Truth be told, I could write a whole book just about my experiences at City Gardens -- an iconic punk rock club located in Trenton, NJ -- between 1988 and 1992.  City Gardens may be one of the greatest music venues of the 80's and 90's on par with both CBGBs in New York and the 930 Club in Washington, DC.  The number of top-tier alternative 80s and 90s bands that played there is astounding  including The Ramones, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Green Day, Bad Brains and Gwar.  From an historical perspective, A Flock of Seagulls, Thompson Twins and Sinéad O'Connor all made th ..read more

  1989 dawned with great promise.  All our initial hard work through playing shows and promoting ourselves during the last three months of 1988 was starting to bear fruit and as our second demo tape made the rounds we started to get local media coverage and we started receiving calls to play more shows. I think it's fair to say that as the first ska band from New Jersey, we were responsible for helping to cultivate a ska scene in the Garden State.  And while it's true that The Toasters and the N.Y. Citizens were playing shows here. we were the first home grown ska band that&nb ..read more

The departure of Ken "Miggy" Gayle from the band in late 1988 coincided with the addition of Sean Moore on trumpet. Sean was a New Brunswick music guy who hung out at the Court Tavern and was friendly with our trumpet player Kevin Shields.  It turned out that Kevin had played our demo tape for Sean and he really liked it.  According to Kevin:  My buddy from town Sean was also a trumpet player and showed up at just about every show we played. After a while, he started to give me things for my horn. He gives me valve oil, he gives me a snake to clean out my trumpet, he gives me ..read more

After the high of the Court Tavern show, just a few days later we were off to play our first official show in New York City -- listed erroneously as The Panic -- with the New York Citizens (NYCs) at the Cat Club in the East Village. At the time, the Cat Club was one of the premiere live music venues in Manhattan that regularly booked up and coming bands including Jane's Addiction, Faith No More, White Zombie and 24-7 Spyz. The fact that we were playing a ska show at the Cat Club in late 1988 spoke volumes about how far ska had come up from the underground in New York City in just five yea ..read more

  The lead up to our first show at the Court Tavern in New Brunswick in late October of 1988 took a rather dramatic turn. We had only been together for about 8 weeks at this point, but our toaster Miggy was starting to show us another side of his personality.  The response to Roger and Miggy from our first show had been significant -- they were both being recognized as minor celebrities around Rutgers and around New Brunswick. What we had learned was that while Miggy had charisma and charm, he also had a temper that could flare out of nowhere.  After making an impression on th ..read more

Word had gotten out quickly around New Brunswick after our show at Scott Hall at Rutgers University and within a few days we were offered a gig at the Court Tavern, then the premiere rock and roll club in the area.  The Court Tavern remains important in the story of Bigger Thomas and in the history of music in New Jersey. In its heyday, the Court Tavern was the Stone Pony of New Brunswick.  It was originally owned and managed by Bob Albert Sr. with help from his son Bobby Albert. During the day, the bar catered to lawyers and  courthouse staff who spent their days working a ..read more

  In the span of just two weeks I had gone from meeting musicians in the living room of my small apartment to being in a six piece band.  We had outgrown my small living room so we booked a rehearsal at studio in downtown New Brunswick and that was the first time we could hear ourselves on proper amps and drums.  It was also where we introduced Steve Meicke to Kevin for the first time.  To say they were a "Mutt and Jeff" horn section would have be an understatement!  Kevin was an 30 year old punk rocker.  Steve Meicke was a 19 year old jazz loving New Brunswick ..read more

  Though the band that would ultimately become Bigger Thomas had started to quickly come together at the end of July 1988 in my apartment on Louis Street in New Brunswick, NJ, it was a night out with our new singer Roger Apollon Jr to see a Ranking Roger at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ on Friday August 17, 1988 that the band finally crystalized.  That night was also the start of my life-long friendship with Roger. Housed in a decrepit former supermarket deep in the badlands of Trenton, City Gardens hosted a wildly eclectic mix of hardcore, post-punk, indie, ska, hip-hop and metal ..read more

After our first meet and greet rehearsal with trumpeter Kevin Shields, I received another call about the ad I had plastered all over New Brunswick from a singer named Roger Apollon Jr. At the time he called me, Roger was attending Livingston College at Rutgers and working part-time as an orderly at St. Peter's Hospital in New Brunswick. Roger was the oldest son of Haitian immigrants and lived in West Orange, NJ.  He was musically trained and had studied piano and knew how to sing and dance.  Better yet, as we we would soon learn, he was the consummate front man! Roger distin ..read more

  I love band origin stories. In fact I love them so much that my book Ska Boom: An American Ska & Reggae Oral History is all about the origin stories of 18 bands that helped to create a uniquely American version of ska and reggae. As a former reporter -- if only for a few months -- I learned early on that you have to include multiple points of view for any story to be honest and factual and attempt to reflect the reality of a situation.  That is why an oral history appealed to me so much. An oral history is predicated on the notion that everyone who was part of an event or col ..read more