The Smithereens Take Us Back to 2011

Written By Mike Greenblatt
The Smithereens 2011

The last album by the original Smithereens lineup, 2011, will be released for the first time ever on vinyl in 16 Days (Sunset Blvd Records). March 14 is also the date it will be re-released on CD for the first time since 2015. The clear vinyl will be a limited-edition—only 1,000 copies will be pressed—for the beloved power-pop band. They came out of Middlesex County and wound up spearheading the nationally-recognized Hoboken scene. 2011, named after the year it was originally released, was seen, at the time, as a return to their 1980s glory, combining gritty East Coast indie-rock with 1960s British Invasion overtones.

Jim Babjak, Dennis Diken and Mike Mesaros graduated Carteret High School and found their missing link in Pat DiNizio of nearby Scotch Plains who put an ad in the free back-page classifieds of the Aquarian Weekly for a drummer to help on a demo tape. The two got on so famously that drummer Diken—who answered the ad—introduced him to Babjek and Mesaros. They took their name from cartoon character Yosemite Sam who used to say, “I’m gonna blow you to smithereens!”

Seventeen albums and over 2,500 live shows later—and after influencing Kurt Cobain enough to form Nirvana in ’87—they suffered the loss of their singer-songwriter frontman in 2017 at the age of 62. Knowing that’s what Pat would’ve wanted, they forged on with a series of singers like Robin Wilson of the Gin Blossoms, Marshall Crenshaw and John Cowsill.

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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.

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