Sir Ben Kingsley STOMPS into the shoes of Minor Threat’s Ian MacKaye from Mean Magazine on Vimeo. You know an actor has class when he has no problem trying to act like he is 16 all over again. Funny idea for a Mean Mag promo video. Get some Minor Threat music and mosh or whatever it is the kids are doing these days: Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White | I Don’t want to hear it | Think Again | Filler
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New Jersey has been producing great music for some time. In fact we will grandstand here and say all the fools who move to newborklyn or la to “make it” or be entertained are retards. Stuyvesant is all parts equipped with punk veterans and can keep the attention of any special needs kids who needs to be spoon fed their music. Sometimes sounding like the west coast and other times packing that NJ edge makes Stuyvesant’s latest tasty album release on Manual Phono unlike the acquired taste of a Fishmilk shake. I kid them because I think I’ve known a couple of them for more than 10 years (Yikes! we’re fuckin old) so it is hard to be an ass and be constructive at the same time so I can only tell it like it is my brothers. So lets start with Linden Callings artwork shall we? I love it, nobody takes the time anymore to make stuff look cool, as if were handled with care, in particular if you are comic book fan the Boy Howdy tv illustration is killer(which you can get from their site stuyvesantrock.com i think). The lyrics here won’t win a Pulitzer but if there were a rock lyrics award Ralph Malanga (formerly of Footstone) would be in the running for story telling and fitting large amounts of syllables in 3 minute pop-punk marvels that don’t need to studio pro-tool polish most bands hide behind these days. Plus,there are only three chords required to rock and this records proves the point. Their music shows their fan dome for the likes of Social D, Ted Leo, Mats and the Decendents ,etc,etc, blah, blah. Hats off to some of the song names but these are the stand-out tracks: “Liars Poker”, “Tape Hiss”, “forgotten two” and “Salieri”. Enjoy.
While this has been a busy summer full of local festivals; it is sad to say that the spoils of summer have not been as plentiful as recent memory serves. Show #23 has been changed several times and then there was the Peecee blow out where the most recent playlists were lost to the ether. Now Fall is upon me like the doom of winter and I have to get it in gear. To abide by my self-imposed deadline here is a quick playlist with some mp3 links to said tunes (ethical or not). Enjoy:
1) The Young Knifes of Superabundance with “Turn Tail” – I stumbled on this and if said hey radiohead what would your music sound like if you were 20 years younger when you made the Bends. This is what it would sound like.
2) Idaho from the Forbidden EP “The Thick and the Thin” (mp3via sneakmove)- I am late comer to Jeff Martin’s music, so it is all new to me. Very ethereal soundscape material no wonder he mostly does soundtracks for movies.
3) British Sea Power from Do You Like Rock Music? brought “Waving Flags” – Trance guitars and shoe gazers geeks who apparently speak their own language. Subscribe to their newsletter and you will see what I mean.
4) Bruce Springsteen’s “Girls in their summer clothes” – Probably the best song from this past year. Really captures the essence of the title and reminds of the jersey shore hook line and sinker.
5) Cloud Cult “Everybody Here Is A Cloud” via their album Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)
(from Fuel Friends) Has this new pornographer/arcade fire, shins vibe that I dig.
6) The Roadside Graves brought me the best title for a song called “Lot Lizards Ain’t Lip Kissers” via Pop Headwound from a Sort of Dylanesque vocals; totally alt country with a hippie lemon-lime twist. Also check out the shit kicking drum dirge “Ruby”. Good stuff fellers. You make Jersey proud.
Update: Summer 2009 playlist go here!
This years Music fest in Cranford NJ put on by the County Freeholders and sponsored by a myriad of corporate sponsors including the love hope and strength cancer foundation was a very ambitious undertaking. Complete with two nights and three stages. Day 2 suffered from lots of excess rain from the hurricanes. I could not got go to day 1 because I was working and totally tired on Friday night but did manage to catch the first half of Day 2 before the torrents of water. We made sure to get there right after nap time first to catch Dan Zanes & Friends along with every other cool parent in the area. Former Del Fuegos guitarist has morphed into this folk rock niche without being too corny that with his real target audience being me. He played a bunch of tracks from his new album Neuvo York with lots spanish versed songs. All good btw. If you have kids and they remotely like music this performer is for you. Their set time worked out perfectly at 11 AM and then the clouds started to hint of what was to come even though Zanes tried to make it go away with some voodoo. Next up on the 3rd stage was New Brunswick’s Roadside Graves who performed after some BMX’ers. Yes, dudes doing these flips on their bikes over a large ramp. Quite impressive I must admit but sadly the crowd of kids dispersed before RG’s set. Not sure if it was their crowd and it was kind of wierd having a rock stage tucked away by bathrooms. The bands best moment was at the end when they sounded more like the Stones and less like this washed out version of Jack Johnson if there could be such a thing. I’ve seen them play better at the court tavern but alas not easy to command a festival crowd.
The highlight was Mike Peters from the Alarm playing with the NJ symphony Orchestra. Every classic Alarm song was smooth and reached a couple moving points when Mike referenced his own fight with cancer and 20 years of marriage to his wife. His voiced sounded as good as it ever has and it was great to see him perform in front of tons of dedicated old school fans in the spirit of 76′. Can’t wait till next year and hope there is no rain to spoil the show.
The strict state of rock is always trying to re-invent the storyline where the county lines have been defined for quite some time. To get your six string on and give it something new is as hard as making new octave chords out of the three that exist. The first three tracks on this record totally sound like the timber of Springsteen and music of some Southern Californian band holed up in the same apartment for a few years. The advantage for new bands is there are so many recent tenets who have come before in literature or Music who are the hometown mayors and pioneers as Bruce is to Asbury, as alliteration is to Tom Robbins and well punk is to the power chord. The good news is there are plenty of people to borrow from and bads news it just hard to be truly original. When you boil it down; the references are easy to hear if your record collection goes deep down to the marrow. Making the twists and turns your own from the scene around you is the trick and this is what they seem to do. The 59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem is transparent and derivative for somebody like me but brand new for the next generation of music lovers. For execution style and in the singing at audience dept they deliver on just about the same plain as classic rock of The Hold Steady and best that Jersey has to offer these days. Real stuff exists in these lyrics and only gets into trouble from my pov when they try to be too accessible and take the first exit off the turnpike. They don’t break too many rock rules too much; borrowing from pop-culture but hey who am I to complain. I keep playing the record and listening so they are doing their job right. I am not bored and enjoy catching the bits and pieces of other songs I like so all is good here fellers. Fallon’s band rocks. 3+ thumbs up. Check them out on Emusic | Download The Backseat | The ’59 Sound
Other great New Jersey Bands you should be aware of:
Aviso’Hara – Sonic youth and flaming lips inspired – Last.fm | Emusic
Boss Jim Gettys – Big rock alla Nirvana and Green Day but snazzier – Zoommoozik
Eastern Anchors – Trail of dead with Hum peppered inside – Last.fm
The Slow Wire – Pixies mixed with some GBV goes along way – Last.Fm
There are a lot more.
Pretty good interview with Craig Finn from The Hold Steady interview from mog.com talks candidly about the first records he bought, seeing the replacements and growing up. Their new album Stay Postive is out now and pretty good. See them on tour now.
The mighty Ff from Brooklyn, Stuyvesant, No Pasaran! and the Eastern Anchors are going to grace Maxwells with their presence on Sat Aug 30th for FREE!
We are a couple weeks away from the anual Union County Music Fest in NJ. This year’s show has a couple local bands actually from Jersey who are not interantional super stars including Val Emmich and The Roadside Graves. The big headliners are Everclear and cracker on Fri 9/5 and The B52’s and Gin Blossoms On Sat 9/6. For the kids Saturday at 11Am is Dan Zanes! Very cool. Last years show was pretty good with Fountains of Wayne and the addition of a beer garden. Bring your own food and cooler with mixed drinks to save a few bucks. The kids area was really fun last year and I can’t wait to let my daughter run around.
Man Radiohead managed to redeem the line to get into the line to get into the line at All Points West. They put on an intense performance and sounded amazing. Thank g*d for the close up monitors. They were the only band besides the wall of sound by the astonishing the Black Angels we were able to enjoy. We skipped the Roots to get something to eat, piss and drink. If they had a justifiable mix it would have been really awesome.
Firstly, there was a 5 beer limit per visitor and I am not sure how I humanly could have drank more when you considered the time needed to stand in line. The show was attended by 70,000+ music fans who apparently are all eco-friendly (see dumpter plastic pic below) and love cramming in public transit together, love to stand in lines to take a pee and miss half of the music. Sure us late to get going should have gotten there 3 hours earlier but why or how would we know that we would spend half the day waiting in line from 4pm on? Seriously by the end of the radiohead show i thought my bladder was going to explode and was thankful for having figured out where the shortest lines were. Sort of an expert strategist when given a proper map. Starting to see a trend here.? I hope next year they make some improvements with the ticket line to get in and give the damn beer garden drinkers a monitor to enjoy the rock music.
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