It sounds like New Jersey

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driving round the petroleum and car lot paradise of NJ last year it struck me that the springsteen type stuff that is supposed to represent NJ didn't sound like what i was seeing

so, what does sound like new jersey?

the other people place - lifestyles of the laptop cafe. had that empty road at dusk feeling
east river pipe - party drive, not sure why particularly, may well be partly the front and back cover of the gasoline age that suggests it, but it does make me think of NJ
groove armada - superstylin' (and, to an extent, some of the rest of that album). - i know, i know, you wouldn't have thought it would you? but somehow it really complemented the scenery.
grooverider - the prototype years. quintisentially british, but the rigid night time militantism somehow seemed right for the landscape

― gareth, Monday, 24 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe you're not listening to the right Springsteen -- try "State Trooper," which was of course modeled after Suicide. Suicide would probably sound pretty good, too.

― Mark, Monday, 24 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The sound of a stupid blonde bitch getting beaten with a tire iron sounds like Jersey to me...

― JM, Monday, 24 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

THE CRAMPS!! Thrashy, dirty, willful outsiders who stopped giving a shit about "cred" a long time ago. They were a Vegas band, right? Their relationship to L.A. was maybe like what Jersey (viz Atlantic City) is to New York, the seamy desperate foil for metropolitan glitter.

That said, the last time I was in New Jersey I was in very rural north Jersey, practically Pennsylvania, staying at a house directly across the road from an airstrip, like COW country, walking along the shoulder as the day turned to dusk, the crickets were starting to chirp, flies were buzzing above the long grass, and I heard a car rushing up around the curve so I step a few feet further away from the road and it zooms past blaring "Get Ur Freak On" in full Doppler EffeX0r....

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 24 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"Shine On, Elizabeth" by Cop Shoot Cop

― Alex in NYC, Monday, 24 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Hey, NJ didn't just bring you Springsteen - don't forget Sinatra, Bon Jovi, and, uh...Yo La Tengo.

― geeta, Monday, 24 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Depends on the part of New Jersey you're talking about - for even though NJ is a small state, it's quite diverse depending on where in the state you happen to be. Yo La Tengo and the Feelies always remind me of hot weekend afternoons in Hudson County. Bon Jovi sounds like the blue-collar Middlesex County suburbs where I grew up.

― mike a, Monday, 24 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

when i think of the abandoned parts of new jersey (parts of the shore, the tons of abandoned old buildings, the pine barrens) it makes me think of labradford. desolation and all that.

the more populous areas just make me think of 60s psych because that's what i'm usually listening to in the car while driving up exciting route 1.

― your null fame, Monday, 24 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The Feelies = New Jersey, and New Jersey = wouldn't care if it disappear off the face of the earth, but the Feelies are great (and Yo La Tengo too!)

― A Nairn, Monday, 24 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

six years pass...

There isn't a thread for the whole Jersey Shore Sound thing but I'm on a total kick right now, early 80s Springsteen and Mink DeVille and Southside Johnny & The Asbury Dukes. It was The Gaslight Anthem that sent me reeling back looking for shit that sounded like leather jackets with chips on the shoulders, and I'm really glad wiki pointed me to this stuff. This week Coup de Grace is probably my favorite album ever made.

What else sounds like this stuff? Or The Gaslight Anthem?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 06:51 (seventeen years ago)

I'm about to go to sleep but just to bump this for the awake people before I do...

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 12:18 (seventeen years ago)

Damn isn't it like 7:30 in the morning in Texas? Excellent work.

― ╓abies, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 12:28 (seventeen years ago)

Dude is DeVille rockin uggs here?
http://www.multipics.nl/afbeeldingen/ppc07%20Mink%20DeVille5.jpg

― ╓abies, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 12:44 (seventeen years ago)

Check out Red Collar- North Carolina-via-Pittsburgh, a lot like Gaslight Anthem. That line from "Rustbelt Heart" - "the sad refrain that you will never make the grade" sums up chip-on-the-shoulder worker-rock succinctly.

― bendy, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 12:48 (seventeen years ago)

As a lifelong NJ resident, I find that whole "we're just a bunch of unpretentious working class guys from Jersey" shtick kind of irritating. But if you like that, The Smithereens were pretty good, if you can get past the singer's extreme right wing nutjobness.

― kornrulez6969, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 13:38 (seventeen years ago)

I think that attitude prevails in pretty much every smallish-to-mid sized town big enough to have bands.

― ╓abies, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 14:29 (seventeen years ago)

P-Funk. The key members were from Plainfield, best stuff out of Jersey ever.

― Bill Magill, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 14:39 (seventeen years ago)

The Gaslight Anthem. I think they're a cool band. Both their albums are good, solid rock with a small Sprinsteen-goes-punkrock-vibe.

― Marty Innerlogic, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 14:46 (seventeen years ago)

Aly-Us - Follow Me

― dan selzer, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 14:51 (seventeen years ago)

^^^ Dan OTM

Also, "Respect" by Adeva (she's from my hometown of Paterson)

― Capitaine Jay Vee, Wednesday, 3 June 2009 19:50 (seventeen years ago)

one year passes...

So thanks to Titus Andronicus, Real Estate, Ducktails, Alex Bleeker and the Freaks, and Julian Lynch, Ridgewood is becoming a little hotspot for hip Jersey bands. (Titus Andronicus are from Glen Rock yes, but they are neighboring towns- practically one big town as far as I'm concerned)

Anyone from the area that thinks this is kind of neat, too?

― Evan, Monday, 28 June 2010 13:52 (fifteen years ago)

Bergen County is the new Williamsburg. Didn't Karen O grow up there too?

Can't forget The Wrens from nearby Passaic county.

― kornrulez6969, Monday, 28 June 2010 14:26 (fifteen years ago)

I'm not sure did she? Also one or more of the Vivian Girls grew up in Ridgewood. Its like the high school class of 2004 makes up this whole group.

― Evan, Monday, 28 June 2010 14:52 (fifteen years ago)

Also love the Wrens.

― Evan, Monday, 28 June 2010 14:53 (fifteen years ago)

heyyy speed the plough are BACK!
http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/music/97045334_Reintroducing_the_North_Jersey_rock_band_Speed_the_Plough.html

― tylerw, Monday, 28 June 2010 15:11 (fifteen years ago)

Back when I had musical ambitions, I had this idea of emphasizing being from New Jersey in the marketing of my fairly non-NJ but non-Brooklyn sounding band (sort of post-rock/alt-country, which at least at the time did not seem common in Jersey). I was actually the only person NOT from NJ in the band, but everyone else was from Monmouth County, and we also were friends with a few other fairly hipstery bands who were all originally from Monmouth County and also did not sound very Jersey. I wanted to push a Monmouth County as anti-Williamsburg line, but no one else seemed to like it. I thought it might have an 'otherness just across the river' kind of appeal.

I don't know if that's exactly what's going on in the current crop of bands (RE, Titus) -- it seems more like an appeal coming from a sense of looseness and slightly more casual, less practiced hipness as an antidote to the fashion-forward, studied, art-school-grad sensibilities of a lot of Brooklyn bands.

― hills like white people (Hurting 2), Monday, 28 June 2010 15:38 (fifteen years ago)

A couple cool NJ bands from the 80s:

Dramarama and Winter Hours

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoV0eVt_KxU&feature=related

― kornrulez6969, Monday, 28 June 2010 15:57 (fifteen years ago)

"...it seems more like an appeal coming from a sense of looseness and slightly more casual, less practiced hipness as an antidote to the fashion-forward, studied, art-school-grad sensibilities of a lot of Brooklyn bands."

This is exactly what has been whats attracting me to lots of 90s college rock kind of stuff, and anything that seems to come from the suburbs, or share that suburban sensibility. Brooklyn has just been turning me off in all aspects a whole lot lately, and I have been gravitating to music that reminds me of fresh air and trees and grass.

But yeah Hurting, you hit the nail on the head.

― Evan, Monday, 28 June 2010 17:07 (fifteen years ago)

in the late '80s and early '90s, the monmouth county to new brunswick corridor sounded very much like a suburb of seattle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP1qnxnu4aI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaNoFLjzMk8&feature=related

― fact checking cuz, Monday, 28 June 2010 18:35 (fifteen years ago)

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