They started out as a Hoboken high school band in 2022. Today, 3 Dollars—vocalist-guitarist Arthur Pawley, drummer Ben Kamel, guitarist Tyler Wachtel and bassist Costas Krassos—are perfecting their sound in a style that has been described as post-emo punk. Along the way, they’ve been collecting kudos from Hoboken Girl, Hudson Reporter and NJ.com.

Frank Sinatra’s image, music, cultural significance and coolness quotient is too great for him to ever really die. Why should we be deprived of the man who put Hoboken on the national map? Death, oftentimes, is a boon for an artist’s career. Just look at Elvis. And The Fab Faux reminds us that Beatle music will always outlive the four guys who originally made it. It’s just too good to stop when they do. Enter Hollywood’s Gary Anthony.

Step By Step is an octet of four musicians and four vocalists from six different areas of New Jersey:  Lakewood, Jackson, North Brunswick, Branchburg, Bayville and Keansburg. Their mission statement is to “keep the essence of Johnny Maestro’s music alive.” To that end, they’ve performed all over the state and beyond at theaters, township events, oldies shows and festivals.

There once was a band from Morris County called TV Toy who took punk into prog. The original trio of Rob Barth, Steve Peer and Dreux Bassoul had a song they called “Weekend” that drove fans nuts when they opened for Talking Heads, Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes, Bill Bruford and Jan Hammer. Recorded in Passaic County, it will be part of Rob Tannenbaum’s exhaustive CBGB:  A New York City Soundtrack 1975-1986, a four-CD boxed set due January 30 on Cherry Red Records.

The amalgam of grit, hard-rock, old-school metal, indie-rock, shock value and punk have manifested itself into the cohesive whole of Rahway, named after their hometown in Union County. The new single is “Drowning.” The new tour starts January 21 in SC, before traveling on to NC, TN, KY. PA, MA and CT, opening for Scotty Austin, the former lead singer of Saving Abel.

NoLifeTil Metal Records will release Completely Covered in Black, by Patriarchs In Black, on February 13.  Paramus guitarist Dan Lorenzo (Hades, Non-Fiction) and Brooklyn drummer Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative, Danzig) will host different singers and bassists on each track. Expect blistering covers of Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Twisted Sister, Queen and Peter Gabriel. 

While at Princeton earning her Evolutionary Biology degree, Brittany Haas joined the jam-grass band Crooked Still on fiddle with whom she recorded four albums of esoteric bluegrass, folk-grass, jazz-grass and chamber-grass. No telling if she smoked a lot of grass. Probably not. For if Hass is anything, it’s focused. Driven.

Jersey City indie-folk singer-songwriter Jacob Tremont hit his stride in 2025 with the laid-back groove of his wistful “Slow Motion Night.” It’s the title tune of his impressive new album that landed in May on Mint 400 Records out of Passaic County. Tremont’s music fits right alongside Wilco on a mix-tape. He writes of heartbreak and healing in a soothing everyman voice one could easily love.

Hoboken’s Doctor Mister Genius have self-released “Man of Simple Taste,” the latest in a series of singles, this time accentuating their particular brand of Americana Soul (through a Jersey blender). As written by guitarist David Ribyat, it is yet another stab at their freewheeling genre-bend that has up to now included punk, metal and surf.

The Jersey Sound would like to wish everybody a healthy and happy New Year.

Morris County First Night, Ocean City First Night, and Seaside Heights First Night: Train rides, hot air balloons, face painting, fireworks, magic, Rizzo’s Wildlife Show, The OMG Bubbles Dazzling Bubble Show, meet’n’greets with Mickey and Minnie Mouse plus Polynesian Princess Labubu and a singalong with The Hunter Girls.

The 2025 stateside leg of the My Chemical Romance tour is over. Reviews were fantastic. The 2026 Southeast Asia leg of the tour has been pushed back from April to November. Valentino Petrarca, writing in The Aquarian, called it “their most exciting year yet…it’s not just another tour, it’s a whole new world.”

Singer-Songwriter Cyndi Dawson is a gem and records for Jem. She’s a Little Girl Lost, as the title of East Brunswick band The Cynz famously proclaimed on their last album where they covered 1978’s “Tell That Girl To Shut Up” by Holly & The Italians and 1989’s “Room Without A View” by The Smithereens. On January 23, all bets are off, as their new album, Confess, brings the band to a whole ‘nother level.

On January 9, Strikezone Reecords will release Blue Fire by West Orange guitarist-composer-producer-educator Dave Stryker. Recorded at the legendary Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, it was mixed and mastered at Trading 8s in Paramus. Among its nine tracks is Paul McCartney’s 1967 “The Fool On The Hill,” Charlie Parker’s 1947 “Dexterity” and Jerome Kern’s 1937 “The Folks Who Live On The Hill.”

Lead guitarist Robbie Robertson [1943-2023] wrote “Christmas Must Be Tonight” for bassist Rick Danko [1943-1999] to sing on The Band’s seventh studio album, Islands (1977). Reportedly, he wrote it upon witnessing the birth of his son. Elton John famously loved it.  Train and Ronnie Hawkins covered it. Mark Mulch, originally from Toms River in Ocean County, now living in Nashville, in our humble opinion, has the best cover of all.

Good Damage, the Middlesex County band we wrote about last March when they claimed to be “Better Off Alone,” has gone one step further by wanting to be “Just Alive.”

"I finished writing “Christmas In Songtown” after I returned from a trip to Ireland this fall. I saw buskers on the streets. I saw musicians in the pubs sharing their joy of music from Kelly's in Belfast and Temple Bar in Dublin. They were universally playing practically the same covers you'd hear at the Jersey shore bars, so I figured I'd give us all a challenge in song to write a better one than this.”

I guess it had to happen. The evil forces of the oxymoronic soft-rock agenda have kidnapped the great Bumblefoot, paired him with Graham Bonnet of Rainbow, and forced him—kicking and screaming—to record “Just The Two Of Us,” the Grammy-winning 1980 soul song by Bill Withers and Grover Washington, Jr. It’s on the new Yacht Metal from Cleopatra Records.

Before Twisted Sister became internationally-known rock stars, they were Silver Star out of Bergen County, cross-dressing and considering themselves to be New Jersey’s answer to the New York Dolls. From ’72 to ’80, they toiled in clubs constantly refining and redefining their act. It wasn’t until ’82 that the band as we know it blossomed. Cleopatra Records has now released the 12-track Hammerheads 1980, named after a West Islip, New York, venue.

When we last visited The Modbeats in August, they had put out “Frankie,” a song actually better than anything its subject (Frankie Avalon) ever did. Now the band from Cherry Hill in Camden County that blends a 1960s British Invasion feel with surf-rock and power-pop has come up with another winner:  “Midnight Train” (listen below). It’s been a fan favorite at gigs.