Written by: David Porter
All photos by Geoff Tischman
New Jersey.
We’re a sort of “in between,” an odd landscape where the sprawling green lawns of wealthy bedroom communities climb the hillsides above some of America’s most moribund cities. We are highways, of course, and beaches, and from a good bit of the northern part of the state you can easily see Manhattan, in whose mighty shadow we are grateful, as we are a state made of oceanside and pretty much two monstrous suburbs, one west of New York and one east of Philly.
Without these pre-Revolutionary cities we’d be…Iowa.
But, even with the pedigree our urban neighbors give us, we remain undefined, adrift…home of the unlikely, the yearning, the underdog. And in New Jersey we love our underdog stories – Bruce Springsteen, anyone? The Smithereens? Pete Yorn? Southside Johnny and the Jukes? Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul? Kool & The Gang? PM Dawn? Looking Glass? We’re the underdog state, loathed nationwide, yet somehow, for decades, we’ve churned out incredible music. Yes, Bon Jovi, too, and The Feelies and Monster Magnet and Chris Harford…say whatever you want about us, but we rock.
These days, our favorite unlikely heroes are The Gaslight Anthem, one of the all-time great bands to emerge from our state and conquer the world, and they received a hero’s welcome on a cold autumn night in Holmdel, NJ, at the PNC Bank Arts Center (once known as the Garden State Arts Center and about a half-hour from the fetid music scene in Asbury Park). The crowd neared 17,000 people once Gaslight took the stage, and the band was thrilled to be there. Of course these guys have played big festivals, but this might have been one of their biggest shows ever and we gave them a much-deserved hero’s welcome.
Brian Fallon, keeping himself as warm as he could in a leather jacket, lead the band through teardown versions of most of their best and biggest songs, all smiles, drummer Benny Horowitz pounding away behind him. The evening was as joyous as it was hard-rocking, and I think all of us, 16,000 plus, were just a mite bit proud of our state as The Gaslight Anthem left the stage and we turned and, the steam of our breath floating in the air ahead of us, walked to our cars and, with the PNC Bank Center behind us, pulled onto the Garden State Parkway, all of us deeply, deeply satisfied. And the best news?
As the band left the stage, Fallon leaned back toward the microphone and left us with this: “it’s time to go make a record.”
