New Jersey
Movie Review: The Many Saints of Newark
3.5 stars out of 5I felt I owed it to David Chase to see this film in a theater. Way back, my coworker/friend Mona mentioned an upcoming HBO show, The Sopranos, that one of her fellow actors had scored a big part in. I thought it was maybe about opera singers. My cousin Ilene was […]
Movie Review: Asbury Park—Riot, Redemption, Rock ‘n Roll
4 stars out of 5The story goes that, a couple of years ago, Mr. Bruce Springsteen saw a rough cut of this documentary and said, “I should be in this.” His ample included commentary in the finished version certainly lends the film some legitimacy and authority, but the story presented here is worth telling regardless. […]
These Eyes Spy Cheese Fries: The Return
I was talking with Kelli from the band Resounding No, and she mentioned a beloved childhood fast-food joint, Burger Express in Carteret. In researching it, she had stumbled upon a review I wrote which appeared in the New Jersey section of the New York Times way back on October 1, 2000. I asked if the […]
Meatball Sandwich Review: Frank & Joe’s
It was thrilling to learn how to drive again at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, New Jersey, this past June. But almost equally exciting was finding out that my instructor Maria’s father ran a pizza place in Paterson. I promised myself that when I was finally an approved driver, with hand controls […]
EP Review: ‘Gross Dominance’ by Resounding No
4.5 stars out of 5 Click to sample or purchase I never got the chance to see Sarah C.’s previous group, the Soft Maybes. But it gave me a big smile when I learned that the bassist’s new band was called Resounding No. And now I’m smiling even more widely, because the trio has delivered […]
Album Review: ‘Great & Solemn Wild’ by Marybeth D’Amico
4 stars out of 5 Click to listen or purchase Word on the street was that Pat Byrne was releasing an album. Yet it wasn’t from his rocking band They Live!, nor was it selections from his fondly remembered WFMU comedy show Prove It All Night. Rather, Byrne had produced and was releasing a […]
Song Review: “Black Moon” by Screaming Females
Despite the “unsolicited criticism” category on this post, the Screaming Females Fan Club solicited me to write a review of the band’s new single.
Album Review: ‘Total Hell’ by Joy Cleaner
4.5 stars out of 5 Click to listen or purchase Many will claim to have been there, but I genuinely was: the debut performance by Joy Cleaner at Newark, New Jersey’s Index Art Center on February 27, 2016. That in less than a year and a half, the trio has put together such an […]
Album Review: &’s by Higgins
4 stars out of 5 Click to listen or purchase Allow them to reintroduce themselves, their name is H to the I to the double-G, I to the N to the S. It’s been five years since Higgins’ last release, Straight A’s. Now, the duo of Kevin P. Fish and drummer Brian Kantor has returned […]
Movie Review: Chuck
3.5 stars out of 5 No, there isn’t a big-screen version of the old NBC spy-comedy that I never watched. Here, the titular Chuck refers to the real-life Chuck Wepner who maybe inspired the fictional Rocky Balboa. As I’ve lived in Hoboken, Wepner has been in my consciousness for over two decades. My initial exposure […]
Jack Silbert, curator