Cloaca Melodia

Birch Hill, Old Bridge, NJ sorry, Mike has not yet written about this show... add your own comments if you were also there!

Mighty Mighty Bosstones/Social Distortion/Pennywise/Blink 182/Reel Big Fish/Less Than Jake Bradley Park, Asbury Park, NJ sorry, Mike has not yet written about this show -- coming soon!

PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ..... Lilith Fair   sorry, I haven't yet written about this show... add your own comments if you were also there!

State Theater, New Brunswick, NJ Sheik performed with a second guitarist, a bass player, and a percussionist. The sound mix was terrific. Very mellow, yet you could hear every note... As a sidebar, here's a 1996 interview I did with Sheik on his birthday (11/18): Mike: One of the things I love about your album is it's not just great music--songs, I mean--but also it's such a great sonic environment. Was that the kind of thing you heard in your head when you were composing the songs, or was this something that evolved in the studio? Duncan: Well, definitely my aesthetic comes from people like Brian Eno or David Sylvian or the later Talk Talk records. Whether they're electronically produced or they're acoustic-instrument produced, I still like these things that sound really organic and moody and have their own kind of darkness. That's always been a really important part of creating recordings for me. Mike: So when you have something like in "Reasons For Livin...

Coney Island High, New York, NY This show was apparently part of the Intel New York Music Festival.

Tradewinds, Sea Bright, NJ In the afternoon, Better Than Ezra popped by WHTG and did an acoustic version of "Desperately Wanting" on the air. That evening I was the M.C. for the show. Before their performances, I chatted backstage with Ednaswap and was given a CD by Knockout Drops.  Although their performance was good, BTE had a touch of the rock star attitude. When I went backstage and told them I was supposed to introduce them, they merely waved me to their tour manager to set up the details. After the show, I tried to chat with them a little and they just seemed kind of bored. It was a weeknight, which was always tricky since I was on the air at 6am the next morning. I ended up only getting 3 hours of sleep before my hated alarm clock went off the next morning...    

Surf Club, Ortley Beach, NJ.... Surfstock 4. Below is a contemporaneous review of this show I wrote for injersey.com. Surfstock 4, the July 4th concert at the Surf Club in Ortley Beach, was a worthy successor to the fine previous shows on the beach. This year, sponsoring radio station FM 106.3 selected bands to give the show a well-rounded diversity of styles, and the approach seemed to work well for most audience members. The whole of Surfstock was greater than the sum of its parts, and each performer contributed a great deal to the fun and energy of the event. Not only was the music terrific, but the atmosphere was appropriately party-like. The weather was ideal, the crowd was eager and receptive, and the bands and artists themselves were largely accessible to fans--most of the performers strolled around the beach when they weren't on stage, gladly signing autographs or simply chatting with admirers. The headliner, former Dramarama frontman John Easdale was clearly the crowd favo...