{"id":21465,"date":"2025-09-09T10:46:49","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T14:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/?p=21465"},"modified":"2026-03-22T19:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T23:38:09","slug":"new-jersey-punk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/2025\/09\/new-jersey-punk\/","title":{"rendered":"New Jersey Punk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">New Jersey had an incredible punk rock, ska, and hardcore scene in the mid\/late-90s. Breakout bands like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lifetime_(band)\">Lifetime<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thursday_(band)\">Thursday<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Bouncing_Souls\">Bouncing Souls<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bigwig_(band)\">Bigwig<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Midtown_(band)\">Midtown<\/a> got their start playing in the basements of northern New Jersey&#8217;s American Legions, Elks Lodges, VFWs, and fire houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some kind, now-middleaged punk rockers have archived many of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@njpparchives9927\/videos\">those basement shows on YouTube<\/a>. You can probably spot a teenaged and bleached-blond Paul somewhere in the crowds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a clip from Outline&#8230;they were a good but not break out band in our scene at the time, however they were fronted by future-megastar, Taylor Swift-collaborator, and member of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bleachers_(band)\">Bleachers<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fun_(band)\">Fun<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jack_Antonoff\">Jack Antonoff<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6j9EOViFcvA?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Jersey had an incredible punk rock, ska, and hardcore scene in the mid\/late-90s. Breakout bands like Lifetime, Thursday, Bouncing Souls, Bigwig, and Midtown got their start playing in the basements of northern New Jersey&#8217;s American Legions, Elks Lodges, VFWs, and fire houses. Some kind, now-middleaged punk rockers have archived many of those basement shows [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,206,275],"class_list":["post-21465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-music","tag-new-jersey","tag-punk-rock"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1G65p-5Ad","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21465"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22791,"href":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21465\/revisions\/22791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulmaiorana.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}