Music

This bonkers festival has '80s cover bands, rides, pro wrestling, and karaoke

by Richard Howard

New Jersey’s first inaugural Food Truck and Rock Carnival  boasts headliners such as Slash, Stone Temple Pilots and Godsmack. That’s some sweet 90’s goodness, to be sure, but you can catch those same acts at dozens of music festivals this summer. Why hit up this one? Basically, because it sounds like it may be the craziest rager-of-randomness festival ever.

Generally, festivals go for grandiose, celebratory sounding names. But this one is 100% literal. Food trucks – check. As in forty of them. Rock – you got it. 80’s/early 90’s standouts like Skid Row, Lita Ford and Faster Pussycat join the aforementioned acts and a host of others. But because this thing insists on being ultra weird, there’s also a lineup of the best Ozzy Osbourne, Tool, Rage Against The Machine, Queen, Journey and Judas Priest cover bands. As for the carnival – now that’s where the real fun begins.

Legit amusement park rides will be in the mix, including an Honest-To-Jesus ferris wheel and more adventurous fare their website refers to as (no lie) ‘good old puke rides,’ should you feel the need to relieve yourself of that deep fried Mars bar you just ate. No carnival would be complete without an illusionist, a hypnotist and comedians so what the hey, those are thrown in the mix too. If seeing grown men fake-hit each other in a soap operatic setting is your thing, there are three pro-wrestling shows daily that promise to feature a couple WWE Hall of Famers. To round things out, you can either get interactive with gamer competitions including a Call of Duty tournament or piss everyone off with a horrible rendition of ‘I Will Always Love You’ in the karaoke competition.

I am truly heartbroken that I won’t be attending this ludicrous weekend of tomfoolery. While they encourage kids and label it a ‘fun for all event,’ even they make sly allusions to what we all know: this is the greatest ‘get-hammered-and-do-hilariously-random-things’ event that’s been conceived in a while. Hats off, gentlemen.