THE MOMS: NOT YOUR DAD'S ROCK 'N' ROLL BAND

The Moms - "Snowbird EP" (September 16, 2016)

Bar/None has always been known for its close association with the Hoboken music scene, but The Mom's,  one of the label's most recent signings, is better described as the quintessential New Brunswick band.  The power trio formed at Rutgers when its members weren't old enough to get into bars yet and honed its talents in the Hub City's fabled basement-show scene. Once the band started performing, the boys never looked back, hitting the road and releasing early recordings on two small labels.  The Moms'  Bar/None debut EP "Snowbird" was co-produced by Pete Steinkopf (Bouncing Souls) and Brett Romnes (I Am The Avalanche) and mastered by Jon Marshall (Misfits, The Front Bottoms, Murphy’s Law).  The EP  ("six short sharp bursts of discordant punk rock that should improve your day immensely and keep a smile on your face" - The Punksite) offers just a taste of what to expect from this up-and-coming combo, composed of Joey Nester, and brothers Jon and Matt Stolpe.

Joey Nester: The Moms formed in the closet of my New Brunswick apartment on 16 Central Ave, where I had my amps stacked up among my clothing. This is the place that most of the early Moms songs came to be. It wasn't, however, until after I left Rutgers after two semesters that we began to play shows. Our first drummer Don and I had girlfriends that lived at 63 Plum St and we coerced them into throwing shows in the basement, a haven on which we bestowed the name "Dickland." I have a fondness in my heart for New Brunswick basement shows. It is a scene unlike any I have witnessed across the country due in part to the sheer amount of shows that occur all year round. These shows embody a spirit that is distinctively Rock and Roll. They are subversive, all inclusive avenues for young people to express themselves without worry of jaded promoters or age restrictions. It is arguably the only scene in New Brunswick outside of the library where there are no ulterior motives of violence or girl/guy ratios - just good clean appreciation for music, fun, and the community where it thrives. New  Brunswick basement shows are a good example of what i believe to be a good slogan for Rock and Roll - "everybody's invited!"

In today's day and age, there are plenty of places that will not allow underage bands to play. This restriction is hardly an issue in New Jersey because there are plenty of places to play where age is of no concern - basements, VFW halls, all-ages venues like Montclair's Meatlocker, etc... When The Moms embarked on our first tour, I was underage and this posed a concern as several of the shows on that tour were 21+. My solution was a money order to China that resulted a few weeks later in a fake ID. That got me through a few years at out of state venues where I technically should not have been allowed to play. As we've gotten older, I realize that there is a shift in the crowd. Younger fans at a bar show are only concerned with the music being played, whereas the older crowd has a partial motivation for the booze. This past September, we had a big issue at our "Snowbird EP" release show in Morristown. We had booked the venue far in advance with the promoter's permission to make it an 18+ show. We had talked about the details and logistics of having underage people in the crowd and the bands and it was all well and good - until we showed up to play. Much to our surprise, the owners of the bar had put a kabash on the 18+ rule at the very last minute and at 10 PM, the bouncers swept the crowd and purged the room of anybody underage. It was a ridiculous shortsight of the staff that left a very bad taste in our mouth for the venue. Corrina, Corrina was told that they couldn't even go back into the bar to get their gear! Fortunately, nobody that was forcibly removed from the bar held it against us. We're still figuring out how we're going to make it up to those people.

One of our favorite places ever to play was The Asbury Lanes - a sentiment shared with many, many people in the NJ Rock and Roll scene. Leave it to government to use eminent domain as an excuse to bury one of the greatest institutions for punk in the whole country. Perhaps it wasn't as iconic as The Stone Pony. Or maybe it was because the only ones that voiced an objection to its closing were "just a buncha punks," but the scene lost a good all ages venue in Asbury Lanes. Other venues worth mentioning are Swayzes in Atlanta, Buzzbin in Canton, Churchill's in Miami, The Cavern  in Russellville,  AR, and basically any place anywhere with good, passionate bands full of solid people.

As for crazy stories, there are many - like the time we were robbed in Cincinnati, only to get everything back a few minutes later. Or the time Jon pooped his pants on stage. Or the time I drank too much whiskey and hopped on a freight train in Lexington, KY. Or the time I drank too much whiskey and got a firm talking to from Steve-o of The Holy Mess, or the time we played one of the most unexpectedly great last minute show in Shitsplat, Nebraska to a bar full of Moms fans, or the time we ended up at a diner in Japan with good buddy from home Dwyer, or the time we got pulled over in North Carolina and Jon had to eat all the weed, or all the times when we DIDN'T get pulled over, or the time we had to change an alternator on the side of the road in Long Island and still made it to the show in time, or the time we had to drive through the Rockies on 5 of 8 cylinders, or the time we drove 16 hours between Bismarck and Boise in a blizzard, or the many, many times where we were almost murdered with alcohol by the bar we played in, or the time we were almost robbed by a guy with a sword in Connecticut, or the time we saw a vagrant with a rifle and had to take shelter behind a church, or the time Matty literally went crazy. The list goes on and on... to live in a van and play in a rock and roll band is to open yourself to a wide array of hairy experiences.

Listen To The Moms:
The Bottom
Seen Enough 
Road Soda 

Criminals

TOM PRENDERGAST: ON THE RADIO

TOM PRENDERGAST - BAR/NONE FOUNDER


Tom Prendergast deserves his own plaque somewhere in Hoboken.  As one of the founders of both Pier Platters (the town's pre-eminent record store in the Eighties and Nineties)  and Bar/None Records, he's one of the unsung heroes of the Mile Square City's music scene.  These days, Tom lives in his native Ireland but he's keeping his hand in music with a weekly radio show called "Last Bus Home" on Limerick City Community Radio, 99.9 FM. The program offers an eclectic mix that ranges from jazz and American standards to indie rock. Last Bus Homes airs on 99.9FM at 10:30 pm on Sunday nights on but you can listen any time online at www.mixcloud.com/LCCR.

Tom:  This isn't the first time I've done a radio show. I worked at a pirate radio station in the 1970's, but not since then.Limerick City Community Radio is three years old and I've been with it for two and a half years. I got on there by simply asking!  Thank you for listening and please do tell your friends.

PLAYLIST FOR THE LAST BUS HOME, SUNDAY THE 2ND OF OCTOBER

IVOR CUTLER-LIFE IN A SCOTCH SITTING ROOM

FRANKIE SIMS-SHE LIKES TO BOOGIE REAL SLOW

NAZARENE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH CHOIR OF BROOKLYN-WHO'LL JOIN THIS UNION

SILVER JEWS-TRANSYLVANIA BLUES

JOE HENRY-CURT FLOAT

TON T HALL-I LOVE

ROY ORBISON-THE CROWD

THE UNTHANKS-HERE'S THE TENDER COMING

IVOR CUTLER-BEAUTIFUL COSMOS

MY FAIR LADY-ASCOT GAVOTTE

ELVIS COSTELLO-SHE

KD LANG-THE AIR THAT I BREATHE

TIM BUCKLEY-SONG TO THE SIREN

CHARLI HADEN-WAYFARING STRANGER

IVOR CUTLER-THE SURLY BUDDY

ANITA O DAY-TEA FOR TWO

GOTAN PROJECT-CHUNKAS REVENGE

DANGERMOUSE AND DANIELE LUPPI-THE ROSE WITH A BROKEN NECK

MEL TORME-GUILTY

IVOR CUTLER-BIG JIM

BETTY DAVIS-THEY SAY I'M DIFFERENT

RAY CHARLES-HONEY HONEY

IVOR CUTLER-EVERYBODY GOT

PLAYLIST FOR THE LAST BUS HOME SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 25TH

MIA-MANGO PICKLE DOWN RIVER

JOHN ZORN-STRATEGIES

TONY ALLEN-GET TOGETHER

DISCLOSURE-WHEN A FIRE STARTS TO BURN

HOLFER CZUKAY-HEY BABA REBOP

PEADAR O RIADA-SEAN O RIADA

JUNIOR CREHAN-LAMENT FOR WILLIE CLANCY

                              -FAREWELL TO MILLTOWN MALBAY/MOTHER'S DELIGHT

BOB DYLAN-THE MIGHTY QUINN

THE BYRDS-CHESTNUT MARE

MOUSE- A PUBLIC EXECUTION

DANGERMOUSE WITH SPARKLEHORSE-STAR EYES

JIM O ROURKE-THESE HANDS

TORO Y MOI-WHAT YOU WANT

PAUL MC CARTNEY-MAYBE I'M AMAZED

THE KINKS-MILK COW BLUES

DR FEELGOOD-RIOT IN CELL BLOCK NO 9

JONATHAN RICHMAN-SHE CRACKED

CHARLES MINGUS-LOS MARIACHIS

GLENN MERCER'S INCIDENTAL HUM: INSTRUMENTAL BLISS

Glenn Mercer - Incidental Hum (September 9, 2015)

Incidental Hum,from Feelies founding member Glenn Mercer, is a collection of 15 instrumentals, ranging from original compositions to striking covers of classic tunes like "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and Eno's "Here Come The Warm Jets."  The album was recorded at his home studio, with Mercer providing all the instrumentation.   Incidental Hum follows Mercer's first solo album, 2007's Wheels In Motion, although it is his first purely instrumental release.  Bar/None released Incidental Hum in September, 2015; the label has also released the Feelies' 2011 comeback album Here Before, and has reissued  Crazy Rhythms, The Good Earth, Only Life, and Time For A Witness.

 

Glenn Mercer's Incidental Hum on Bar-None.com

The Feelies on Bar-None.com

 Glenn Mercer:  I originally started playing bass when I was around 13.  I can’t even remember the first songs I learned how to play.  I remember that when I switched to guitar,I played stuff like early Creedence, “Sweet Jane” was an early song I learned on guitar… People have to remember that it wasn’t like it is today, where there are billions and billions of bands and you can just go online and hear pretty much anything ever recorded.   Back then, you learned about bands from reading about them, mostly. I had two older brothers who were into music and had a lot of records, but basically it was pretty easy to find out about stuff like the Stooges or whatever just by reading your favorite magazines. There really wasn’t that much going on, so it wasn’t that hard to find good music. 

I think people think that because bands like the Velvet Underground and the Stooges didn’t get played on the radio, nobody knew them.  People assume that most people got exposed by being on the radio, but that really wasn’t  true at the time I was getting into music seriously.  It was probably true a few years earlier, like ’66.  You’d hear a lot of stuff on AM radio, that was pretty much the only source you’d hear new music.   But then FM came in and albums got more important than singles, and things just really took off from that point.
I don’t remember the name, but the first band I played in that was semi-professional was when I was about 15 or 16, and we played pretty much every weekend for an entire summer. That was when I was still playing the bass.  There was a band called the Outkids where I first played guitar.  Originally we were a cover band and did what was popular at the clubs around that time. Like, Bowie was big, Mott The Hoople, things like that.  Once we started writing original music, the sound veered into the “Nuggets” garage-rock thing. We did a lot of covers from the “Nuggets” album and a lot of garage-y type stuff.  So by the time we were doing all our own originals and playing in New York, we were a garage-rock band.

About Incidental  Hum:

Some of the songs on this album go back really far, like almost ten years. Since I have the ability to record in my house, it's my favorite thing to do, even beyond performing.  So every opportunity I have to record something, I will.  I've done a ton of cover songs over the years, and other projects. The idea [for Incidental Hum] started to take form when I began reminiscing about working with [Feelies songwriting partner] Bill Million on the soundtrack for [the 1982 Susan Seidelman film] Smithereens.  That was something I really enjoyed doing, watching the screen and improvising stuff to go with the movie. That kind of led into the Willies (an instrumental band that performed in the dark during a period when the Feelies were largely inactive,) where we discovered a new way of working that wasn't performance based, it was recording based. It was very liberating to have a completely free palette to work with.  And then I was thinking also of a lot of the groups I used to love, back in the pre-Feelies period, when albums like Bowie's Low and Heroes came out, and Kraftwerk and Philip Glass; there was a lot of instrumental stuff that I was listening to back then.

Sometimes I would just turn the recorder on with no idea of what I was going to do, and just improvise, and that worked well, that led to a song, and I kept going from there. Then I'd listen to the stuff and think, boy, this would be really good for a film.  I could visualize a specific scene or place in my mind where this would fit. So then I thought, what if I went the other way, and had the image of the scene first, like I was scoring a film, and try to write the score for these images in my mind that didn't even exist. And that kind of took off.
Then I found this box of old cassettes in my basement.  There were a lot of demos and songs I started but never finished.  There was some instrumental stuff on there too, so I thought, whoa, this isn't really that new for me, I've done instrumental stuff before. So I took the cassettes and transferred them to digital and added some parts, and used some of that music too. There was no deadline, I was just doing it for fun, but I happened to give a tape of some of the songs to our manager while we were talking about something else, and he liked it so much that he talked me into looking into getting it released.  But I never started out to make another solo album. This was all done just as an experiment for fun.
[Interviews courtesy of JerseyBeat.com and NJ.com]

 

'A GIRL LIKE YOU' - AN UNLIKELY HIT FROM EDWYN COLLINS

Edwyn Collins - Gorgeous George (June 20, 1995)

"A Girl Like You" became one of Bar/None's unlikeliest hits when it soared up the U.S. charts in the summer of 1995.  The stylish, acerbic, witty singer/songwriter Edwyn Collins had been a working musician for 15 years when - after a successful stint as the lead singer of post-punk hitmakers Orange Juice - he released his first solo album, Gorgeous George, in 1994.  The critics hated it - the reviewer from England's esteemed Guardian advised Collins to give up music and find another job - but "A Girl Like You"  (written as a tribute to Iggy Pop) caught the public's fancy, first in England and then across Europe.  (A little known fact: Paul Cook, drummer of the Sex Pistols, played vibraphone on the track.)  
The song samples the drums track of Len Barry's 1965 hit "1-2-3". It appeared onscreen for the first time in the Empire Records soundtrack, and again in the music for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.  It's also been featured on television on the shows Cleopatra 2525 and Spin City, and in a commercial for Marks & Spencer. Alvin and the Chipmunks covered the song as a bonus track on their 2007 video game Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Bar/None signed Collins in 1995, and "A Girl Like You" proved just as popular in the United States, which resulted in Collins and his band performing the track on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. 

Conan O'Brien's cue cards

Edwyn Collins' "A Girl Like You" on iTunes.




This video was produced by John Flansburgh of They Might By Giants.