The Tris McCall Report

March 28, 2004

Chris Jordan from the Home News wrote my favorite piece of pre-show hype for our Anniversary party. I don't even mind that he called me a keyboardist -- though now that there are so many new people reading the site, I might have to revisit the screed about instrument nomenclature. Sorry!

Stephen Mejias had my favorite reaction to the night:

The shows and crowds at Uncle Joe's seem to be getting bigger and better every week. This past Friday, the place was totally packed with beautiful women (and regular-looking dudes). Not for nothing, but I think us guys gotta start representing a little better.

Call me superficial (I won't argue), but I am glad we still have our rep for attracting good-looking audiences. Of course, Stephen might have been talking about the good-looking band...

 

March 27, 2004

I've been going to Maxwell's in Hoboken since '88. Back then, Hoboken still had Blackwater Books and Pier Platters, and a hand-painted sign that said "You're in Hoboken/No jokin'" to welcome you to Washington Street. It felt like an arts town, and it was. Hoboken, while pricier now than then, is still artsy. The Symposia Bookstore has moved its project into the space that used to belong to Blackwater, and the Guitar Bar and Tunes cater explicitly to rockers and those who love them. The demise of "Cool Hoboken" has been overstated.

In a good month, I'm at Maxwell's three or four times. That's thirty visits a year for fifteen years, several bands per bill. You know I'm up front for all of them; I don't hang around at the bar. So when I say that last month's American Watercolor Movement show was one of the handful of best performances I've ever seen at Maxwell's, that's saying something. I don't like to make recourse to transcendental categories of value, and I don't go to shows to be "blown away", but by the time they'd finished their set, I was speechless.

Tonight, AWM plays closer to home. They're at L.I.T.M. (140 Newark Ave.), the bar that's upending conventional nightlife expectations for downtown Jersey City. This'll be the first real rock performance in this space -- Suzanne Vega, of all people, did a surprise acoustic concert there on an improvised stage. I missed that show. Hilary was mad at me. "What's the use of being Tris McCall", she asked, "if you don't know when Suzanne Vega is playing down the street?" I had no answer to that one.

The spot is already crowded when we walk in. William Main, a poet who read gory excerpts from Christopher Marlowe at the Keyhole, is seated by the door; other spoken-word night regulars (Tracy Luscz, Ernie de Zavala) are chatting it up by the bar. This is another Waterbug Hotel evening, and as I've come to expect from Lex Leonard and his collective, it's been well-promoted. L.I.T.M. is generally the busiest spot in a three-block radius from the Grove Street PATH Train Station anyway (except, tellingly, for the Thursday night poetry session, when the crowd was around the corner at the Keyhole on Erie), and I'm already looking at the ceiling for evidence of a ventilation system. I expect to get smoky.

The Waterbug guys have thrown together an opening act. Cucarachas de Agua, they're calling themselves. Okay, that's funny. Jesse Wright, a painter who exhibited his work here on the wide, white walls of the bar's large back room, is on guitar; Lex himself is seated behind the bongo drums. Spoken-word impresario Aaron "Middlepoet" Jackson and Nyugen are taking turns on the microphone, reading longer pieces over musical accompaniment. It takes awhile for the sound to focus, but once it does, the poetry settles into a groove. Jackson is engaging and disarming as always, and Nyugen, whose performance at City Hall struck me as a bit strident, is wonderful tonight: he's relaxed, conversational, wry, ironic. He rhymes "ambitious" with "do the dishes", and bleeps himself out on the word "shit". "If you see me on the street, and I don't say sh...", he whispers. See, Waterbug entertainment is good for the whole family.

The Cucarachas pack up. L.I.T.M. patrons crowd into the back room, anticipating the main event. It occurs to me that even as the hall fills to capacity, I can still breathe easily; it's also not particularly hot in here. The high ceilings have taken care of much of the ventilation, and pure energy has handled the rest. The track lights that shine on the artwork go down, replaced by soft gels and the video projector that AWM uses to such powerful effect. For a moment, I feel as if I'm inside one of Norm Francouer's lightboxes: those sculptures of glass, plastic and bright electricity that give downtown Jersey City so much of its distinctive character.

American Watercolor Movement is without backup vocalist and dancer Elisa Monod tonight, which is a shame -- her interaction with frontman Jason Cieradkowski give a visual focus to his stories of love, longing, and pursuit in declasse Europe. Also, guitarist Marcos Cid -- he of the jazz-chords and snarling lead of "I Paparazzi" -- is also missing. He's been replaced by a substitute, though; the band hasn't tried to compensate for Monod's absence. Cieradkowski has miked an old typewriter, and he's hammering away on it as the band begins in a swirl of riffage -- Mark Townsend triggering percussion samples like a Tubeway Army vet, Brian Wilson rattling on the snare with martial precision.

I'd written for New Jersey Online that the bass tracks on And The Maps Came Down were lacking intensity. That was before I saw John Fesken play. I didn't realize how much of what I thought was synth was actually Fesken on the high strings; he's one of the most unique bass players in the state. In performance, he drives these songs with a propulsion that often feels robotic -- he hits with the authority of a piston engine, and pushes these songs forward with precision and grace.

The stage at L.I.T.M. isn't big enough to accomodate the entire AWM machine. Cieradkowski is down at audience-level, gesticulating, shouting, scrambling foreign languages like a guidebook in a blender. I wish he were up on the risers for everybody to see, but nobody's going to stop him now: he's got the front lines dancing, he's egging us on, arms waving in the air. The group rips into "Lifestyle": Fesken, Cieradkowski and Townsend in unison, shouting mystery syllables, swinging to the beat. "Paparazzi" is even better -- the crowd clapping along in rhythm, bartenders and waitstaff threading their way deftly through the packed house, one eye on the stage. We're locked in.

The sound system is holding up pretty well. Lex and Perhapstransparent honcho Stephen Connolly are sharing board responsibilities (and unlike so many abstentee NYC soundpeople, they're sweating every note), but there's just not that much tweaking necessary. The room is large enough that the drum hits aren't caroming off of back walls, and if the P.A. speakers are a bit trebly, they're not the worst I've heard. L.I.T.M. certainly could have chosen a more straightforward act to serve as guinea pigs for their rock experiment. Starting with a band as complex and challenging as American Watercolor Movement -- and having them sound as good as this! -- is the best sign possible. There isn't a single musician in attendance who wouldn't want to try their luck on that stage: here in a room so energetic, artistic, and exciting. There'll be many more shows here.

One final run through "Motorbike", and then it's time to say good-night. Drinks are cheap here (a glass of wine cost $5), but in Jersey City, the last call is at midnight. L.I.T.M. isn't going to become the Maxwell's of Jersey City, because there's no equivalent to Maxwell's anywhere -- but also because this is our vibe, our spot. It's radiant with the virtues of our downtown. It encapsulates our values and our desires: it's artful, surprisingly multicultural, even a little intellectual. Critical mass and the unerring demands of local interest is going to make L.I.T.M. a prime musical performance space. That cabaret license ought to be in the mail tomorrow.

 

March 25, 2004

One year in the books.

Let's count down the top ten articles from my first year of public blather.

10. Shame. I'd like to think this lit a fire somewhere. Certainly there's been more action around here since then, but that could be pure coincidence.

9. Larchmont Rock City. Of suburban rock, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and my favorite cohort of transplanted NYC rockers. Hell, I'm listening to the new Benjamin Cartel EP right now.

8. The concept-master at work. My interminable review of Scarlet's Walk feels just as relevant now as it did then. Maybe more.

7. Friends and Neighbors, late '03. I implored you, indie rocker, to become a protest singer. You laughed, sure, but deep inside, you knew I was right.

6. Yessay. Geeks of all stripes lined up to comment on this one, and to reprimand me for slighting Relayer. Sorry!

5. The Marauder's Map. On January 29, I visited the city planning office and 111 First Street. This is probably my favorite piece of writing on the whole site. Certainly it's the most prototypical. I'm glad you liked it, too.

4. Critics Poll 2003. The Wrens won. I had some stuff to say about Outkast, but nothing you hadn't heard before.

3. Pop Music Abstract, War With Everybody edition. I was hoping my review of Sean Paul, in particular, would revolutionize aesthetic categories.

2. Lyrics Check: God Bless America. This one dates back to the winter of 2002. Who says my screeds don't have a shelf life?

1. Tris McCall Christmas Abstract. The seasonal fave.

Thanks to everybody who keeps on reading this stuff.

Some factoids from the webcounter:

 

March 21, 2004

This'll be my last website roundup piece for a little while. I have very special content in store for April and the beginning of year 2 -- one which'll knock the local news off of these pages for a month or so. But I'm not going into the new year without making a strenuous point about one of our few local website options.

The JC List is an outgrowth of the old Newport bulletin boards, and in many ways it still feels like a Newport discussion group. Most of the posts there are made by Newport residents, or by residents of other waterside condo developments. That's fine. What isn't fine is the tone that the board has developed. Recent threads have concerned why you shouldn't date Indian men, the mythic evil Arabs dancing on the rooftops after the terrorist attacks, and how best to avoid that terrifying ghetto neighborhood of Hamilton Park. It's become a freespace for the lazy racist imaginary of the modern condo dweller.

I saw this coming upon launch, and I blame the webmaster. Why? Because the site allows anonymous posts. When you run a bulletin board, the first thing you have to do is get your readers to register. That way, they're forced to take some responsibility for their postings. If not, you end up with hit-and-run posts of the worst kind: Internet anonymity allows visitors to indulge their worst impulses.

Admittedly, the NBUnderground boards can be pretty funny. But they also reinforce the stereotype that New Brunswick musicians are a bunch of xenophobic and homophobic mooks. Similarly, the JCList is now confirming everybody's worst suspicions about Newporters. And the JCList boards are not funny -- the posters there don't even have the arrogant pith of outraged rockers to fall back on. Mostly, they sound scared.

I don't believe that everybody living in a waterfront condo is scared to walk on Newark Avenue. I don't even believe that most people there feel that way. But by allowing anonymous postings, the List guarantees that irresponsible and uninformed voices will dominate. The intention of this website was, I am sure, to better integrate Newport -- a community that often feels so distended -- into greater Jersey City. Right now, though, the JCList is fueling divisiveness. If you want to know why longtime downtowners distrust condo residents, look no further than there.

I say it again -- make people register to post. It's not a real discussion group otherwise.

 

March 16, 2004

Graham Parker

Title: Your Country

From: Working-class London, originally. But since Another Grey Area (1982) he's been hanging out in New York City, and beginning with "Blue Highways" from Mona Lisa's Sister, Parker's songs have increasingly been set in America, not England. He may or may not have moved to Woodstock, but his music emigrated years ago. I now think of Parker as a New York artist, and I bet most of his new fans do, too.

Format: Full-length album, a bit shorter than the twelve-track standard I've come to expect from Parker. There are nine new originals here, an inspired Jerry Garcia cover, plus a countrified version of "Crawling From The Wreckage" -- a song you might know from late-seventies Dave Edmunds albums. It's nice to hear Parker give himself another shot at one of his most famous songs, but tellingly, it's not the best thing here.

Fidelity: Acceptable. Graham Parker albums never sound great; they always sound like they were put together, conscientiously but expediently, over a period of a fevered week in a second-rate studio someplace in the woods.

Genre: Roots-rock/singer-songwriter. Parker intends this to be his country-western album, and enlists Ben Peeler (lap steel) and Lucinda Williams to add the requisite tropes. Yet the Parker songwriting template is so characteristic and entrenched that it resists framing. A few of the songs here ("Anything For A Laugh", "Cruel Lips") feel a little like Nashville Skyline, but Your Country is much more latter-Springsteen than Dwight Yoakam.

Arrangements: Nothing that would have been out of place on Scarecrow. Acoustic guitar, steel, bass, drums, a little jews harp, harmonica, honky-tonk piano, melodica: the typical algebra of Americana. Longtime sideman and collaborator Andrew Bodnar isn't in on this one, and he's missed, but his absence allows Parker to experiment with standing bass on a few tracks.

What's this record about?: Rebirth, bemusement at America, love in the face of disappointment, salvaging value from decay and disaster. These characters are second-raters, running from themselves or exploring their identities tentatively, queasy about learning too much. "Anything For A Laugh" follows a mediocre comedian on the road -- smart enough to recognize his jollity as a shield, but too frightened to do anything about it. "Nation Of Shopkeepers" posits constructed-Englishness as a mask, and exposes European gentility as a responsibility dodge: "I don't wanna act upon the world stage", demurs Parker, safe in his Mini Cooper. Elsewhere, Parker reverses the domestic reveries of Struck By Lightning and 12 Haunted Episodes with hard-faced songs about lovers living in compromised, damaged relationships. "The Rest Is History" and "The Things I've Never Said" invert the openness and optimism of "Partner For Life" (from Episodes) with portraits of damaged, compromised couples who aren't communicating. "Almost Thanksgiving Day", the brief centerpiece, is a dark-night vignette from a country home that sounds anything but comfortable. Regrettably, Parker also indulges in some uncharacteristic misogyny here, too ("Tornado Alley", "Queen Of Compromise"), but maybe he thinks that's appropriate to his intended genre.

The singer: It is, I am sure, a thing of infinite torment to Parker that he cannot be discussed without bringing up Elvis Costello -- especially since no Elvis Costello reviews ever mention Graham Parker. But one similarity between the two writers that's rarely pointed out is that conventional rock critics ignore much of their best work, choosing instead to focus attention on a handful of energetic but flawed albums recorded in the late Seventies. I've written a little about why I think this might be, but I think current judgements have been particularly hard on pub-rockers. Like Costello and Joe Jackson, Parker was never really a punk: if he sounded more urgent at twenty-five than he now does at fifty, that may have been an accident of youth. Sex Pistols fans migh (or might not) have been into it; I don't know, I wasn't there. But I'll bet real Parker fans -- the ones who were listening hard -- recognized him as a writer first and an angry-young-man only after that, and were willing to follow him through his stylistic detours as long as the quality of his writing remained high. The rock critics who loved Howlin' Wind for its fist-shaking and rattling around didn't know what to make of Human Soul. Those of us who've followed Parker for years had no difficulty making connections between the two. I suspect that those who want to argue (and many do) that there exists a massive qualitative difference between Parker's singing on Howlin' Wind and the singing on Human Soul are hearing echoes in the wind-tunnel of nostalgia. Graham Parker has always sung like a writer -- discursive, thin, reedy, a little waspish. Imagine giving your local op-ed man a record contract: that's what Parker's singing sounds like. It's a voice I like a lot. It's not a golden-throated voice, a voice that moves records into the sales column. It's a voice that kept Parker off of the charts when he was making albums for majors in production styles commensurate with popular radio, and it's a voice that will continue to endear him to old grumps now that he's an official sideliner. If you're looking for a real difference between Costello's career trajectory and Parker's, you don't start with the history of Stiff Records -- you start with their voices. Costello's is weird, but within the margins of popular appeal. Parker's is fun, sarcastic, winning; but too teacherly to ever be radio-friendly. On Your Country, he tries a few new tricks -- a country-twang here and there, some pinched vowels, a Dylanesque delivery. At base it's Parker's voice, the same one he's been using since he told the Lord to stop asking him questions, all those years ago.

The band: Pretty good. The playing here is better than it was on the uncharacteristically ragged and bleak Deepcut To Nowhere, and it's never as quirky and undisciplined as it was on Acid Bubblegum. But as always, if you're looking for instrumental virtuosity or guitar heroism, the Graham Parker section is not where you should be browsing.

The songs: Traditional pub and folk rock. Verse, chorus, and tag-line, relative minor on the bridge, no odd chord changes. Parker is an old hand with pop hooks, but he's become such an album-oriented artist that he's no longer wasting time crafting candy canes for the kids. Parker's proclivity for throwing a leftfield reggae number into every album ("The Girl Isn't Ready", "Soultime", "When I Was King", etc.) seems to be dead for good, but most of his other stylistic touchstones, from two-chord rave-ups to reflective balladry, are well-represented. Even his straight rewrites show good taste: "Fairground" borrows just about everything from "No Surrender" from Born In The U.S.A. Hey, no problem there, I love "No Surrender", too.

What distinguishes this record from other records of its genre?: Twenty-five years and fifteen albums deep, Graham Parker music has almost become its own genre. This is undoubtedly his most rootsy record -- as it was meant to be -- but honestly, it's not such a departure from his previous work that you'd even notice if you weren't listening intently.

What's not so good?: Because of "You Can't Be Too Strong" and its debatably antiabortion sentiment, Parker is occasionally identified as a conservative. Certainly there is longing for stability and justice at the heart of much of his writing. I think it's also arguable that there's something conservative (or maybe just backward-looking) about Parker's adherence to the social-democratic policies his songs sometimes advocate. But the odd thing about calling Parker "conservative" is that he has, over the past three decades, been one of the most consistent and articulate antimaterialist voices in pop music -- a persistent and class-conscious topical songwriter suspicious of yuppies, corporatism, and the culture of disposability. Human Soul -- for my money his best album -- concluded with a sidelong suite of hallucinatory fragments culminating in "Slash And Burn", an exercise in Marxist-sympathetic songwriting more explicit than anything from Stereolab. Most Parker albums have at least one song condemning mainstream culture ("Disney's America" from Episodes, "Short Memories" from Burning Questions, a good half of Acid Bubblegum). That version of Parker is M.I.A. on Your Country: this is the least polemical album he's recorded since the very-personal Another Grey Area. That makes some of the misogyny here particularly tough to countenance. "You might be a prick/and that's the part of you she's teasin'/If you wanna drive her home you're in for a surprise/Because she'll only go halfway", he complains on "Queen of Compromise". What is this, Extreme? Yo, Parker, I don't want to hear about your blue balls. "You used to swing your big ole breasts around town/for every man to get a good look", he kvetches on "Tornado Alley", before hammering his subject in the chorus. Coming from the author of "That's Where She Ends Up", one of the few songs about domestic violence I've ever heard that's neither mawkish nor voyeuristic, it's particularly disappointing.

Recommended?: I have always claimed that rock writers massively exaggerate the degree to which musicians change from album to album. Graham Parker is Exhibit A in that argument. Over the years he has drifted from production style to production style, but he persists in turning out song after song on the same basic composition logic. At times, his production choices have dovetailed with those that were popular or well-received by critics; at other times, they haven't. Many critics would have you believe that the Parker who recorded Squeezing Out Sparks in 1979 -- according to strict new-wave/pub-rock logic -- was a rock and roll genius, and the Parker who recorded the declasse Burning Questions in 1992 was a man who'd lost his muse. But upon close inspection, there's no meaningful distinction between the songwriting strategies on those two albums, one heralded and one obscure. If you like Graham Parker for his writing (as you should), you will no doubt respond well to Your Country. If you liked Parker because of his adherence to a particular "urgent" style, respected at a particular time, what can I tell you?, wait for re-issues.

Where can I get a copy/hear more?: Your Country is out on Bloodshot, the alt-country collective responsible for Alejandro Escovedo's work. An MP3 of "Nation Of Shopkeepers" is available on the site.

 

March 15, 2004

I've written several times about how I get psycho over good local restaurants I fear are struggling for business. It gets to the point where I can't even pass by the front door without freaking out and doing a head-count.

I'm glad to say I'm not alone. Jersey loyalist Amy Wilson is having a similar problem up in McGinley Square. See, there's this Ethiopian place up there called Mulu Baltena (713 Bergen Avenue). Amy swears it's the best restaurant in town, the best Ethiopian food she's ever eaten, and she implores you -- yes, you -- to take a trip up the Palisade to visit. Here's Amy, on her site:

A couple of times I've gone to places that I was told had absolutely amazing food... only to be sorely disappointed. Mulu Baltena, however, is absolutely exceptional. It's cheap to boot -- for between $6-$11 you can get an order of more food than you know what to do with....

All I can tell you is that it's completely wonderful, the people who run it are lovely, and it's affordable. I don't have a menu in front of me to tell you the exact dishes to order, but here's a start: there's an amazing chilled tomato and onion dish; all the lentil dishes are solid; if collard greens are your thing (and they're definitely my thing) then their collard greens rock.

McGinley Square isn't a neighborhood that hipsters visit often, but it's not tough to get to: take the path to JSQ, get off, walk south on Bergen Avenue for a few blocks. Conversely, head up the Montgomery Street viaduct, pass the Medical Center and the Armory, and you're there. I'm not feeling well right now, but I'm going to take her advice and visit as soon as I'm better. As for you, do Amy a favor and consider a trip to Mulu Baltena the next time you're trying to decide where to eat out.

 

March 10, 2004

CONTROVERSY!

As the first anniversary of the Tris McCall Report approaches, it's fun (but also a little scary) to fire up the webcounter and trace the growth of the readership. When I first started this project, I figured it would be one of those dusty cyberspace corners that I dig, a discovery for the intrepid, netting a handful of interested readers a week. As it turned out, my move to Jersey City coupled with the unfathomable popularity of some of my out-of-control screeds brought the TMR much wider attention than I anticipated.

Now I regularly get e-mail, and lots of it, from people I've never met. Much of it is straightforward encouragement, and it goes way too easy on me, but a substantial fraction -- maybe one out of every twenty messages -- are fire-breathing letters of dissent. I'm a huge fan of fire-breathing letters of dissent; as you can probably guess, I've been the author of many. I like getting them almost as much as I like writing them -- as far as I'm concerned, heated discourse is what this Internet is all about.

That said, a few of the complaints have been persistent enough that I feel a need to address them publicly. Some of them have to do with a common misinterpretation of what I'm doing here: this is a personal site, not a webzine for Jersey City. I don't work for the municipal government; I'm an outside observer lobbing bombs from the periphery. I'm chronicling my own experience in the neighborhood -- I'm not making any attempt to be comprehensive. If I've left out your local event/scene/project, there's probably a reason for that that you could figure out by reading further: perhaps I was elsewhere that night, or I had a show to do, or I decided to play video games. By all means, remind me, but I don't feel under any obligation to write about anything I don't feel like writing about that day.

Then there are those who e-mail angrily about how I'm doing a poor job of covering the local Latino/Indian/African-American experience. Well, of course I am; I'm a white guy in a rock band. My primary experiences here are going to be within the rock subculture, and that subculture is segregated. I wish it wasn't. I'd like to think I've done a few things to help desegregate our subculture, and I hope I can do more. Everything about Jersey City suggests to me that we don't have to end up like Williamsburg -- all of the pre-gentrified culture driven to the perimeters by hipster bars and hangouts that feel like Selma in 1953. Events like Waterbug at City Hall prove that we can do better than that.

But in order to keep crosscultural pollination open, we need to keep on talking. What does that mean? It means that if you're going to write to me to complain that I've ignored your ethnic subculture, it's incumbent on you to tell me what I'm missing. If you're going to take five minutes to curse me out over e-mail, please take another three to send me a link or point of entry to the subculture you feel I've been neglecting. Otherwise, I'm going to be forced to the conclusion that you're a guilt-consumed white liberal using a faked name.

For every bitter letter I get calling me a stooge for yuppie colonizers, another arrives from an aesthete bemoaning my emphasis on cultural context. Can't you just write about art, Tris, without dragging race, class, gender and politics into the discussion? Well, sure I could, but that would be boring, and irresponsible to boot. To paraphrase my guidestar Kari Orr, I don't sit down in front of this computer to weigh in on who's the best band in New Jersey: that's like trying to decide who's the most beautiful woman. I'm interested in why people like what they like; why they attend what they attend, what the motivation is behind their valuations. Lord knows there are plenty of decontextualized art-for-art's sake sites on the Internet -- if you're too squeamish for polemically-charged pieces about subcultures, go read those.

Contentious though I seem, I am the least competitive bastard you will ever encounter. It was never and will never be my intention to run the site for Jersey City, or to be the authoritative voice. I'm a pluralist, I don't believe in that crap. I mean to represent one voice -- my own. If my reckless prose infuriates you; look, webhosting costs about twenty bucks a month. It took me about twelve hours to learn Dreamweaver, and I'm a techno-idiot; I can't even figure out how to download MP3s. Surely you will have an easier time. Start your own local website, and I will be the first person to link to you and learn from you.

 

March 9, 2004

I've got a few new local websites to report. I'm pleased to find a genuine rock and roll weblog here, and it's so New Jersey you can practically smell the Turnpike while you're reading it. You get: Uncle Joe's roll call, pictures of Jersey girls on the toilet, some genuine state pride, beer-glorification, motorcycles, pictures of the Alphamales, a list of "places I've pooped"; even some gratuitous France-bashing. Is Jens Carstensen behind this? The Captain's apparent political priorities aside, I've got two words for this site, and they are: rock on!

Some people are proud to be from Jersey, and some people refer to Jersey City as "the wilds". Honestly, this happens all the time; there was even a recent discussion of the problem on the Jersey City list bulletin board. It's usually done ironically, but then who can really tell?; in any case, it's silly, and it fuels uninformed public perceptions. Jasper Coolidge calls Jersey City "the wilds" on his Julia Vorontsova page, and while I'm tempted to lay into him about it (I mean, he lives here), I'm giving him a pass, because he seems to be getting religion. Coolidge went to the Loews show, and besides contributing his usual awesome photographs, he pumps up the mystique of the old theater by calling it "indescribably gorgeous heaven on earth". Now we've just got to get Coolidge to the next Uncle Joe's/Waterbug event. Jasper, that's Jersey calling; pick it up.

Speaking of the Waterbug, Hilary wants me to point out that the tea-seller at their City Hall event isn't an employee of Subia Cafe, but an independent businessperson who happens to sell through the store. You can also get Janam tea straight through her website -- the headquarters of the operation, it turns out, are right here on Mercer Street. I haven't tasted the tea yet, but I've seen the jars, and it looks like a classy operation. Yes, I said "classy", and I'm going to continue to say classy as long as the punishment for being classy continues to be a prison term.

Finally, in case you didn't catch it on the splash page, this week is the WFMU marathon. If you've got any chump change, or bankroll, or trust fund lying around, why not contribute it to the most Jersey-est, most Hudson County-est institution anywhere?

 

March 5, 2004

If the Waterbug Hotel wasn't already a dominant Downtown-cultural brand name, it sure as hell is now. The Waterbug crew surfaced with three hours of music, visual art, and spoken-word performances in the City Council chambers last night. That's right: rock in City Hall. If you weren't there, you missed the spectacle of a varied crowd of artists performing right out on the debating floor, in front of a big banner festooned with flourescent waterbugs (painted by performer Bex Goyette) draped right below the official seal of the City. Hey, perhaps this administration really is down with the local arts community.

Constant migration around Downtown has taught the Waterbug guys how to throw a party. For a City Hall blowout that functioned as a coming-out party for the scene, Waterbug pulled in Comfort Bistro to cater, Ground to supply drinks, and Balance for general performance support and hairdressing. I even recognized a young woman from Subia Cafe selling her tea in the City Council lobby. The community responded: the council chambers were packed all night, audiences were enthusiastic, and even after the curfew was imposed, the party continued at L.I.T.M..

So now that the parameters of this movement are visible and public, we can ask: what characterizes Waterbug Hotel-brand entertainment?

#1. It's personal. Almost all of the poets and many of the musicians performed first-person accounts of their lives, upbringings, urban neighborhoods, day-to-day experiences. This made for three hours of pained, outward-representational art: one poet brandished a brick and talked about life in the projects; a good, 50 Cent-ish young rapper named Test asked "will it ever be heaven in the ghetto" and proceeded to list reasons it won't; event co-host Aaron Jackson read passionately about his race and class identity. Thus:

#2. It's political. No hiding behind reserved stances or rejections of polemicism here -- these artists used the forum to advance a decidely progressive agenda. "Bush gonna get stoned!" insisted performer Tracie Luscz, over and over, to a jazz-musical backdrop, and nobody in the audience seemed like they wouldn't welcome that outcome. Later, another poet took the mic, and delivered a rap (complete with audience participation) about starting a revolution "right here in city hall". And no, he didn't mean a revolution in form. The frontman of the Tipsy Mishaps opened his set with a plea to save 111 First Street. This was a politically-charged evening.

#3. It's legitimately multi-ethnic. It's testament to the potential of Jersey City that the Waterbug event attracted to City Hall a commendably polyglot crowd: racially-mixed, gender-balanced, toddlers, senior citizens, high-school kids, nighborhood hipsters, business owners. A few of the children were escorted out to the hallway during some of the more incendiary pieces (they were occasionally warned by thouightful poets), but for the most part, people stuck it all through and listened attentively. The organizers did their best to present a multicultural bill, too: an entertaining experimental jazz trio, an African percussion group that appeared to have honed their skills by playing elementary schools, poets from all over the city.

#4. It's loose. Groups presented songs amorphously -- no verse-chorus-verse structure for these performers. Waterbug retains much of the spontaneous, improvisational ethic of the open mic. Even Kevin Spyker, the night's guitar-slinging singer/songwriter, opened with a dense, abstract piece that incorporated parts of well-known folk-rock songs and refused to settle into a conventional structure. Several poets read over grooves; the drums were low-key, and the bass was (gulp) fretless. The Society Giants jazz trio represented the best example of the kind of energy the approach can generate: they were "out", all right, but they were constantly listening to and commenting on each other's parts, and they never lost focus no matter how challenging they got. The poets rarely read for cadence or sound: they delivered their pieces without much concern for prosody. They're conversational, open, direct.

#5. It's sincere. These are not ironic projects. This writing tends to be straightforward, and avoids most literary devices. I'm attracted to irony, for sure, so I was most impressed by Tracie Luscz's stuff: particularly her satirical piece about Beverly Hills 90210. But that's me; I'm a satirist myself, and I like the strategies satirists employ. They're not the only strategies. Certainly if you're urgent about what you're doing, and you're leaning aggressively in the direction of social change, satire and irony may feel like unnecessary detours.

Hip-hop historians and proud Angelenos are always quick to tell you that Freestyle Fellowship -- and by extension, everything generated by Project Blowed -- sprung from the jazz and cafe scene in early nineties Leimert Park. We may be witnessing the birth of a similar scene right here in our backyard. Look, I'm not saying anybody I saw at City Hall has the narrative complexity or scope of Aceyalone -- yet. This is just starting, and it only gets bigger and better from here. These writers will continue to push each other, challenge each other, develop their skills and maybe even experiment with literary strategies. It's all going to happen right here in public, and we've got a chance to watch it grow. Me, I will be playing at my first Waterbug Hotel event on Saturday the 9th of April, and I am thrilled to be able to lend my voice to this movement.

 

March 1, 2004

Jersey City is the state’s biggest municipality, but the rock scene is still intimate enough that we’ve got to watch the guys to whom we give clout. Should a real jerk end up booking the only club in town, well, we’d have a problem on our hands. Luckily for us, the Uncle Joe’s schedule is set by the always approachable and generally unflappable Shaun Towey. Friends, we are in good hands.

A musician himself, Towey has been singer and principal songwriter in The Ankles, whose candy-coated fuzz-rock Kill Themselves made a Hudson County-sized splash in 2002. I caught up with him at the Ground Café on Jersey Avenue – where he tends (coffee) bar – to talk about his band, Uncle Joe’s, and the future of the nascent Jersey City rock and roll scene.

TM: You’ve become an important figure in Jersey City. Are you from New Jersey originally?

ST: Nope. I’m from a town called New City, New York. So is (Ankles bassist) Billy Ferrara. It’s about an hour north of here.

TM: What made you choose to make music here, rather than, say, Brooklyn, or California?

ST: Hmm… circumstances. I always seemed to find myself in New Jersey. Every girl I’ve ever dated was from New Jersey. In ’99, Billy was living in Hoboken, and I was crashing on his couch. I began waiting tables at Maxwell’s. After some false starts we put together the Ankles. By then I was in too deep to get out!

I knew a girl who lived in Jersey City, and we started to look for an apartment here. Eventually, one opened up, right here downtown, and we all moved in. It was the cheapest apartment we could find: three of us crammed into a $900 a month space. We wouldn’t have been able to find that in Hoboken.

TM: How did you land the Uncle Joe’s gig?

ST: Chris Ward. He got me in. Chris used to run the door at Maxwell’s, and back when Uncle Joe’s was first hosting rock and roll bands, he was the booker.

TM: Where did Chris go?

ST: Oh, he split to Southern California. He’s having a beautiful time down there. He still loves us, though – I talked to him a few days ago.

TM: When did you take over from Chris?

ST: October ’03. But I’m not the only guy booking nights there now. My roommate Bill Murphy, who plays in a band called The Rules, has been doing Saturday nights. Bill is also going to be playing with us on the next Ankles album. (Murphy, who is in the coffee bar, walks over to the table to say hello.)

TM: You guys operate as a tag team?

BM: Well, we’ve got the same stereo and the same computer, the same e-mail account, and we get the same demos.

ST: So, yeah, we kick around stuff, talk about what’s come in…

BM: We get some crazy people asking to play at Uncle Joe's: cover bands, wedding bands. Guys who obviously have never been to the bar, who have no idea what they’re asking for.

TM: Under Chris, Uncle Joe’s established a reputation for hosting heavy bands. It was almost a hard-rock alternative to Maxwell’s.

ST: Well, that was Chris’s music. He liked the rough stuff. I’m much more of a pop fan. So though we still have the big guitar bands, I think I’m moving the club more in that direction.

TM: You guys have a particular aesthetic in mind when you put the schedule together?

BM: It’s not as extreme as that.

ST: I would like to stay away, though, from what Hoboken offers. The typical schlock; I’d like to stay away from that. Besides that, we’ll book all kinds of bands. If we’re getting away from the heavy music a little, it’s only because the room is so loud.

BM: It’s such a small place, and it’s got wood walls, and you see these bands come in with huge Marshall amplifiers. It’s like: what are you guys thinking?

ST: And it’s hard to take that stuff night after night. So it’s not that we’re trying to make the room go "quieter side", it’s just an acknowledgement that it’s easier to see a show there when it’s not so loud.

TM: Electric rhythm guitar in that place can really get crazy.

ST: It does. And drums, too.

BM: That said, some of the best shows we have there are still by the heavier bands. A group like Rye Coalition is going to sound good anywhere. Even if we’ve softened things a bit, this is still a rock club.

TM: The contours of the club have shifted around a lot – now the bands are playing against the east wall. Has that been in an effort to deal with the sound problems?

ST: Definitely. I think it helps. But really, the sound isn’t going to improve radically until we get a new system in there. The owner of the bar has been very supportive, but he’s made it clear that he’s not putting any more money into equipment. Dane Johnson from Grisly Labs pitched us on a brand new sound system. It would have been great, but it’s clear we’re not getting it anytime soon. Hopefully we’ll go through a period where no mike cords break and no stands walk away, and we can save a little money for the upgrades I know we need.

In the meantime, we can do things like deal with the configuration of the space. But we’ve created another problem now: there’s much less room for the audience to stand. Especially on nights when groups aren’t sharing equipment, the right side of the room can turn into a jungle of drum equipment.

BM: I liked the old riser system. We should bring those back.

ST: It’s better in the summer, you know, bands can use the outdoors, and pull trucks into the driveway. Everything picks up during the summer.

TM: Speaking of summer, are you going to do more outdoor shows in that gazebo of yours?

ST: Nope. Those got shut down. We had problems with neighbors.

BM: It’s hard to believe; I mean, who even lives out there?

ST: I think the neighboring bar might have complained. Anyway, outdoor shows aren’t going to happen.

TM: Uncle Joe’s has, in a short period of time, gotten itself a national reputation. You’ve gotten quite a few national touring acts coming through.

ST: Yeah, you know there are so many people in Jersey who know what’s going on and have great taste, and they’ve directed people my way a lot recently. People from any band that’s toured – I think they’re happy to help out Uncle Joe’s. There’s a sense that this is a community resource.

TM: It has become one, definitely. In the biggest city in New Jersey, this is the only rock and roll club in town. Why do you think that is?

ST: I don’t know, I really don’t know. Because rock and roll is so white, maybe? But no, I really don’t know. I moved here and have been working at Uncle Joe’s since the get-go, and I didn’t get much time to go around and look. There are places that put on events and shows, and have one-offs, but it never seems like it’s the same place from weeks to week. Up around Journal Square, there always seems to be something going on, too, but never anything permanent.

TM: The Waterbug Hotel has hopped around from place to place, and they’ve been vocal about their problems with the city.

ST: Yes, they have.

TM: The last few e-mails from Waterbug (who have moved, at least temporarily, to the 111 Building) suggested they were having territory issues with Uncle Joe’s.

ST: Oh, no, not with me, I get along great with those guys. The last manager we had, though, didn’t really know what was going on, and if people would try to talk about other stuff happening in town, he would affect a real "brute" mentality: "get that out of here!" He wanted to make his bar the money. He pissed a lot of people off. He’s not at Uncle Joe’s anymore – our new guy is much cooler. We shouldn’t have any problem with anything happening at 111 First. God knows we need lots of things happening around here – it can’t just be one place, that’s unsustainable.

TM: Let’s shift gears for a bit and talk about the Ankles. What’s new with you guys? How have things changed since you did Kill Themselves?

ST: Well… our drummer has left. But we’ve done a lot of new writing, and we’re working on a follow-up album with Kevin and Brian from Higgins. We’re starting tracking this week in their million-dollar studios (laughs); they’re going to be doing drums and guitar on it and singing some harmonies. Then a bunch of people who have played guitar with us in the past are going to come by and contribute, too – we’re getting a lot of people involved. Billy’s going to play, too.

TM: Higgins is the Weehawken band you’ve been raving about, right?

ST: Yeah, those guys are incredible. We’re playing with them at the Waterbug on the thirteenth of March.

TM: They’re home recorders, right; that’s the million-dollar studio?

ST: It’s all digital. They record on a film-editing program that I think is called Vegas – it’s meant for video, but the audio is simple and it sounds great. I think they’ve found their niche with this technology.

TM: You’ve got a split coming out with Higgins in the next few months?

ST: Yeah, we’re doing a split 12" with them, which’ll come out before the album does.

TM: How has the music evolved since Kill Themselves?

ST: It’s poppier, less noisy. I’ve been doing a lot of writing on piano these days, which opens up more harmonic possibilities for me. Kill Themselves was a pretty fuzzed-out album, and this time, the guitar will be much less upfront.

TM: This is a philosophical question that I ask musicians all the time: why do you think rock bands use so much electric rhythm guitar? As far as I can tell, all it does is obscure the vocals.

ST: I think a lot of it has to do with the love of the instrument – there’s something about the guitar that can get you to waste days, and years, and it can be all you think about. And then you kinda forget that you’re supposed to be writing songs, and that there’s so much more to add. I’m at the point where the guitar is going to be much less prominent in my music. It’s not like "oh, I’ve had my fun with it, and now I want to move past it"; it’s just that I want to get a lot more things involved. I still love it, but I’m just not the loud guitar master that I was two years ago (laughs).

TM: Did you ever feel that the electric guitar was standing in the way of the songs?

ST: But, I mean, that’s probably why I liked it so much. Look at Jesus & Mary Chain. On Psychocandy, that’s what they did: they hid these beautiful songs behind walls of noise. That’s neat, too; it’s just another way to present art. Sometimes it’s good to have shades on the windows.

TM: Funny that you mention J&MC. The Ankles are much more British-influenced than the average Jersey band.

ST: That’s me. I’m the Brit-pop guy in this group. Billy brings the rough stuff; he was always into things like Pussy Galore.

TM: British shoegaze music was a conscious influence on your sound?

ST: Yeah, but then I have been a sucker since day one for all blissed-out British music. Ride is one of my biggest influences for sure. Everybody gushes about My Bloody Valentine, but hey, give me Jesus & Mary Chain, give me Swervedriver, give me Ride, and I’m happy. I liked Secret Shine a lot, too.

TM: So when you fuzzed out your guitar on Kill Themselves, you were consciously working in that tradition?

ST: Totally. I must have listened to Swervedriver’s Ejector Seat Reservation every day for a year and a half while delivering pizzas. That and only that! I can’t deny their influence at all. As a kid tinkering with guitar pedals, the sounds they got were, to me, a lot more interesting than My Bloody Valentine’s. Adam Franklin was always concentrating on the relationship between tones and parts, and I’m a huge sucker for melody.

TM: How did the Ankles hook up with Maggadee Records?

ST: It’s funny, they were friends of friends when I was waiting tables at Maxwell’s. We had this band, and we were playing a lot of stupid around-town gigs, and all those guys would never come. Finally we made the record, and we had a few cassettes to distribute. I don’t remember if he’d asked for one, but Bill Dolan (from American Standard and Maggadee) heard it. A few weeks later we had a show at the Mercury Lounge, and he popped up and offered to put the record out. As is! Sometimes I wish it was a two-song single. But it was good, a great experience, and I now know what I don’t want to do again.

TM: Has Jersey City been good to you? Would you recommend it to a young band looking to get established?

ST: Definitely. There’s so much good stuff here. I’m always uncomfortable talking about a "scene", because it sounds like a dirty word. But I’m getting used to it. It exists here, and it’s definitely heating up. We need a few more venues, a few more places to go, a few more hip bars. But we’re getting there. It’s going to be a great summer. 2004 – the year of fun.

 

The February Jersey City Journal.

The January Journal.

December Journal.

Jersey City Journal (original flavor).

 

give me one good reason to go to bed without emailing me.