ASBURY PARK — The Bamboozle Festival, which has grown into a music institution since its inception in 2003, will return to its birth city here in May with rocker Jon Bon Jovi headlining the three-day event.
John D’Esposito, Live Nation talent buyer and founder of the Bamboozle, said Monday that it was time to return here, and the City Council last Friday agreed to sign an agreement for the 10th annual festival to be held on the city’s waterfront May 18, 19 and 20.
The event began in Asbury Park, but by 2006 moved to the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford.
So far, Bon Jovi, one of the top-touring acts in the music business, and the festival’s other headliners, California pop-punkers Blink-182 and the Foo Fighters, a top-selling rock band formed in 1994 by former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, have been announced as performing.
Details about some 100 additional musical performers, who could draw an estimated 40,000 people a day over three days, will be forthcoming, D’Esposito said.
The Bamboozle has grown since starting out as a jam band weekend in 2003 at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park. There have been a stadium-size California Bamboozle and a traveling edition called the Bamboozle Roadshow.
All along, D’Esposito has had the foresight to merge rock acts like Fall Out Boy with hip-hop stars like Snoop Dogg, along with comedy acts, games and established artists, like Boyz II Men, for an eclectic event that has stayed relevant to today’s fans.
“He's definitely molded an event with cutting-edge new acts that fits its changing tastes within the music industry, and he takes the old and makes it new again,” said Scott Stamper, the owner of The Saint nightclub on Main Street here. “It's a fresh approach, and he’s stuck to his guns. He’s changed the thinking of how to produce a music festival.”
D’Esposito said the designated area for the festival — Bradley Park, Convention Hall Complex, parts of Ocean Avenue, the boardwalk and oceanfront land from Convention Hall north to Deal Lake —will “serve as a remarkable site.”
He said that when he switched the site from the first years at The Stone Pony and then one year at Convention Hall to the Meadowlands in 2006, it was because the festival had outgrown the capacity of what was available in Asbury Park at that time.
Yet during the past three years, D’Espositio said, he has learned that “a festival site makes a festival,” and at the Meadowlands, the Bamboozle was in a parking lot.
“Now I believe the political and development climate in Asbury is stable and supportive to help us bring the event back to where it began and look to expand it as an annual tradition in a historical and musical town,” D’Esposito said.
“We’re incredibly excited and think this is a testimony to how far the city has come and how well the waterfront developers and the city are going to be able to work together,” said Anselm Fusco, a vice president with Madison Marquette, which owns many of the beachfront buildings and played a role in the negotiations between the city and Bamboozle.
Asbury Park will get a guarantee of $200,000 for the use of the city beach and portion of the waterfront that belongs to the city, City Manager Terence Reidy said.
The city also will share in the ticket sales, getting a fee when sales go over certain thresholds and bonuses if they reach certain numbers. The city will get the $200,000 and an estimated $160,000 for costs of police, fire, emergency medical technicians and public works 10 days before the festival.
“The city is on a path for financial independence and part of it is owning what we offer the world,” Reidy said.
The festival promoter at this time is offering only three-day ticket packages, which go on sale 10 a.m. Saturday for $190 plus applicable fees. For more ticket information, visit www.thebamboozle.com.
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