Titus Andronicus Opened for The Bouncing Souls for Night Three of Home for the Holidays, 12/28/13 (PHOTOS)

CoolMom Is a Cool Mom

Here's how cool CoolMom really is. My parents had agreed to babysit and were coming over at around 6:15. We left the house at 6:30 so that we could be in Asbury Park by 7 for Night Three of The Bouncing Souls' annual four-night Home For The Holidays residency at The Stone Pony. We weren't going out to have a nice dinner before the show. Instead, she was coming with me to be at the venue when the doors opened so that we could stake out a position along the barricade to watch Titus Andronicus open for The Bouncing Souls. Titus Andronicus would play third. At 9pm.

I've been to The Stone Pony probably four or five times in the last four weeks. They never give me a hard time about taking pictures; and, most of the time, you can get a good view of the stage. When the place is sold out, though, things become a little less conducive to the way I like to see a show. Without proper planning, you can end up either in one of the main bar back / bathroom thoroughfares or behind a bunch of people for whom the show is just some noise over which they need to make their conversation heard.

I don't know if you know this; but Titus Andronicus are, maybe, my favorite band of the moment. I wasn't going to put up with any of that for their set, plus I've never managed to get any really usable pictures of the band at any of the many shows I've attended. CoolMom likes them, too. Apparently, she also thinks highly enough of me to tough it out for over two hours while teenage bros slam into her from behind during their failed attempts to get some kind of crowd surfing thing going.

As for Titus Andronicus, they played a great 45-minute set that included three songs from what will be the band's fourth LP -- "Fatal Flaw," "C'mon Siobhán," and another listed on the setlist (provided to me by a friendly member of Stone Pony security) as simply "Funny" -- along with selections from each of the band's first three LP's and a cover of "Jumpin' Jack Flash."

We withdrew to a safer part of the venue just prior to The Bouncing Souls' set. CoolMom will put up with many things, but getting crushed between crowd surfers and beefy security personnel for over an hour isn't one of them. I get that, so we watched the rest from the bar near the Pony entrance.

"You were right," she said to me in the car. "Getting there early, I mean. It was so much more fun that way."

She's so cool.