On June 27th, 2020, the first live music festival returned to New Jersey since February 29th and the legendary "Leap Day Festival" in Atlantic City! Since March 13th, ALL bars and clubs have been shut down - basically killing every tour, live date, and record release for months now. Well guess what, my friends? Leave it to New Jersey to break the seal and put on the first live bands, public gathering, benefit show, FULL ON BBQ since the world came to a grinding halt!
Before I get into reviewing how great every band was, this is completely dedicated to one man and one man alone: Mr. Jay Baluski. This dude has been a NJ fixture probably as long as me. He completely organized this show, got the bands on board, and found a non-political reason to get the ENTIRE NJ scene together in a matter of TWO DAYS! All hails to you, my brother!
So here we go. An absolutely beautiful NJ summer Saturday, and it's go time. We got six bands from all genres of the "underground" gathered in one of the most beautiful parks at the Jersey Shore. For over 20 years, Hebrew Park has been the site of the annual "Angry Drunk BBQ". A Jersey tradition if there ever was one. Too many bands to even list. But I digress. This was a donation show for our local animal rescue shelter Popcorn Park Zoo, which if you're ever around the Jersey Shore, you should check out. From what I heard, we raised THOUSANDS of dollars! NOW on to the bands. If you can imagine this, OC Rippers OPENED this show! In my humble opinion, the best band in NJ right now. They started out full throttle and just NEVER let up! With originals that will get you dancing to amazing covers that if you didn't know the lyrics, you'd never recognize. These guys just totally set the mood for the entire day. Ending with an incredible cover of the Nervous Eaters' "Just Head", I could only WISH I could be in a band this good. Next up was Coffin Void, a local grindcore band that the bass player from OC Rippers plays guitar in. I'm not the biggest fan of that style, but DAMN they were tight and got the entire crowd out in the pit. Next up was my friend Ian's band USELESS. I've known this dude since the '80s, and I knew this was gonna be HEAVY. After watching these guys plow through a half hour of tunes that I can only call "sludge rock", I was converted. Neurosis meets Sabbath meets REAL rock and roll! They did a cover of "Ain't No Sunshine" that I shit you not should be played on EVERY radio station! Next up was a band I just heard of, but they have no Bandcamp. So I went in blind. From Asbury Park, New Jersey, let me introduce you to one of your new favorite bands, Tiki Torture! I was talking to their guitar player/singer for a while. He was telling me they were surf metal. I was on board already because that's pretty much what I play. These guys hit the stage, and it was all over! EVERYONE moved up to check these guys out. Starting out with a couple standard type "punk" songs, they slowly went into DK/Agent Orange mode. To say I was blown away would be an understatement. By the time they launched into their epic song "MooseKnuckle", I was converted. Supposedly they have an LP coming out soon that will be available on Bandcamp, but we only got Soundcloud for now. At that point, it was time to socialize, take more pics, and get reacquainted with some people I hadn't seen in 20-30 years.
The ENTIRE NJ underground scene came out for this show. ALL OF US! Old friends, new friends, seeing children for the first time - IT WAS ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL! I've never seen so many people so happy just to see each other again! And believe it or not - we're already planning another show just like this! You can't stop punk rock! This was the first live music show in MONTHS, and EVERYONE came out for a good cause and just to feel alive again. I thank EVERYONE that made this happen, and I'm so blown away that there were at least FOUR generations at this show and everyone got along with no bad vibes whatsoever! It's time to live again, my friends! Thank you, Josh Rutledge, for giving me this chance to show people that things ARE going to get better! Stay underground and stay strong!
-Ralph Rivera
https://ocrippers.bandcamp.com/
https://uselessnj.bandcamp.com/
https://coffinvoid.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TikiTortureNJ/
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