Asbury Park, NJ – 24 September, 2025
25 years has not been enough for us to grow up or get over this
Once a month, like clockwork, my wife finds a meme about people who refuse to update their playlists and sends it my way. It’s always some dig about being stuck in the past, still listening to the same records I was spinning two decades ago. Mean? Sure. Accurate? Painfully. But honestly… why wouldn’t I want to retreat to those years before mortgages and utility bills, back when the hardest decision I faced was picking the perfect Myspace profile song?
That nostalgia was thick in the salt air last night at The Stone Pony, where Bayside brought their Errors Tour; a 25th anniversary lap that felt more like a communion than a concert. Alongside fellow New York veterans The Sleeping, the two bands turned the storied Jersey landmark into a time machine, offering a cathartic reminder of what made this scene so magnetic in the first place.
The Sleeping took the stage first, as sharp and precise as ever. Their career has had its stops and starts, but none of that showed in the performance. At first the crowd felt tentative, maybe waiting for Bayside, but then came their Bayside-centric “Heart Beatz,” followed by one fan shouting out the familiar chant: “If your heart was broken, you’d be dead!” The band leaned into it, weaving it into the set, and suddenly everything clicked. The room moved in unison. It was a small moment, but it broke the dam and set the tone for the night. The band has always maintained technical mastery of their instruments and nothing seems to have changed. Frontman Doug Robinson high-kicked, jumped and barricade-climbed his way throughout the set in an undeniable charismatic catharsis.
When Bayside arrived, the connection between band and audience was immediate. There was no denying every person on that stage in that pit was living their best life and enjoying the fuck out of this performance. Anthony Raneri grinned as he acknowledged the obvious; that most of us are “too damn old” to be out this late on a Wednesday. I’ll admit it, that’s exactly why I wasn’t coming back for night two. When he joked that Tylenol used to be his cure-all recommendation (before walking it back because, in 2025, even Tylenol is political), it was clear: we’re older, sure, but this music still keeps us young.
The setlist was a greatest-hits gauntlet from the band’s first four records, a wall-to-wall reminder of why we joined this “cult” in the first place: “Montauk,” “Masterpiece,” “Alcohol and Altar Boys,” “Don’t Call Me Peanut,” and deep cuts like “Kellum” and “Existing in a Crisis (Evelyn).” The encore trio of “Landing Feet First,” “Blame It on Bad Luck,” and the ever-anthemic “Devotion and Desire” felt like closing prayers.
For a few hours, strangers became family, arms raised and voices hoarse. This was a blanket for our anxieties, a pressure valve for our rage, a time capsule we willingly climbed back into. Twenty-five years in, Bayside aren’t just surviving, they’re reminding us why we fell in love with these songs in the first place. It felt like coming home to a place that has always been there, waiting. My wife isn’t wrong when she jokes that I’m stuck in the past. But standing in that room last night, I realized something: the past isn’t where I’m stuck. It’s where I belong.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/