first row of the audience swarmed Farrar in a rugby-like scrum. After the final song, Farrar -- totally spent -- said, "And now we go to sleep. We love you." The band slowly climbed down from the stage.

As usual, the lighting at Asbury Lanes pushed the ISO limits of my point and shoot; but here are some shots of the evening.