Bash Festival
The Bash Festival is like Rancid’s new version of Punk in Drublic, a punk music festival with free beer samples.
I met my friend Brandy in Jersey City and she drove us Raceway Park in Englishtown, aka BFE NJ. The lineup was Madball, L7, Suicidal Tendencies, Pennywise, and obviously Rancid.
There were over a hundred craft beers. Brandy’s celiac though, so she could only drink gluten-free beers, and the only table that should’ve had gluten-free didn’t bring any. Luckily we found some hard seltzer and REALLY GOOD mead. We basically just stayed at the mead table drinking that.
We thought it would be unlimited tasting like at Punk in Drublic, but they gave us like ten tickets for beer, which was weird. Somehow we were still able to get a bit tipsy on all the mead though.
It was really hot most of the day, and they were confiscating most everyone’s sunscreen. Brandy was able to sneak hers in, but we were still sweaty af. The rental car had no AC so that was fun. So the rain was actually nice and welcome, but then they kicked us out of the venue. SO FUN.
L7 only got to play like 4 songs before we got kicked out initially.
We met a kid who had a hell of a day getting there from Atlantic City and we kept running into him. He sat in the rental car with us during one of the multiple rain delays.
We saved a frog that somehow wandered into the stadium. Well, Brandy saved a frog I guess. I didn’t touch it.
We also talked to this other group for a bit. A 32-year-old was saying she’s too young to know Rancid and I’m like lolllll I’m 26 and I love them.
We were allowed into the VIP section after 4. There was a Monster tent with free Monsters, but we weren’t allowed to take them out of the tent because they were being sold for $5 elsewhere, which was super weird. They had like this Arnold Palmer flavor, which was surprisingly really good, and we stuck them on the outside edge of the tent’s barricade and grabbed them from the outside so we wouldn’t get caught leaving with them. Heh, sneaky.
We really only watched Pennywise’s set:
Peaceful Day
Fight Til You Die
My Own Country
Rules
Same Old Story
It’s Up To Me
Minor Threat cover
Pennywise
Society
Live While You Can
Brandy and I were inside the VIP section standing on top of the barricade, so we actually had a pretty great view.
Two other Infernites Margot and Doug showed up right before Rancid. They’d never seen them before, so this was a big deal for them, but it ended up being a very disappointing first show.
After four or five songs, it started raining again. But not just raining this time, torrential fucking downpouring. I was a sad, drenched rat.
So this was our entire Rancid set, that we came all the way out to BFE New Jersey for:
Radio
Journey to the End of the East Bay
Maxwell Murder
The 11th Hour
