Bamboozle Festival May 2012...

Bamboozle returns to Asbury Park

Asbury Park again to play host to music festival that began in 2003

The members of Bon Jovi (from left) Richie Sambora, David Bryan, Jon Bon Jovi and Tico Torres. The band will headline the three-day Bamboozle Festival in Asbury Park. / NJ PRESS MEDIA FILE

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.”

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Ticket Packages on sale today, December 13.