“Jersey girls aren’t trash…. Trash gets picked up!” I smile when I see my friend wearing his favorite T-shirt. It doesn’t bother anyone around here; we New Jersey-ans on the Hilltop laugh it off. We’re proud. We spent high school down the shore and late-nighting at diners. We have three different routes to the mall, we know our exits and we frown on D.C.’s poor excuse for a bagel. We’re a small army here at Georgetown, and we wear the badge with our baby blue Uggs and Coach sunglasses.
When my friend and I began the post-Thanksgiving trip back to the District from our beloved Jersey last weekend, it’s no accident that the Springsteen Greatest Hits album played in a loop three times. We cruised down the Turnpike, windows down and singing at full volume, as God — or rather, the Boss — intended.
New Jersey might be the “armpit of America,” but it’s got more heart than any other state in the music world.
Like a pack of wide-eyed teenagers, we idolize our own with an intensity you can’t find anywhere else, from coast to coast. Lyrics are as rustic as we like to think we are. Record deals are earned, not bought. “Only the strong survive,” we joke, and the underdog appeal is everything. Jersey musicians set out to truly be a force in the world.
So who can argue that Frank Sinatra, a Hoboken native, and Whitney Houston of East Orange didn’t do just that? After all, New Jersey also boasts Lauryn Hill, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie.
And who can forget Bon Jovi? Certainly not the thousands of fans who came out a couple of weeks ago to inaugurate Jersey’s hottest new music venue (yes, my Jersey friends and I jumped on ticket offers months in advance). Newark’s Prudential Center, better known as “The Rock,” is more of an arena than a venue. It’s also the new home of the New Jersey Devils and the Seton Hall Pirates men’s basketball team. When the owners looked for an act to fill the 17,500 seats, they knew to go to the hometown favorites. They even managed to stage Bon Jovi with opening act My Chemical Romance, natives of Belleview and Kearny, N.J.
But Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi and My Chemical Romance have more in common than roots in the “dirty Jerz” — they have ignited airwaves far and wide not with mere songs, but with anthems. The working class wants to sing “Highways jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive” right along with Springsteen as they bust out of the parking lot at 5 p.m. just as badly as Hoyas want to belt out Boni Jovi’s “Wooah, we’re halfway there, Wooah! Livin’ on a prayer! Take my hand, and we’ll make it I swear…” as they clutch onto friends in the Tombs on 80s Night.
My Chemical Romance made its own dent in the scene with their pop-punk rank-and-file rallying call, “Welcome to the Black Parade,” in fall of 2006. The single peaked number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number one on iTunes in the U.S. The single, with its modernized Bohemian Rhapsody-style schizophrenia, has become a lasting sensation worldwide.
Maybe it’s all summed up best in a dialogue clip Scottish indie pop group Belle & Sebastian included on the 2002 album Storytelling from a film of the same name: “Maybe they make fun of New Jersey all the time. But I don’t care. They’re just snobs. ’Cause Jersey’s where America’s at!”