First, a not-so-hot take, to be filed under Common Knowledge: Sea.Hear.Now has become one of the very best festivals in the American music industry, and 2024 was without a doubt, the year that You Had To Be There. This year’s astonishing closing set by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band was not just the high water mark of the weekend, but of the festival’s six year history.
Of course, part of that night’s magic was made on history and context. Most of the time, a concert is just a concert. But every once in a while, a musician takes the stage with the energy of some larger social purpose at his back, and that energy can’t be commoditized or replicated. When Rage Against the Machine played a free show in Finsbury Park in 2010, it was a celebration for the fans who had upended the national radio charts in an unlikely grassroots campaign. When Madison Square Garden re-opened its doors in 2021, it wasn’t just for another Foo Fighters show, it was 18,000 people celebrating the end of a lockdown.
Likewise, Sea.Hear.Now has always been, somewhat unofficially, a celebration of its community’s recovery. In the ’90s and early ’00s, Asbury Park was a social and economic ghost town, a place of “boarded up windows” and “empty streets,” as described by Springsteen in his 2002 song My City of Ruins. Throughout those decades of hardship, the city was kept on life support by its legendary musical scene, and ultimately by a robust and enterprising gay community.
By 2018, when Danny Clinch, Tim Donnelly, Tim Sweetwood and HM Wollman partnered with C3 Entertainment to curate a music, art and surfing festival, Asbury Park was once again a burgeoning destination town. But there was no guarantee that Sea.Hear.Now would survive- let alone flourish- in a tricky marketplace. The city had previously hosted a few large-scale festivals, including The Warped Tour and Bamboozle, both of which had long since seen their heyday come and go.
Yet from the very beginning, Sea.Hear.Now has just plain worked. The inaugural year was headlined by Incubus, Jack Johnson and Social Distortion, and drew about 25,000 fans, with Springsteen making a quick and unbilled appearance for three songs with Social D. Since then, the festival has steadily grown in status and star power. The lineups have always been a who’s who of tried-and-true live chops, as opposed to pop stars, DJs or flavors of the week. Somehow, even the weather always seems to cooperate.
In the meantime, Asbury Park has only continued to grow and prosper. And given his long storied history there, along with his close working relationship with Clinch, it’s always been something of a foregone conclusion that Springsteen would one day properly top the bill. The last time Springsteen headlined a show in Asbury Park was 2010. So when this year’s Sea Hear Now lineup was announced back in March, tickets sold out in minutes.
And yes, as usual, this year’s lineup was rife with plenty of dynamic live acts. 311, The Black Crowes and Grace Potter were just some of the many highlights. Noah Kahan continued a meteoric year with a headlining Saturday night set.
On Sunday night, when Springsteen and the E Street Band finally took the stage, Asbury Park’s recovery became an outright sonic boom.
But on Sunday night, when Springsteen and the E Street Band finally took the stage and burst into Lonesome Day, that was the moment when Asbury Park’s recovery became an outright sonic boom. New Jersey has quite simply, never been cooler.
And Springsteen’s command over a New Jersey crowd has never been more astounding. It’s one thing for a younger artist to get a bunch of younger fans to bop up and down and sing along. It’s something else entirely to see an elder artist get thousands upon thousands of fans, many well into their silver years, screaming at the top of their lungs and dancing in the dark. The pride that Springsteen brings to his home state- and the reception he gets in return- is like a scene from the world’s loudest church.
And now, a slightly warmer take, to be hotly debated amongst the rock and roll diehards: Springsteen’s three-hour-plus Sea.Hear.Now appearance was the best he has ever been, full stop. This is his prime, at least in terms of live performance. Not the The Rising tour of 2002 and 2003, not the commercial pinnacle of the Born in the USA era, not even the legendary Darkness tour that so many purists still swear by. As of this writing, The Boss is quite simply the best in the business, and better now than he’s ever been before.
The show has already been released on CD and digital download, so the evidence is all there in a gloriously official audio release. His voice is richer and more evocative now than it was in his younger years. He’s absolutely mastered his pitch, his timing and his breath control. He’s written some of the best songs of his career in recent years; any perfect Springsteen setlist would be incomplete without 21st century bangers like The Rising and Wrecking Ball.
Music is subjective, of course, and even the concept of what exactly constitutes a great show is a little intangible. But every once in a while, you find yourself standing dead center in the prime of a great artist- or a great event- and you know beyond a doubt that you’re experiencing the glory days, no matter how many future iterations are to come. Hangout is still one of my favorite American festivals, but its heyday was probably ten years ago. Lollapalooza has become a sprawling international behemoth, but will forever be chasing the magic of the early ’90s. Burning Man? You couldn’t drag me there- not without a time machine set for the late 1980’s.
Sea.Hear.Now, on the other hand, has just touched musical nirvana, the kind of weekend that a lot of big festivals promise, but few will ever achieve. Last year, there were a few grumbles about crowd and sound issues. This year, the audio was flawless, and you’d be hard pressed to find anybody in Springsteen’s congregation who didn’t have a delirious grin on their face. Even the weather, as per usual, was late summer perfection.
It’s hard to imagine Clinch and company recapturing the same magic at Sea.Hear.Now 2025. Anything short of Jimi Hendrix coming back from the dead to headline next year’s bill would be a mild disappointment- and even if he did, I’m not sure Hendrix could ever live up to Springsteen playing on the beach of his revitalized home base. No matter what happens next September, the rapturous applause from this year’s show is probably still ringing in the air, somewhere over Asbury Park.