Back Into The Blogosphere

Hello, again. I’ve been, uh, busy. But I’m going to try and start keeping this blog updated regularly again. If you’ve only been looking at this page, I really recommend you also bookmark www.jerseybeat.com. Things are swinging over there – we have a new column by longtime contributor Johnny Puke, a new Rock N Roll Addiction column about City Gardens, the massive punk/HC/industrial concert hall outside Trenton that used to rule the Jersey scene back in the late Eighties to mid-Nineties, and we’re always updating the zine site with fresh reviews and interviews. So now, back to blogging…

Well, first things first; I finally moved!

We sold the old family house on Gregory Avenue – which took about a year, a total nightmare - but it’s finally over, and I now live in a spiffy co-op apartment about a mile north of where I used to be. I don’t want to post the address on here but you can find it on www.jerseybeat.com.

Here are some photos of the new place:

























































I love it so far. There’s a 24-hour Pathmark a block away, with a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Chinese takout place. A block in the other direction, there’s a pizzeria, a dry cleaner, and a deli… And a few blocks past that, an upscale neighborhood bar with yuppie chow (like $10 hamburgers and $12 wraps) and $5 Blue Moons.

I still need a kitchen table (a SMALL one, my kitchen’s tiny now) and I’ve been waiting for a new dresser for my bedroom to get delivered. Once those pieces are in place, I’ll be completely moved in. It’s funny, I thought I’d feel a wrenching sense of loss when we sold the house. My great-grandparents bought that house in the 1920’s; my grandparents lived there, my father was raised there, and he and my mom raised my brother and I there. But to be honest, an enormous sense of relief came with getting rid of the place, with all the many things that were either broken or needed replacing or updating. Now I don’t have to fuss with the leaky furnace every night or see a fuel oil bill ever again; it feels like a new beginning. It feels really good.

Now back to the music

Last Friday night, my friend Joe Evans (aka Joe III) put together a punk show at Lost & Found in Brooklyn to help celebrate the release of the first Chemical X DVD fanzine (you can find a review on jerseybeat.com) Joe’s a nervous little guy in the best of times, but this show proved especially stressful – there were all sorts of last-minute tinkering with the lineup, and then Lost & Found lost power the night before (which meant that the show might have to be done with a portable generator and very little in the way of house lights.) Luckily the power came back and eventually all the drama resolved itself and it turned into a fun night. Unfortunately I had some drama of my own, waiting six hours for my bedroom dresser to be delivered (it never did show), so I was late for the show and missed the debut of False Friends (sorry, Kelly Lynn!), but I did get to see Full of Fancy, the Steinways, and the ridiculously amazing Japanese noise band Peelander-Z. Joe III even got to relax and dance around by the time the Steinways were one, which was good to see.











Ah, but my weekend was just beginning. On Saturday (after waiting another couple of hours fruitlessly for my dresser to show up,) I headed down to Asbury Park for The Wave Gathering festival. This annual weekend event (this year was the third) brings Asbury Park’s music community together for wall-to-wall shows at clubs, restaurants, and retail spaces.

The artsy drag in Asbury Park is Cookman Ave, about a five-block stretch that’s lined with boutiques, antique stores, restaurants, and café’s. Lots of new businesses had opened since the last time I’d been there, which is the good news; the bad news is that just as many shops and eateries had failed and closed. (It’s ironic that the rebirth of Asbury Park back around 2000 really began with a string of art galleries on Cookman, which are now all gone.)

New Rick Barrys

Once you get off Cookman, though, Asbury is still the same dreary place – with the exception of The Saint, Main Street is lined with bail bondsmen, nail salons, tattoo parlors, cheap ethnic takeout restaurants, and boarded up storefronts. The boardwalk’s definitely showing signs of the much-ballyhoo’d rebirth, but it’s all behind schedule – there’s a lot of construction and new businesses about to open, but none of them managed to do it before the summer season started on Memorial Day. By Labor Day, though, the Asbury boardwalk should be a very different place than the boarded up wreck it was last year.

One of the boardwalk stores that will be opening this summer is called Style Rocket; from what I understand, it will be a high-end surf and skate shop, and it’s owned by my old friend Mike Pimco, who some of you might remember as the lead singer of Kid With Man Head (the punk band who ruled the Asbury scene back in the late Nineties.) Right now though, Style Rocket is just a big empty space with some mannequins; they had a few bands play in there for Wave Gathering, and the place had the acoustics of an airplane hangar. I’m eager to find out if Mike intends to have in-store live music once the place actually opens. (I remember seeing Kid With Man Head play a great in-store show at a record store down in Austin during SXSW once.)

Wave Gathering made use of many of the new businesses on Cookman Ave., Style Rocket, the (temporarily?) reopened Wonder Bar, Asbury Lanes, and the Saint, so visitors and the musicians who performed had a chance to see most of downtown. And everybody had the same question: Asbury’s on the cusp of a massive wave of gentrification. There’s already a strip of luxury condos at the foot of Cookman Ave (near the beach and the big gay hotel/nightclub, the Empress.) More condos are under construction just off the boardwalk, and more will be going up in the near future. But will the city and the developers have the wisdom to make Asbury’s music scene a part of the gentrification; or will greedy real estate developers stifle the local music scene just as they’re almost surely going to bulldoze Asbury Lanes and the Fast Lane in the months or years ahead? It’s fine to build places for rich people to live; but don’t you need a reason for them to live there too? So far, there are condos in downtown Asbury Park; but where are the supermarkets, the deli’s, the coffee shops, the drugstores, the libraries, the bookstores, the parks and playgrounds? And I can’t even begin to imagine how much money and time it will take to turn the local public school system around. Are those things on anyone’s agenda? Or are the developers just going to leave the rest of the city a crime-plagued ghetto and hope the rich folks behind their locked doors in their condos don’t notice?

Readymade Breakup

Wave Gathering certainly provided a blueprint of how the arts could become a part the new Asbury Park, so let’s focus on that. It was great to see every venue with significantly better turnout than last year, and it was especially gratifying to see so many local musicians (and even some of the touring musicians) hang around all weekend attending shows. That’s how a scene happens, whether we’re talking about Hoboken in 1980 or ABC No Rio in 1990, or New Brunswick in the late Nineties, or Asbury Park in the 21st Century. It all starts with the local musicians supporting each other, and it grows from there.

I spent the weekend with my friend Lazlo from BlowupRadio.com (we even managed to broadcast several sets over his Internet radio station with just my iBook and a Snowball mic,) and we caught everything from singer/songwriters in small café’s to big rocking sets at Asbury Lanes and the Saint. Here are some of the highlights:

Shane Cooley

We inadvertently caught Shane Cooley's set at the Twisted Tree Café, but both Lazlo and I were glad we did. Shane is a young singer/songwriter from Virginia who came up to Asbury for the weekend. He’s a sharp dresser with a pleasing, mellow style that reminded me a bit of the young James Taylor. Coincidentally, the first track on his new CD is called “My Asbury Park,” which isn’t about Asbury at all but rather about his own hometown, written and sung as a homage to Springsteen. It was definitely the highlight of his well-received set. www.myspace.com/shanecooley

If you’re vegan or vegetarian, the Twisted Tree is where you want to eat in Asbury Park. They have a wide selection of homemade vegan muffins and cookies, herbal teas, and a menu full of tasty vegan sandwiches. I’m not much of a tofu fan but I had their tofu “meatball” wrap and it was delicious. The meatballs were perfectly grilled and filled with nuts and spices. Lazlo (who’s a vegetarian) raved about his focaccia melt, which was a selection of grilled veggies and cheese in homemade focaccia bread.

After Shane’s set, I headed to the basement of Trillum Antiques, where the Aquarian Weekly was hosting industry panels on topics like management, studio production, marketing, and songwriting. I was on the Press & Radio Panel, along with radio personality Jeff Raspe, the Aquarian’s John Pfeiffer, rock writer Richard Skelly, and several other industry people from radio and newspapers. I think we gave the musicians in the audience some useful advice about how to present themselves, put together a presskit, and whatnot, as well as touching on ubiquitous topics like CD vs digital and the future of Asbury Park.

After my panel, Lazlo and I met up at The Saint, where we saw the new lineup of Fairmont (where singer/guitarist Neil and drummer Andy are now augmented with keyboards and a beautiful young woman on violin and backup vocals.) Lazlo and I agreed that it was the best Fairmont set we’d ever seen, and we’ve both been following the band since its inception.

Later we were back at the Twisted Tree for beautiful acoustic sets by Joshua Van Ness and Mimi Cross, which Lazlo and I broadcast over Blowupradio.com. Both artists filled the Twisted Tree and received warm and enthusiastic responses from the crowd. It was a big difference from the first Wave Gathering (I had to miss last year,) when many of the artists played to small or indifferent audiences, who were just in the venues to get a meal and didn’t care about the live music.

Next up, we walked across Cookman to the lounge at Synaxis, an upscale Greek restaurant, to see The New Rick Barry’s. Rick is one of the best singer/songwriters in NJ and it’s fun hearing him with a full band. The material seemed much more upbeat and light than some of the heavy political tunes he sings as a solo artist.

Miss TK & The Revenge

We doubled back to The Saint in time to see Miss TK & The Revenge, the Asbury-based new-wave band that invokes the cheesy synth-pop of the Eighties, but with a more punky feel. They packed the place, as did local favorites Readymade Breakup (playing songs from a soon-to-be-released new album) and the Milwaukees.
Lazlo and I ended by the night by doubling back to Synaxis to catch a set by the Crayons, who also had a sizable crowd enjoying their breezy indie pop.

I slept over on Lazlo’s couch and we were back in Asbury the next day, early enough that I got to take a long, leisurely stroll up and down the Boardwalk to see all the new construction. We kept seeing the same faces – journalists Gary Wein and John Pfeiffer, Adam and Scott from the Saint, and musicians like Anthony Fiumano, Tommy Strazza, Joe Harvard, and others everywhere we went. Our Sunday itinerary included a beautiful set by singer/songwriter Alex Brumel at the Twisted Tree (he announced that he’s about to go into the studio to record a solo album,) 16-year old wunderkind Quincy Mumford at the Saint (the lad sounds like a cross between Jack Johnson and John Mayer, with some very appealing teen-oriented songwriting,) and the catchy pop-punk of Frank Bressi & The Chilling Details at Asbury Lanes (where I ran into my old friend Gentleman Jim Norton doing sound.) Other notables in town were Toby Record from the early Nineties New Brunswick punk scene (he’s now managing Miss TK & The Revenge,) Bouncing Souls manager Kate Hiltz (who had Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio with her on Sunday!), and producer Jon Leidersdorff (who, it seemed, had just been in the studio with just about every local act we saw all weekend!)

There are a lot of questions right now about the future of Asbury Park, but I walked away this weekend believing that the Wave Gathering fest and the music scene it represents need to be a part of it.

W.E. Fest 2008

Here is a link to some photos. For a full report, visit www.jerseybeat.com

http://flickr.com/photos/jimjbeat/sets/72157605294171171/

JERSEY BEAT MEDIA BLOG


POINGLY
So Sue Me - the new full-length album
Available for download at www.poingly.com
New interview at JerseyBeat.com

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JERSEY BEAT MEDIA BLOG

My Back Pages

So this week was my unofficial Spring break. Although unlike a real Spring break, I still had to get up for work every morning (except Good Friday, which was a vacation day, thank you Jesus.) Nonetheless I did stay out late every night for five night's straight.

Monday -- Tin Armor at Otto's Shrunken Head. Otto's is that weird tiki bar at the east end of 14th Street. They don't advertise so you never know who's playing there; usually it's four or five no-name NYC bands, often (but not always) in the garage-rock genre. The sound system's pathetic and the crowded little backroom where the bands play doesn't have much in the way of atmosphere (although there are a lot of chairs as well as booths against the walls, which is nice if you're old like me and don't like to stand up for five hours at a time.) I got there too late to see Tin Armor's tourmates Annabel and Tin Armor played a pretty short set, but it was good seeing the guys and I was able to pick up their new EP on WhoaOh Records.

Tuesday - Tin Armor, Nato Paisano, Hopalong at Lost & Found. Lost & Found is out in the middle of Brooklyn somewhere. My grasp of the geography of the area is pretty limited, all I know is that it takes two subways to get there, the 7 to the G, and the G is the worst-run line on the MTA. The trains are old, noisy, dirty, and run at their own whim. On my last trip out to L&F, I had to step over several used hypodermic needles on my way back into the station.

On the other hand, Lost & Found has a friendly grungy vibe, the beer is relatively cheap, and they give you free hot dogs (or veggie dogs) as long as you order drinks. The sound system's less than ideal, but it's certainly not the worst place to see live music. The only really bad thing is that the place runs on Punk Rock Time. I got there at nine (the designated showtime) and the place was empty, except for a couple of bartenders who were bowling on the floor with a bocce ball and old Budweiser bottles. I called half a dozen friends and got nothing but voicemails, and was starting to panic (thinking I was at the wrong place) when Joe Evans III and Jonny WhoaOh came walking up the street from the G train. I hung out and chatted with them for a while and eventually people (and bands) started to trickle in.

Apparently a bunch of the scheduled bands had to cancel at the last minute for this show and were replaced by Hopalong (a girl folksinger who did a cover of Del Shannon's "Runaway" that pissed Larry Livermore off no end,) and Nate from the Used Kids doing a solo set (including the Modern Machines' "House On Buffalo Road" at my request, and a fun Bruce Sprinsteen cover.) Tin Armor went on at about 11:30, played "The Proclaimers" at my request (thanks guys!) and sounded great. The original trio of Matt, Matt, and Matt have added Matt Umland's brother John on second guitar and backup vocals, deepening the band's sound and adding a little more range. Most pop-punk people don't think Tin Armor are really pop-punk but like them anyway, and I guess I can see the point. Like Lemuria, they're really more of an indie band that mostly plays and tours and hangs out with pop-punk bands. But who cares? I love Matt Umland's voice and I think he's one of the best songwriters of his generation; like Delay, who also hail from Columbus, there's no hint of bullshit or ironic distance or affectation with this music. It's all written and sung from the heart.

On Wednesday night, I met up with longtime Jersey Beat contributor Paul Silver, who was in NYC from Chicago at a business convention. We grabbed a vegetarian Asian dinner at a cool little restaurant called Red Bamboo and then walked crosstown to The Annex on Orchard Street (passing the former home of CBGB's so I could point out the empty storefront there now to Paul.) We were there to see Cymbal Eat Guitars, a band I've been championing since singer/songwriter Joe D'Agostino was a lonely high-school kid stuck in the no man's land of South Jersey making mind-blowing demos under the name Joseph Ferocious. Now that he's in college in Manhattan, Joe's got an excellent band that is in the process of recording their first album (produced by no less than the Wrens' Charles Bissell.)

Before we could see CBE though we had to sit through two awful bands, one a funk-rock group that would have fit right into the NYC scene of 1991 and the other a loud bombastic rock act whose members looked like they should have all should have been in different bands (the singer was dressed in Clash togs, the drummer was a skinny new-wavey dude, the guitarist was a dead ringer for John Travolta doing Vinnie Barbarino, and the drummer looked like he was there to deliver a pizza.) Somewhere mid-thru the second bad New York band, Paul turned to me and said, "Cymbals Eat Guitars better be damn good for making me sit through this!"

Well, they were. And then some. I had heard the band not that long ago at the Lit Lounge, but the superior sound system at the Annex made a big difference. This band is far too good to be playing crappy bars on weeknights, but such is the nature of the NYC music scene that they really have no alternatives at this point. They're so original that it's hard to describe them, but there's definitely a complex layered shoegazer thing going on (ala, say, Spirtualized.) You can also hear the Wrens influence in the band's impressive command of dynamics, going literally from a whisper to a scream in a few notes and making it all seem perfectly organic and seamless. The two guitars, bass, and keyboards interweave to create a dense wall of sound that's mind-blowing in person and is going to be overwhelming once they finish in the studio. I wish there was a way to flick a switch and have them playing regularly at Maxwells and Piano's, but to be honest, Joe needs to be playing these crappy bar shows just to get used to being in front of a live audience (he needs to work on his stage patter and maintaining eye contact with the crowd.) But when he's singing, he's a natural - charismatic, commanding, and utterly real. His vocals range from murmurs to bloodchilling screams but none of it comes across as affectation. Much like the Wrens, Cymbals Eat Guitars twist time signatures, dynamics, and multiple song parts into intricate puzzles that are a delight to figure out. Paul was blown away, and he's a pretty tough critic. Color me impressed too.

Thursday I was back at Otto's Shrunken Head. Again, I opted for the more cost-friendly draft beer although I really longed for a colorful frozen margarita in a tiki head mug with an umbrella sticking out of it. Maybe next time. I was there to see the Invincible Gods, 2/3 of which used to be in the Atomic Missiles. Stuck in traffic, they got to the club late and had the soundman hectoring and lecturing them, as well as providing utterly shitty sound. I'll just stop the review right there. Surprisingly, The Imperialists (featuring members of Plastic East and The One & Only Typicals) actually sounded pretty good with their updated version of what the Missiles and Plastic East used to called "street wave" - funky, bouncy, big and beaty rock 'n' roll. Mike East gave me a copy of their demo, which will be reviewed on jerseybeat.com shortly. Keep an eye out for these guys, they're smokin'. An incredibly lame garage-band whose name need not be mention followed, during which I drank beer and reminisced with Nick and Sean from the I-Gods. The One & Only Typicals ended the night with a truncated set during which the very grumpy soundman (apparently they have noise issues and have to cut off the live music fairly early) stumped around and made faces and kept threatening to pull the plug. It was one more example of how badly bands get treated in NYC.

Thankfully, I got to sleep in Friday (and nap most of the afternoon) so I was ready for my trip out to another Brooklyn club, Bar Matchless. This place is at the edge of McCarren Park, southwest of the Bedford Ave. strip in Williamsburg. My first surprise was discovering that the bartender was my old friend Artie Shepherd, whom I've known since he was a teenager playing in hardcore bands. Since then, he's been in Errortype:11, Instruction, Gay For Johnny Depp, and currently God Fires Man, and he also insisted on giving me free drinks all night. Sometimes (not often, but sometimes) it's good to be me.

This was a really good bill, although the Imperialists were made to start at 8 pm when there was no one in the club. I got there midway through their set and at least caught half of it, although with the four members of the Meltdowns.

I've been corresponding with Billy Gray of The Meltdowns (see Tris McCall's review of their new CD on jerseybeat.com) for years but this was my first time actually seeing them, and they were terrific. The bassist plays a 6-string bass and does some amazing runs, and Billy's a maniac on lead guitar. The band plays funky stretched-out rock jams with a lot of humor (at one point, Billy and the bassist put down their instruments, jumped into the crowd, and did a perfectly synchronized re-enactment of the dance moves from MJ's "Thriller" video). I mostly missed the next band (an all-female instrumental jazz-rock combo) because I had so many friends cross-secting several different scenes in the room (not to mention the free Rogue ales from Artie,) but I was back in the back room for the Used Kids (Danny and Nato from the Modern Machines with Mikey Erg on drums, and a short feisty gal named Kate on second guitar.) It was the best Used Kids set I've seen so far, mixing in a bunch of old Momacs favorites with new songs, Danny and Nato trading off lead vocals, and Kate adding a little extra crunch.

Now it's Saturday night and I'm about to head down to New Brunswick to see The Measure (SA) open for World/Inferno Friendship Society at the Court Tavern. And in case it's crossed your mind, you're absolutely right; I am way too old to be running around like this every night. Next week I intend to be in bed every night by 19.

Oh, except for Monday, when the Screaming Females are at Maxwells. I guess we'll see how the rest of the week goes.

... and the Oscar goes to..."

I was chatting with my pal Chris Avello online today and this story came up...

Back around 2000 or so, some friends owned an art gallery in Asbury Park. They used to have live music there sometimes and put on a show one Saturday night with several singer-songwriters. I was one, and Glen Hansard was another. He was on holiday from the Frames and doing a solo tour of the U.S. I had heard of the Frames but had never actually heard their music, so I was really impressed by Glen's set.

Gentrification hadn't taken root in Asbury Park yet so we all sat outside on the sidewalk after the show on lawn chairs, drinking beer into the wee hours and passing around an acoustic guitar. Cops would drive by and just wave at us. They had a lot more to worry about than a few white people drinking beer outside. That would never happen today, we'd be shut down in a minute. But the luxury condos hadn't gone up yet at that point, and the local cops were still very laid back.

So anyway.... When it was my turn with the guitar, I decided to bust out Loudon Wainwright's old novelty song, "Dead Skunk." As I announced the song, Glen interrupted me and exclaimed, "I love Loudon Wainright, brilliant selection, let me sing it with you." So Glen and I sang "Dead Skunk In The MIddle of the Road" together.

Now I can say that I dueted with an Academy Award winner. Pretty cool.

New JB Podcast

http://media.libsyn.com/media/jerseybeat/jb50a.mp3

I tried recording this episode with Garageband on my ancient iBook laptop. Listen and let me know how it sounds.

The Wit & Wisdom of Dave Zukauskas

Dave Zukauskas - aka Dave RunIt, aka Dave Brushback - is one of my oldest friends. We became penpals back in the mid-80's when he was publishing Run It Fanzine and I was just a few years into doing Jersey Beat. He quickly became a regular contributor, penning witty, caustic record reviews (yes, they were still records back then, except for the occasional cassette tape) and hilarious cartoons. Run It fanzine turned into Brushback, and today Dave is online (just like me) doing a blog in which he basically reviews his record collection.

Dave's sense of humor ran heavily to inside-jokes about the indie/punk/hardcore or whatever-we-called-it-back-then community; Gerard Cosloy and the editors at Forced Exposure (my constant tormentors) were frequent targets. But even if you have no idea who Scott Munro or Thurston Moore are, his stuff is pretty funny. The following are some excepts from Brushback #4, Fall 1995.

Friday Night

Good show at the Knitting Factory last night. Got to check out LaGrecia, the new band featuring Jason Shevchuk (from Jersey/HC greats None More Black and Kid Dynamite.) Now based in Brooklyn, the three piece features Jason's raw throated vocals and a bit more of a pop format than his earlier bands. The Ergs put on their usual great show and it was great to see a sold out (and totally packed) Knitting Factory with so many people singing along (although Carla Monoxide claimed it was the lamest Ergs crowd as far as pit action goes. Point is, it wasn't an Ergs crowd, but the crowd still knew the Ergs' songs, especially the stuff form Dorkrock.)

Gaslight Anthem are from New Brunswick but for some reason they'd always flown under my radar. I think from the name I just assumed they were another So Jersey emo band. Far from it, they play aggressive Against Me! styled punk flavored with non-stop Springsteen tropes - let's get in our car baby and cruise those backstreets with the top down and our dreams in our hearts and yada yada yada. Hey, I liked it. A lot.
And from the way the crowd went nuts singing along, they've already already built up a sizable and passionate following with just one album and a recently released new EP.

But if the crowd went nuts for Gaslight Anthem, it was total insanity for Philly's The Loved Ones. Their new CD was produced by Bryan and Pete from the Bouncing Souls (you can read Jersey Beat's review here)and raises their anthemic muscular punk sound to a whole new level. I retreated from the claustrophobic moshing throng in the Knitting Factory's main room (one of my least favorite venues, although I have to admit the sound was terrific) and hung with the Ergs back at their merch table. I survived the CBGB hardcore matinee era, the fun-punk of ABC No Rio's glory days, and the huge commercial bubble that surrounded punk after Dookie came out in the early Nineties, and none of that surpassed the energy and passion that flowed through the show last night.


Punk's not dead, music's not dying. You just have to know where to look.