Show Review: Skate and Surf Festival 2014

When the landmark pop-punk and hardcore festival Skate and Surf announced that it would take place for the first time in almost ten years last year, the announcement was met with overwhelming support. That support turned to jeers, however, as the even was marred by a location change that proved to be both a logistical and organizational nightmare, a weekend forecast that simply didn’t co-operate with an outdoor festival, and a rumors of heavy merch cut percentages causing several bands to refuse to sell merchandise at the festival. I was fairly critical of last year’s Skate and Surf, saying that the one saving grace was that I also was able to go to Six Flags each morning before the festival grounds opened (and Fall Out Boy playing an awesome set in the pouring rain didn’t hurt).

So when the festival was announced as returning in 2014, I made a promise to myself. Despite having gone to every New Jersey area Bamboozle/Skate and Surf since 2008, I would only go to Skate and Surf 2014 if Midtown reunited. Well, it turns out festival organizer John D’Esposito got Gabe and the gang back together for not one but two sets on the weekend. As a result, I decided to make the trek to Asbury Park for the second day of the two-day festival. The festival suffered yet another location change this year, moving from Middletown to Asbury Park, but yet again the location change ended up benefiting the festival in the long run. Moving the festival back to Asbury Park allowed Skate and Surf to go back to its roots and allowed the fans to appreciate the festival’s legacy. 

Part of that legacy is nurturing local bands and developing them into future headliner candidates. Local New Jersey bands such as Midtown (more on them later), The Early November, and My Chemical Romance grew up playing the original Skate and Surf Festival, and eventually came back to headline the festival, and in My Chemical Romance’s case, outgrew the festival entirely. With that said, I made it my mission to check out the developmental bands on the lineup. So I started out my day early on by watching Time Will Tell perform a few songs, including a surprisingly tight cover of Taking Back Sunday’s “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut from the Team),” which is, of course, one of my all-time favorite songs. 

I then moved over to The World Stage, the festival’s Main Stage, to watch The New Royalty play the last three songs of their set. The female-fronted pop-rock band packs an impressive stage presence for such a young band. Despite having some of the same tendencies of other fairly generic female-fronted pop rock bands Hey Monday and We Are The In Crowd, the band shows promise, especially if vocalist Bree Iafelice continues to improve. The band is going into the studio shortly to record with Rob Freeman of Hidden In Plain View, so I will surely be keeping an eye out for what comes of that collaboration.

Next up on The World Stage were Michigan-based post-hardcore act We Came as Romans.  While the synchronized head banging and posi-jumps were plentiful during the set, and I found myself shaking my head at times at the unbearable crowd, their energetic live set won me over. They closed the set with “Hope,” the lead single from their most recent album Tracing Back Roots, which came out in 2013, but by far the set highlight was one of my biggest guilty-pleasure tracks of 2012, their cover of The Wanted’s “Glad You Came.” There was just something very fitting and hilarious about We Came as Romans covering a Wanted song in front of a crowd of fifteen year old girls. 

After We Came As Romans finished up, Hidden In Plain View took the stage, which was at this point already running twenty minutes behind. I was lucky enough to catch the band perform their first reunion show at The Theater of the Living Arts in Philly back in September, and I’m glad to report that they are still just as well-rehearsed today as they were then, if not more so. Taking the stage to an extended sample, and then interweaving several different sample transitions (including one memorable one in which the “There’s no going back” part of Katy Perry’s Dark Horse played right before the breakdown of “Twenty Below,” the band came ready to blow the doors off the festival. They started out the same way as they did at the TLA show, by playing “Garden Statement” up to the bridge of the song before breaking straight into “Ashes Ashes.” Unfortunately, the band’s set was cut short before they could play their last three songs, at least two of which were “Bleed For You” and the second half of “Garden Statement.” If I hadn’t already seen the band nine months earlier, I would’ve been more disappointed by this turn of events, but I am thankful I got to see them play again.

 

 

Next up was the reason I came to the festival for specifically, the long awaited Midtown reunion (which according to Gabe Saporta will be short lived- “Welcome to the last Midtown show,” he announced on stage). For a band that hasn’t played together in almost 10 years, they have a charisma about them that is absolutely captivating to behold. Everything they did on stage, from Gabe telling a story about how bands are supposed to have bad attitudes- “that’s rock and roll,” he explained- to guitarists Heath Saraceno and Tyler Rann tearing through the guitar solo in “To Our Savior,” to the whole band closing out the set with a rousing rendition of the Argent classic “God Gave Rock and Roll To You,” left me absolute in awe. Midtown is one band that has been on my “Bands to See Bucket List” for years (Explosions in The Sky I’m coming for you next!), but I never thought I would see them live. The hour long set was a great indicator of what made the band special in the first place, so if this really is the final chapter in the story of Midtown, then they absolutely went out guns blazing.

Leaving no rest for the weary, Skate and Surf immediately followed that Midtown set up with a frenetic, captivating performance from one of the absolute best live acts in the world, Circa Survive. The band is an absolute joy to watch perform, layering their sound adeptly, being immaculately tight with their live performances, and of course featuring the fireball that is Anthony Green. It took less than one minute of the opening track “Glass Arrows” for Green to go careening into the front row of the crowd, belting directly into the faces of weary barrier leaners and intrepid crowd surfers.  The crowd responded in kind by bellowing back the song’s rousing climax “I don’t want excuses, I don’t want apologies.” Another delight was the emphasis on the band’s debut album Juturna (4 of the 10 songs they played), perhaps gearing up for a time when the band’s upcoming fifth studio album forces them to take some songs out of the set from that early record. The band also surprisingly broke out the 7-minute long “The Birth of the Economic Hitman” from Violent Waves for the 50-minute set.

 

Next up on the Main Stage were Skate and Surf stalwarts Alkaline Trio, who headlined the festival back in 2003. The veteran band delivered a professional, crisp 16 song set which included both tracks from last year’s My Shame is True, and some of the classic hits that cultivated the band’s stature, such as “Radio” and “This Could Be Love.” Although it certainly must be difficult with such a deep back catalog, I was disappointed to find that the band completely ignored 2008’s Agony and Irony, which although it is not the most universally loved by fans has some very good songs. 

By this point in the night, I was completely exhausted, having been on the barrier for much of the day’s events. I did however, stay for the first three songs of New Found Glory’s festival closing set, “All Downhill from Here,” “Understatement,” and “Don’t Let Her Pull You Down.” The band seemed rather humble to be asked to return to Skate and Surf and excited to celebrate not just their recent signing to Hopeless Records, but also the ten-year anniversary of their record Catalyst being released (which just so happened to perfectly line up with their set on Sunday Night). I missed out on the fun that would come later in the set- including the bride and groom from the wedding at the nearby Berkley Oceanfront Hotel taking the stage, and the groom growling his way through some Pantera and Metallica covers- but I walked away much more exhilarated from my Skate and Surf experience than I was last year. 

The festival was much better organized, and the step down in size helped to make it feel more personal and exclusive. I actually feel like the magic of the Skate and Surf name was recaptured by this year’s festival, in a way that I never would’ve expected a year ago. Hats off to John D’Esposito and crew for crafting a festival that lives up to its namesake, and also allowed me to at once become nostalgic with my favorite bands of the past, and watch the best bands of the future take the stage and flourish before my eyes. Skate and Surf is back everyone, and hopefully it is here to stay.