When I Sing, You Sing Harmonies
Drummer Matt Uychich was out among the crowd. He stopped to take pictures with fans. He signed ticket stubs, posters, arms, faces, foreheads. Admirably, and in particularly un-rockstar-like fashion, he politely declined to sign other body parts. A scrum of fans, most of whom wore Front Bottoms shirts and tanks, moved with him through the crowd. They were ecstatic that he was there with them, and he seemed to be enjoying himself.
The Front Bottoms had sold out Asbury Park’s Stone Pony; and, even during the opening sets, the place was packed. The Menzinger’s Tom May, filling in for a comedian who’d canceled at the last minute, did a solo acoustic set that had a good portion of the crowd singing along. Things grew more raucous for New Jersey emo-punk duo, Dads, with audience members beginning the crowd-surfing that would go on for the rest of the evening.
In between sets, DJ Dancing Tony provided a soundtrack that included some 80s Top 40 classics (“Maneater,” “Bette Davis Eyes”). I’m sure that I was one of only a few audience members who was listening to those songs during the years that they actually made the Top 40.
As I mouthed the words along with Kim Carnes, someone passed out glo-sticks to the crowd; someone else stacked a pile of beach balls behind the drum set; and Matt Uychich laid a couple of confetti sticks next to his seat by the drums. Tony got the nod from someone at stage right and started up the intro to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.”
The Front Bottoms -- Uychich, bassist Tom Warren, multi-instrumentalist Ciaran O’Donnell, and frontman Brian Sella -- came onto the stage to the “Dearly Beloved…” sermon and began tossing beach balls into the crowd. Once they’d taken their places, they launched into “Skeleton” from this year’s Talon of the Hawk; and the place absolutely exploded. Glo-sticks -- wrapped around arms or held overhead -- waved or were tossed on stage. Crowd surfers began storming the barricades; and almost every person in attendance -- from young women in Front Bottoms t-shirts to muscle-bound, crop topped guys in tanks -- sang along. Every, single word. Throughout the night, it didn’t matter if the songs were old favorites like “Mountain,” “The Beers,” "Rhode Island" or “Swimming Pool” or new ones like “Peach,” “Santa Monica,” or “Au Revoir.” This crowd had done its homework.
At the end of the first song, Sella just shook his head, “Holy shit! This is unbelievable.” I’m not sure what kinds of crowds The Front Bottoms usually play to on tour, but The Stone Pony holds around 800, probably more when the outside is open as it was last night; and every single person there was a devout Front Bottoms fan.
The band played through most of the songs from their two, official LPs, aided a few times by three of those air-powered, wavy figures that one sees in front of car dealerships. Sella remained incredulous at the crowd response, stopping several times, once to point out that he was at a rare loss for words.
As the one hour and forty minute set wound down, Sella told the crowd that the band would leave while we all did the “Cha Cha Slide,” and then return for three more songs. True to Sella’s word, DJ Dancing Tony gave us a few minutes of Mr. C The Slide Man. Then the band returned to close out the evening with "Bathtub," “Maps” and “Twin-Size Mattress.” Yellow, wavy men waved. Confetti sticks fired. Pop punk kids crowd surfed.
The entire evening was amazing to behold. In New Jersey, at least, Brian Sella and Matt Uychich are gods. They’re not so full of themselves, though, that they can’t be humbled by the adulation of their fans. And they’re not above signing a few foreheads.
I arrived a little too late to stake out a good picture-taking spot; but here’s what I could get.
It was Matt that handed the glo-sticks to us! :D
ReplyDelete