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| The Battery Electric's Alex Rosen and a fellow Turbojugend member from Sweden who made a special trip from NYC for last night's show. |
LGBT Pride Rockin' Eve
CoolMom, the cooldaughters, and I headed down to Asbury Park at about 6pm last night to check out the first Asbury Park Night Bazaar. Every Saturday in June, the Grand Arcade will host artists and vendors from 6-10pm; while The Anchor's Bend presents an evening of free or nearly-free music. Last night, we saw jewelry, crafts, chocolate, local honey, vegan treats, and more including our friends from Freehold's Big Slick Pomade Company.
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| (l-r): Rosie, Vincent, and Magda |
The girls and I headed out onto the boardwalk for some dinner and then said our farewells as they left me to my evening duties. I made my way back to Convention Hall and The Anchor's Bend in time to catch the set from Psychiatric Metaphors.
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| Psychiatric Metaphors |
I really like the dark and dirty pyschedelic sounds produced by Sam Taylor with his Psychiatric Metaphors project, but this was my first successful attempt at catching one of their live sets. They played as the breeze rolled in off the ocean and as the waves crashed behind them. People danced in the squall of reverb as the sun set. Pretty cool.
Little Dickman Records had put together the evening's music; and Little Dickman artist, The Off White, closed out the first night bazaar. The Off White's Pat Brenner and Mike Bongi are part of the Psychiatric Metaphors live band, and the two acts definitely share an aesthetic. I'd place The Off White a little more on the snotty garage rock end of the spectrum, though. They were sounding great and taking advantage of the open-air Anchor's Bend to enjoy a few smokes during their set. A spilled beer on a bass head ended things abruptly, though. The band shrugged, and we all decided it was time to head over to APYC.
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| The Off White |
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| Governess |
There were lots of familiar faces who'd come out for The Battery Electric, and it started turning into one of those evenings I just love in Asbury Park. Handshakes, hugs, smiles, and just a lot of cool vibes.
The small space at Asbury Park Yacht club started to become basically impassable. They'd added a couple of tables, and it didn't really help things. By the time The Battery Electric started, the bar was wall to wall people. A pit sprang up almost instantly. At one point, Sean from The Off White leapt from the bar and landed atop the crowd. He surfed around getting tangled in the Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling. He wasn't the only crowd surfer, and the normally sedate Yacht Club had become a roiling sea of bodies.
I snapped a few shots and then listened to most of the rest of the set from outside. The Battery Electric played songs from The Heart and The Thrill. They did covers by Sam Cooke, Etta James, The Misfits. They even did a little Weaving Spiders, bringing out "Shock Hazard" for the first time in a while. As they finished up, frontman Ron Santee asked "Hey! Who wants us to do YMCA?"
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| The Battery Electric and friends. |
I guess the vote was yes, so the band and the crowd did a rendition of the song to ring in Asbury Park's annual LGBT Pride celebration.
It was an amazing night of love, friendship, and rock and roll. As I said, it was full of hugs, sweat, and smiling faces. A great night in a great town. Things started as a fun, Saturday night family outing in the early evening sunlight and ended with music that went into the wee hours of Sunday morning. You can do it all here.
All the pics that I managed from last night are up at Flickr.
