I’m not one for festivals. I think the last one I attended was 1994’s Lollapalooza at Cal State Dominguez Hills in LA. I watched Beastie Boys absolute kill it and then headliner, The Smashing Pumpkins, do their usual Pumpkins thing and put on an uneven, lackluster show that had people heading for the exits. It was 1000 degrees, we were standing in what amounted to a dust bowl and there was no water anywhere. It took me three days to clean the dirt out of my ears and nose. So, no, I didn’t want to go to the desert with a bunch of dirty, naked hippies sleeping in their own filth. Or hang with a bunch of drugged-out rich kids in a different desert listening to bad shoegaze and some actor’s vanity DJ gig. No thanks.
So, here I am thirty years later at a festival. One that Ms. Hipster had been to the past three years with her friends. She promised me that we wouldn’t be wading through rivers of shit. Nor would we be almost dying of heat stroke for lack of water. In fact, I was promised a civilized experience. One with all the modern conveniences and a conscientious and polite crowd. And some bands I actually wanted to see. No offense to last year’s Saturday headliner, Noah Kahan, but I’d never heard of the guy. Because I’m not some Gen-Z child. And, sure, Springsteen was the Sunday night headliner last year, but I’ve seen him a couple times in or around 1984 (with my parents) and 2002 (without my parents) and didn’t need to spend a day in the wilds of New Jersey with lunatic fans who deserve him a lot more than I do. Point is, I’ve never been compelled to go to this thing despite Ms. Hipster’s insistence that it’s great. But I finally gave in this year because there was enough of a confluence of my current, past and guilty pleasures in the lineup that my interest saturation was met.
The crowd was, as promised, pretty mellow. The grounds, as promised, were super-clean and well organized. Even the outhouses were of the fancier variety with flushing mechanisms and everything. There were water stations with plenty of spigots to fill and re-fill your bottles. Weirdly, all the beers were 24-ouncers, which is a tough haul for us olds on a hot day. Those last six-to-eight, lukewarm ounces are rough. There was plenty of food to choose from (I had a couple decent tacos from Mogo Korean Fusion Tacos) and all the folks working the festival could not be nicer. It was a reasonably mixed crowd of older and younger folks. Kids and babies. Definitely some people who love devil sticks and go barefoot whenever and wherever possible, but I think those are just the folks who go to music festivals no matter the bands or venue. But mostly just Jersey dudes in their thirties and forties with backwards hats and their wives who seemed to just be enjoying a day on the beach away form their annoying children. So many tattoos. So many bad tattoos. Which I suppose always exist, but with the preponderance of shorts, open-toed shoes, short sleeves and no sleeves, the skin and the terrible ink was more exposed than I’m used to seeing. But, again, everyone was pleasant, polite and just there to hang and enjoy a day out.
I will admit, I had very little knowledge or care about the earlier acts on the bill. Surfing for Daisy? The Tide Bends (or just Tide Bends depending on where you read their name)? Don’t know ya. Our friend, who attended the festival with us, liked Surfing for Daisy enough she was ready to buy a t-shirt. Despite never hearing them before Sunday. She’s a little impulsive. So much so that she later she changed her mind and declared that Grace Bowers was her new fave. Grace Bowers, who is like 12 and shreds on the guitar and had Flavor Flav come up on stage with her while she did her blues rock thing. It too wasn’t my jam. Though she was way more my jam than Neil Francis, who played in the hour block before her. He’s like a free-jam New Orleans, white-guy soul dude. He was giving me serious Dave Matthews vibes. Which, if you’ve ever read my site, isn’t a good thing. I just actually Googled him and my thoughts were confirmed — as he is on Matthews’ ATO Records label. Of course he is. There was another guy, Landon McNamara, in there. I caught about three minutes of his I’m-not-only-a-musician-but-also-a-surfer-and-a-model reggae thing and kept on walking. Look, that kind of music matches the on-the-beach-during-the-day aesthetic, but it doesn’t mean I need to hear it. I’m sure it was fine.
And then we moved into the bulk of the day. 4 Non Blondes got their own block on the main stage. Which is kind of interesting since we all know they have a total of one song anyone has ever heard. We showed up mostly to hear that song (which you can hear a snippet of at the beginning of the video up top) and to see if lead singer, Linda Perry, would wear the dumb hat. They did and she didn’t. Though she did wear A dumb hat. Someone afterwards asked me if she was still rockin’ the dreads at 60. I couldn’t see that far, but I don’t think she’d dare. She sounded good, though, and know that, despite the band being a one-hit wonder, she has gone on to write and produce all sorts of hit songs. I listened to a podcast once where she was the guest and she was incredibly unfiltered and completely entertaining. Good for her. Sara Gilbert’s loss!
The first conundrum of the afternoon came next. Mannequin Pussy and Spoon were playing on two different stages at the same time. And I, Mr. Hipster, am but one person. I’ve seen Spoon a few times over the years, including, most recently, in 2021 at White Eagle Hall. They’re a wonderful close-up band. In headphones. Out of a nice pair of speakers in your home. But the concert experience with them is pretty variable and sometimes not exactly as dynamic as they come off on record. They’re more of a groove band than one that projects in a bigger space. Add to that, the outdoor venue, where sound kind of dissipates and floats away, their sound just comes across as more mushy background noise than the cool, syncopated nuanced attack than you know is there. In this particular case, they were in the Park stage, which had pretty meh sound that kind of bounced off things and just didn’t help them. It came off as pretty boring, frankly, which is a bummer. Granted, I chose to watch Mannequin Pussy for the majority of their set time anyway because the new is always my jam. Mannequin Pussy, on the other hand, brought the rock ‘n’ roll. Reminiscent of that old riot grrrrrl energy that we saw live with Sleater Kinney back in the day. But lead singer, Missy, has definitely watched some old clips of Courtney Love as well. She, and the rest of the band, are good showpeople and their songs have a real nostalgic 90s feel that gets me.
Next came Public Enemy. Who — if I’m being honest — was probably the act I was mostly there to see. I know more PE lyrics than probably any other group — rock or otherwise — that I’ve ever listened to. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back melted my brain the first time I heard it in 1988, and continued to haunt my tape deck and then CD player for years afterward. And while I definitely do not feel like “Farrakhan’s a profit,” I will still chant along with that line just because it’s burned into my solid-state memory chip. It’s pretty funny that Flavor Flav has been in our lives this whole time as well. And here they were, on a beach in the middle of the day in New Jersey. And, let me say, I’ve gone to some hip-hop shows in my time — both on my own and with Hipster Jr. — and it’s a tough musical genre to pull off live. But these guys still sound great! They even performed some new songs, which weren’t terrible. But, yeah, I was super-psyched to hear all the classics and was very happy with their sense of attack and the weird and interesting way that their message has come back around. And THEN. And THEN, they brought out Darryl “DMC” McDaniels to do “Walk This Way” and “It’s Tricky” and the crowd went as wild as a bunch of Gen-X white people on a hot beach can go wild. There was some bad wedding dancing and some poorly timed fist-pumping. But it was a really great surprise and added to what was a terrific show.
Next on the docket was some band called Hot Mulligan. And TV on the Radio. I’ll give you two guesses who I was going to watch. Correct. To be fair, I did walk by Hot Mulligan on the way to TV on the Radio’s stage and they sounded like something I totally wouldn’t hate — some combo of pop punk and emo, maybe — but I only had an hour and didn’t want to have to intro myself to a whole new oeuvre of a band when the competing band was one with which I was already familiar and fond of. I convinced Ms. Hipster to split with our other friends and join me at TV on the Radio and she was really impressed with them. As was I. They were on the same stage as Spoon earlier, so I had little hope that their nuanced and dense sound would translate well in the space. But somehow their very cool sounds — including keys and horns and some electronic stuff — really cut through and created a very cool vibe. Their music is eclectic and really different than just about anything. I’d say it’s an acquired taste, normally, but their mixture of urgency and kind of city cool really translated well as the sun set behind them. Their version of artsy post-rock really transports you to a multi-cultural Brooklyn rooftop evening of weirdo, uh, artsy people who are way cooler than you. There was a little bit of subtle politics going on earlier in the day (Chuck D taking the “peace and love” resistance stance and Linda Perry from 4 Non Blondes talking some shit) but these dudes came right out and shouted “Free Palestine” among other things. Looking around at some of the dudes in those straight-armed warp-around sunglasses, and even a few in t-shirts with the what looks like a ragged American, Punisher flag on them, I can’t imagine a black dude shouting lefty politics hit them hit well. But, honestly, you can’t come to a music festival during an attempted authoritarian takeover of your country and not expect at least a couple of the artists to say something. There was honestly a lot less political talk than I expected. But, whatever, these guys sounded great.
Next up was Lenny Kravitz. The man who has had more number-one hits than just about any solo rock artist I can think of. Over decades. But I dare you to find a person who says they’re a huge Lenny Kravitz fan. Sure, some ladies may be a fan of Lenny Kravitz the person — and who wouldn’t be, the man is ageless and in better shape than 99.9% of men in the US — but his music is about as vanilla as music can be. We know AI didn’t exist in his heyday, but it’s as if someone told an AI bot to take the best of Motown and classic rock, mash it up and spit out 30,000-foot pop music with lyrics that say absolutely nothing but set it to a catchy hybrid sound that will appeal to the widest range of older Gen X listeners. Oh, and then have the dude playing and singing have awesome dreads, a high-fashion Jimi Hendrix vibe and look like a model well into his 60s. Done and done. That said, I last saw Lenny Kravitz open for Tom Petty in 1990 at the LA Forum (a show at which both Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen made surprise appearances) and he was really fucking awesome. In fact, my buddies and I were huge fans of his debut album, Let Love Rule. We used to be a proper country. Anyhow, his music has been ubiquitous over the years, as has his family, including his ex-wife, Lisa Bonet, and his awesome daughter, Zoe Kravitz. And, let me tell you, the dude is a pro. His band is tight. His guitar playing is pretty incredible. His energy is high. His voice sounds as good as it ever has. Honestly, if I didn’t know any better I’d swear they were just spinning the CD up there on stage. It was flawless. The man knows how to put on a show — though he doesn’t know how to show up exactly on time and stop playing when he’s supposed to. The festival runs a tight ship and each artist has exactly one hour. He went on like six or seven minutes late and overstayed his one-hour set — the festival cutting the off-stage speakers so as to not battle with the facing stage down the beach. Not that he could tell, so he just kept on going. The man loves to perform and it shows. And, yeah, don’t listen to the lyrics, but his songs do hit live. Ms. Hipster, a drummer, is completely enamored with Lenny’s drummer, Cindy Blackman Santana, and pretty much stood there, mouth agape, at her awesomeness. By far the cleanest and most “professional” of all the day’s sets.
Next up was Phantogram. Not for me. We strolled over to the other stage to see Sublime, though. And, because the sun had just set and seemingly because nobody else had interest in Phantogram, the Sublime stage was packed. It was hard to see where to talk to get closer and, honestly, what we could hear sounded… not great. It was on the Park stage, which was the one I mentioned earlier that had weird sound dynamics. But, more than that, the punk / reggae thing just wasn’t grooving. It sounded a bit disjointed, and while Bradley Nowell had a really nice voice (at least on record), his son Jakob’s was sounding a little rough. We were getting to the end of the evening and, after eight hours, weren’t looking to fight through a crowd in the dark to hear the one or two songs we might want to hear. Some very nice guy standing next to us during the Kravitz performance leaned over to tell us he was there to see Sublime. He was very psyched. I hope he didn’t leave disappointed.
So we walked back to the main stage for blink-182. Weirdly, a band I’ve never seen live. But apparently their thing is peppering their playing with dick jokes and just generally sophomoric humor. Who knew!? The thing about this band is that it engenders that Gen X ethos of irony and completely eschewing sincerity while low-key being sincere. But then you have to kind of making fun of yourself and everyone else for being sincere. Admittedly it’s a terrible way to live — being afraid to admit your convictions — but this is where this band lives. Queue the mom jokes. Because, god forbid, a person of Mark Hoppus’ age and profession admit to even a modicum of ambition. Because wanted to succeed is akin to selling out. A concept that Gen Z literally has no frame of reference for. But, hey, here they are the headliner playing to around 35,000 people. So you can pretend you’re this little band still slumming it in the clubs and driving from gig to gig in your broken-down van, but we all know you are incredibly comfortable, incredibly rich rock stars. Honestly, good for you. But that doesn’t mean they can’t act like juvenile jackasses. Which Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLong seemingly love to do. Bantering back and forth about all manner of parental and homo-erotic sex stuff that smacks of humor from the mid-90s. They actually seem like they’re having fun. Better than fighting, I suppose. Queue the giant, flaming middle finger. Because, blink-182.
The guys played all the hits and made fun of themselves and each other for even performing “I Miss You,” calling it the “emo” portion of the show. Not even bothering to touch “Adam’s Song,” which is arguably their most emo hit of all. But, no, they wanted to keep it up-beat. And, again, not show too much in the way of earnestness. I imagine — with the three members either 50 or about to be 50 this year — that some of the banter breaks were really just ways to physically break up what is a pretty grueling pace. Honestly, we could not figure out how Travis Barker can keep up the punishing physical exertion he puts into each song without an occasional break. And, yeah, there were times where DeLong sat or kind of leaned. I get it. But generally they were high energy and sounded great. It was a lot of fun and the crowd was really into it. Like any large show, there were people peeling off as it got late to beat the traffic. And they missed the finale, which Hoppus made fun of them for. Because this is this.
That was a wrap on Sea Hear Now 2025. My feet hurt, my back was stiff and I probably have to burn the clothes I was wearing in order to expunge the weed smell. My hands were also impossibly disgusting from the suntan lotion, the porta-potty sanitizer, sweat and salty sea air, but I wasn’t willing to amputate just because I couldn’t stand myself. I’m a little unclear how the heck people could do two days of this, however. That seems like a lot. People do it, obviously, but it’s not something at this point in my life I’d have any interest in. Despite Ms. Hipster being good to her word and this being probably the cleanest and best-run festival in the US. It was a really nice day. Good on them.
