Review: The Gaslight Anthem 59 Sound jersey punk lite story

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.

Craig Finn From the Hold Steady talks about the Mats

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.

Free Labor Day Schlock Show at Maxwells

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!

Union County Music Fest 2008

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.

Radiohead All points West to the end of the line

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.