KABOOM: THE SHOWS BEFORE THE BIG SHOW
A glimpse of the 2007 show via an alley on West Front Street.
For some reason, clicking on the KaBoom fireworks website starts a song that features “let it rain” as a refrain.
There wasn’t some other middling Springsteen anthem-to-partying available in his songbook that avoids provocation of the weather gods?
Fortunately for those responsible, the National Weather Service reports “a slight chance of rain and thunderstorms” tonight about 20 percent.
(Unfortunately for those responsible, if there are thunderstorms, this story will haunt them eternally.)
Though he was unaware of the song’s presence on the site until redbankgreen asked him about it, KaBoom chairman Peter Reinhart is unfazed.
“For the rain date [July 4, same time and place] to be invoked, it would pretty much have to be teeming,” he says. The logistics of the event demand that the show go on unless it absolutely cannot, he says.
Besides, he adds, “that’s not a bad forecast.”
A taste of what’s to come, from a KaBOOM fundraiser at the Monmouth Boat Club in April.
The fireworks themselves are done by Garden State Fireworks of Millington, New Jersey, which claims the show is the biggest in the state.
But there’s live entertainment, too, in the two main viewing areas in Red Bank: Marine Park and Riverside Gardens Park. The music kicks off at 3p with a show for kids in Marine Park and continues long after the final bomb bursts in mid-air.
Here’s the lineup for each of the two stages. (If you missed our stories on surviving the crush or a viable alternative to Red Bank, well, click ’em.)
MARINE PARK
Big Monkey 3 to 5p
Kid stuff.
Jobananno & The Godsons of Soul 4 to 7p
High energy rock and soul
Josh Zuckerman 7:30-10:30p
A little pop, a little rock, a little country
RIVERSIDE GARDENS PARK
U.S. Army Volunteer Band 5 to 7p
The Army’s premier touring show band
Tim McLoone & the Shirleys 7:15-9:15p
Local favorites offering up a popcorn for the ears