Sunday Funday with Puffs, Little Dickman Records, and Asbury Park Brewery

Thelma & The Sleaze

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday...

I am a very lazy person by nature. Just ask CoolMom how much I get done around the house on any given day. Hint: Not a lot.

But I have my moments: Bopping from show to show taking 100s of pictures at South By Southwest or Northside Festival. Editing all those 100s of pictures in one, long sitting. Cleaning an entire winter's worth of rodent droppings out of the shed and sanitizing the whole area. And days like yesterday.

I got up pretty early for a Sunday; and, determined to inject a little exercise back into my life, went for an early-morning bike ride down to the beach. It's, literally, one of my favorite things to do; and I've gotta do it more often. Like daily. It was a stunningly beautiful day; and, on days like that, I'm just blown away when I stop and think that we live right next to the frigging Atlantic Ocean.

Anyway...

After I got back home and got myself together, the coolfamily and I headed into the Big City to see the Off-Broadway play, Puffs. It's a Harry Potter parody focusing on the lowly Hufflepuffs. The producers are very careful to avoid any form of copyright infringement, which makes for some pretty good jokes by itself. I think if you're super into the Harry Potter books and movies, you'll love the play. I thought it was pretty funny and have only a passing knowledge. The CoolDaughters guffawed the whole time. It's definitely a PG-13 (at least) production, so there were a couple moments when I questioned our decision to bring CoolDaughter #2. She's the real Potter expert, though, so we had to.

Then it was a somewhat stressful drive back to Jersey followed by the quick wolfing down of some leftovers and right out to Asbury Park for simultaneous shows at The Saint and Asbury Park Brewery. Our (very NOT lazy) friends over at Little Dickman Records were hosting the party at The Saint, and I hadn't been inside Asbury Park Brewery since it was still a gutted cavern of a space.

The Saint and the brewery share the same block in Asbury, and it's a matter of walking halfway around said block any time you want to move between the two. Doing this, I managed to catch sets from Erotic Novels (Brewery), Tight Lipped (Saint), Lady Bits (Brewery), Basic Bitches (Brewery), and Thelma & The Sleaze (Saint).

I'll sum it up as punk, glam punk, punk, riot grrrl, and garage rock. For me, the whole evening had that kind of exhilarating, festival-type feeling of trying to time things so I could catch particular bands at particular times. It also came with the disappointment of not being able to see everyone I wanted to (I missed sets from Darkwing and Little Vicious because of being only one person.) which is always part of that whole experience.

All the bands were good. New Brunswick punks, Erotic Novels, though (And they totally, 100% didn't tell me to say this while we were all standing in front of the big picture of Joey Ramone at the brewery. Honest.), were real standouts for the evening. Honestly, they played a really good set; and I'm not quite sure how I hadn't seen them yet.

Erotic Novels

Tight Lipped are a trio fronted, primarily, by TV Tramps' Joy Vay. They exude all the punk energy that fact would imply. The crowd at The Saint -- me included -- really dug them.

Tight Lipped

Brooklyn's Lady Bits were playing their last-ever show with their current drummer, and the friendship and camaraderie among the three women in the band was clear from the beginning of the set. They love making music together, and that spilled out into the crowd.

Lady Bits

Basic Bitches are now Naomi Scott (who had a birthday yesterday, I think) on guitar and vocals and Nick D'Amore (Overlake, Mr. Payday) on drums. The pair mesh really well, delivering the songs from their recenlty-released City Slackers with ferocity; and this incarnation of the band is the best I've seen so far.

Basic Bitches

Finally, Thelma & The Sleaze -- playing as a three-piece for this show -- absolutely burned up the stage at The Saint. Not only is singer / guitarist, LG, a rock and roll frontperson who ranks right up there with the very best; but LG also has the funniest stage banter I've ever heard.

Thelma & The Sleaze

When it was all done, I was exhausted. I'm starting to think I may be too old and lazy to be doing all of that stuff.

You can check out the rest of the pics in the usual spots if I ever get off my lazy ass and get them uploaded.