March 2026

Written By Mike Greenblatt

Oftentimes pioneers do not get the credit they deserve. For the much-maligned genre of jazz-rock fusion (“it doesn’t swing” seems to be the main argument against it in jazz circles), Return To Forever, Passport, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Larry Coryell, Weather Report and, of course, Miles Davis, are prominently spoken of as its progenitors. Nobody ever mentions Larry Young from Newark. Check our “Jersey History” section this month for more on a cat who packed a lot of music into his mere 37 years.

In this issue, you’ll meet Asbury Park’s alt-rock Red Head Redemption. We love their baseball-themed video and their Fatal Femme EP.

In “Visual Sound,” we’ve couldn’t decide which video to post from Middlesex County’s Grip Weeds so we ran both. We also discovered a hardcore band out of Bergen County called IDK who covers Black Sabbath on its Narc 5 EP. But it’s their video for the title track that just begs to be blasted loud enough for your neighbors to love it too. Then there’s Wormy from Monmouth County who must’ve loved the Cocaine Bear movie so much, he wrote a song with that title. Rounding out this video five-lot is P-Funk North from Union County who readily admits “All My Heros Are Potheads.”

We’re Listening To Prestige in this month’s “Jersey Bookshelf.” Tad Richards’s informative, entertaining, sometimes revelatory and totally indispensable tome, sub-titled “Chronicling Its Classic Jazz Recordings 1949-1972,” and it made us realize even more the genius of Rudy Van Gelder, who started his recording studio out of the Hackensack living room of his parents’ house. Van Gelder, even as a kid, was such a sound scientist in how he coaxed the music to reach the ear by setting up mics in key positions around the room, that he single-handedly revolutionized how jazz was recorded.

Mike Greenblatt

MIKE GREENBLATT has been writing for Goldmine magazine and New Jersey's Aquarian Weekly for more than 35 years. His writing subjects fill the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

He's interviewed Joe Cocker, Graham Nash, David Crosby, Carlos Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Johnny Cash, and members of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. He was 18 when he attended Woodstock in 1969.

In addition to writing about music, Greenblatt has worked on publicity campaigns for The Animals, Pat Benatar, Johnny Winter, Tommy James and Richard Branson, among others. He is currently the editor of The Jersey Sound.