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.

Mr. Thumb Trax East tunes on last.fm

It has been a long time since I have had this cassette kicking around, and I am sure Jhon Thumb has a better version somewhere of these tunes but the other day I took the time to post 7 tunes by the New Brunswick, NJ band Mr. Thumb on last.fm. The band played with Barkmarket, Nude Swirl, Mule, and whole bunch of other nameless national acts. The music can best be described as classic prog grunge. I would start with

Flowers Are not Evil

and work my way back-up. Enjoy!

Former drummer Alum included: Ken Devoe, Gregor, Dave Rosenberg(aka D Crayola from Deadguy/Lifetime/Transiliva) and bunch of other dudes I can't remember their names- about 3 others. You know who you are.

Former singers: Bil Weis (trax east album) and Karl Munzel (This time it is gonna fuckin' hurt ep)

Bass: Yours truly D Buzz

Guitar/vox: Jhon Thumb

In other blogosphere news:

There are some eastern anchors trax posted on MS which were recently recorded at Moonlight Mile in Hoboken. The anchors are also slated to play a free show at Maxwells Sat Aug 30th w/ Brooklyn's Ff, Stuyvesant and No Pasaran! Rock.

Support Artists on last.fm just by listening!

The time has come where every small town garage band can get paid directly by advertising depending on songs played directly on last.fm by their Artist Royalty program! (Not download)I didn't believe it at first when announced this past January but only time will tell when the first reports come in this October. This is a huge leap for music fans supporting their favorite artists. Caveat is you don't belong to a online collection company that has the online rights and you must own world wide distribution. I'm no lawyer but I think US $10.00 @ .005 a play is 200,000 plays? That is a lot of ad revenue or page views! So start listening to stuff online as much you like.

Start playing and get some Free music by:
The smooth indie rock sounds of The Slow Wire
The almighty noise rock anthems by Aviso'Hara | Own it on Emusic
The old-skool classic jersey alt-punk-rock of Psychic Fair
Albini produced and tweaked indie rock of Bubblegum Thunder
Brought to you by your fine friends from Headphone Music Recordings.


Here is the payment terms fine print:

>for the free radio service, 10% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the free radio service.

for the personalised premium radio service, the greater of 10% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the personalised radio service or US $0.0005 for each complete transmission on the personalised radio service of a track which forms part of Your Content transmitted on the Last.fm service.

>for the free on-demand service, 30% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the free on-demand service.

>for the premium on-demand service, the greater of 30% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the premium on-demand service or US $0.005 for each complete transmission on the prepaid or subscription on-demand service of a track which forms part of Your Content transmitted on the Last.fm service.

Sonic Youth and Feelies playing for FREE July 4th

The main batch of tickets for the show are "sold out" but River will be distributing unclaimed tickets 9AM the morning of the concert in Battery Park this July 4th. As part of WFMU's 50th Anniversay celebration freebie concert series. Both bands are legendary in their own rights. If you stop by the tent the FMU djs will give you the poster. Just give em' a donation. Bootleggers, shut-ins and out of towners be ready; Sonic Youth's set will be broadcast live on wfmu.org around 4:45 EST.

From WFMU's free mp3 archives here are some selects:

New Bomb Turks - So Long, Silver Lining [mp3]

Strapping Fieldhands - In the Pineys

Food For Animals w/ Faust - Planet Say

EXRA TREATS:: Backwards masking beatles/seltaeb songs. [ Evil Beatle Masking can steal your soul ]

1960 Highway safety public annoucements [ Pere Graves on Highway Driving | Jack Webb on alcohol & driving ]

Butthole Surfers School of Rock Experience: Live Review

Well I made it back from Asbury Park last night with all of my flippers in tack and survived the maniacal laughter. I saw and connected with some old faces like Pete from the Bouncing Souls, Dave Dreiwitz from Ween and lots of kids running around with their guitars waiting for their big moments. First up on the stage was Project Object's heavy metal & Zappa inspired rock super star Andre'cholmondeley side band Delicious. Sounds more like old school melvins so much praise from me. Next up were HUNCHBACK who are about to kick of a big loop of a tour to promote their new release Pray for Scars on DON GIOVANI. These kids are noisy like Flipper and less classic rock but as close to early BUTTHOLE's ripoff band as it gets. Minus the acid but + the blood with a keyboard that would not keep it together. Ah, visions of some lame black cape always twitter in front of my eyes and some f'd up dude dragging a leg around. They sure could take some more pointers from their masters and throw a melody or two into a song every once in awhile, which is the one main thing that keeps their music down live. If you like You Black emperor and carnival keywords ala man or astroman vibrato (when they are working). The burn will only sting for a little bit Tyler but you will get picture
Finally, what we all paid good money to see was revealed. Two drummers, pitch shifting vocals, and for about 1/2 of the set Paul Green's School of Rock All Stars who supported GIBBY and PAUL LEARY live and on stage together after 17 years for a whole tour! Crazy. Gibby made good fun of all the knuckle heads trying to make their little videos for youtube and watch the show through a little monitor. He re-iterated a good point that live music is something you should experience and participate in. Hence the buttholes in all their glory, hippiedome, with a imported dancing jezebel. The best part of the set-up was the noise outro. Where all the kids got on stage and just went to town. Gibby's smile was ear to ear with an audio assault pleasure factor at 11. In order to keep the purity of the orchestration Gib escorted an adult of the stage who was trying to part-take in the...SATAN SATAN SATANSATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATANSATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATANSATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATANSATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATANSATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN

Butthole Surfers reunion tour starts tonight

Mommy why is daddy insane? What is acid like? Who is Gibby and Timmy? Why are they playing in New Jersey at Asbury Lanes tonight? Can I go with Dadddy? What do the butthole surfers sounds like live circa 1988!? What's wrong with the brown acid? How come the other kids don't have tails like mine?

Twilight Procession Review

The 1970's through the lenses of Billy Filo's Hoboken and Brooklyn based Twilight Procession debut release on Moonlight Mile Recordings is out now and available through SnoCap. If you dig Costello, and simple rock jams that resemble Jesus of cool and some big hair rock duo solos you should go celebrate and drink beer out of keg with them tonight at the Studio's Record Release party. Lots of local rock stars and side burns sure to be present. Just do it. Later.

Scarlett Johansson 16mm NYLON video short

So the babe who is on the top of The List has put out a Tom Waits cover album? Scarlett Johansson has a tasty spoken voice as it is and it seem to translate to a sexy singing raspy voice in the music. A very strange and daring choice but not when you look at it from the perspective of a performer. She seems to interpret and pulls off some serious artistic integrity. She plugs myspace for musicians a little and seems full of sympathy for musicians who just want to create. Going to have to listen to this record. She is an actress who has the power to make things believable but singing is not something you can fake.

New Brunswick 3 day Music weekend

I am glad to report the basement scene is alive and well in the Hub City of New Brunswick, NJ APRIL 25, 26, & 27, 2008. When Jim Testa emailed a few weeks ago asking me to comment on basement life in the 90's and some memorable moments i wrote some down and forgot about it until he sent me link of his latest Jersey Beat podcast episode #54 that on listen really took me back. Features infamous bands like: Pleased Youth, P.E.D.,The Blisters and Deadguy among others. I then realized this was a part of something bigger and I got really excited to hear there were three days of weekend shows going on in alternative venues like a yoga studio! Man have times changed. Now, all the bands in his podcast are not playing but he really documented almost two decades worth of music. That is right New Brunswick has been a scene like any other that ebbs and flows in and out of clubs and basements and tail of the cast high-lights band who are playing The Screaming Females, Rapid Cities,full of fancy, and for science; all keeping the torch alive. The New Jersey suburban youth gets it and I can't wait to read the special edition of the Hub City Fanzine. I'm amazed somebody printed something and it is not a lazy web zine. Very cool. I may need somebody to hook me up with a copy or since it is Sunday I'll take baby girl on a little road trip this afternoon to curmudgeon records.Life goes on and remember to support your scene outside the scene.