As I mentioned earlier, one of the main focuses of today’s talk was the Hoboken sound. There was this distinct style coming from bands like The Bongos, The Feelies, dBs and such. Using the best elements of 60s pop, speeding it up and altering the syncopation points they created an all together unique sound. The Feelies are said to have had the defining record of that time. Many of the bands coming out of the Hoboken scene looked upon them for inspiration. Sadly however they were never able to follow it up but the members are still active, producing and whatnot.
As Hoboken’s 80s heydays rolled along, Maxwell’s owner Steve Fallon started Coyote Records. The logo of a howling coyote in a bathtub was inspired by a story of Fallon once falling asleep in his tub only to awaken screaming from the cold water. Coyote Records put out a chillingly prophetic compilation in 1985 called ‘Luxury Condos Coming to Your Neighborhood Soon’ with the title written in blood. Ironically, the building on the cover nowadays is considered a welcome one in the face of the true overdevelopment of the last five years.
It was clear that much more that two hours were needed to cover the full richness of this period from 1978 to 1986. There were the dBs who Glenn referred to as the best songwriters of the time. The Cucumbers—who were in attendance today—were on Fake Doom records and had a video on MTV for their son My Boyfriend. By 1989 and into the 90s, when a new wave of bands such as my band Ya-Ne-Zniyoo, Melting Hopefuls, Footstone and more started to surface, Hoboken was chock full of places to play like The Beaten Path, Boo Boos Funkadelic Lounge and The Love Sexy.
But buy 1999, 2000 that all began to change. The music scene was pushed out for the least common denominator as more and more bars opted to have DJs or jukeboxes. Many of us blamed the new influx of Yuppies feeling that all they wanted was a place to eat, sleep, drink and shit in between working on Wall Street. And this was not entirely untrue. Even Maxwell’s in the mid 90s fell on to hard times when long-time booker Todd Abramson left and new owners tried to make it into a microbrew pub. What a disaster that was.
Thankfully this failed miserably and Todd returned with along with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Dave Post of Swingadelic. Reopening in 1998, it has returned to being the best—and pretty much only—place to play outside of NYC. Still supporting the locals as well as nationals. And the scene is changing again for the better. A new influx of talent as emerged thanks to a new player in the live music scene. Longtime resident and member of Skanatra, The Gefkins and most recently The Fave Fran Azzarto runs the Goldhawk as a classy lounge with one room for snacks, booze and darts and a back room for quality acoustic music.
Even before buying the place, when it was called the Liquid Lounge, there was always a kind of positive vibe here that lent itself to nurturing new songwriters. But since changing hands a few years ago, the scene has really taken off. They have what is by far the best open mic in the NY/NJ area every Tuesday night, monthly features such as BlowUpRadio.com’s Folk you, the Writers Hang (which started here in 1998 in the Liquid Lounge days) and Hoboken Unsigned.
So maybe Hoboken has gone nearly full circle in the fact that there is really only one more place for truly original acts to play now then there was in 1978. And though the reasons are different considering back then it was because Hoboken was a place no one wanted to live and today it’s just the opposite, there is no doubt that the music here continues to be important and will not die.
This was an educational day even for me … and I thought I knew all there was to know. It’s clear that I don’t and there are more lectures coming including Steve Fallon on November 17, 2007 and Bongos frontman Richard Barone on December 15, 2007. If you want to learn even more about the overall history of music in Hoboken, museum is hosting Hoboken Tunes from now until December 23, 2007 which goes back to 1855 when Stephen Foster wrote ‘I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair’.
Thanks for the memories. I was a regular at the beatn’ path and maxwell poetry scene in the early 1980s, and later covered some bands like The Gefkins and Sonic Youth. One of our editors even played with some of the local bands. Like most music scenes elsewhere, changes in population alter the art scene. It got too expensive to hang out in Hoboken and too inconvenient to get here. But it’s more than just the local scene something fundamental changed that made it impossible for that scene to continue here. I miss it. But I’m too lazy to go looking for where it went.