Lewis Black: Angry in Red Bank

What makes you mad? I'm not talking about petty annoyances like getting stuck at a red light or forgetting your EZPass for a trip down the shore. No. I'm talking vein-popping, blood-boiling, spit-spraying pissed. Chances are if it's politics, our country's current state of affairs (think election mudslinging and our drowning economy) or your pathetic golf swing, Lewis Black is just as angry. And on Wednesday, March 26, Black let everyone in the Count Basie Theatre know just how pissed he is.

Tags: Black, Lewis

Tools: Share

Into the Light of the Dark Black Night

To call the Fab Faux the world's greatest Beatles cover band, while true, doesn't do justice to how insanely good they are. These five musicians---the best-known is probably the human beanstalk Will Lee, the innately comic and hugely talented bassist of Paul Shaffer's David Letterman band---are dedicated to duplicating live the entire Beatles catalog exactly as it sounded on record.

Even the Beatles could not do that after their first few albums. And that's why there are five musicians in the Fab Faux--they aren't about looking like the Beatles, they are about bringing the music of the greatest rock band of all time (sorry, Mick and Keith) to life on the hugest canvas--live performance--at the highest level of musicianship.

But this post is about more than the splendid performance of the Fab Faux, whose concert I attended Saturday night at the Shea Center at William Paterson University in Wayne. It's also about a song written for a seriously afflicted child (and recorded in part at the concert). It's about a volunteer group called Songs of Love that has now created exactly 15,000 such songs, each one different. And it's about the recipient of that 15,000th song and his family, who were at the concert.

Tags: fab faux

Tools: Share

NJM Expands Offices!

Widespread joy broke out among the New Jersey Monthly staff this morning as two new offices--reflecting the latest in modular design--were unveiled at our headquarters on the Morristown Green.

Tools: Share

Countdown to St. Patrick's Day

The green-and-white banners are flying.

I happened to be walking though Five Corners, West Orange, on my way to Gaffer's Pub for one of their excellent cheeseburgers with frizzled onions. Saw these banners:

Tools: Share