The Black Hollies
Genre: Rock Hometown: Jersey City NJ
www.theblackhollies.com
Friday, March 14 11:00 p.m.
Friends (208 E 6th St)
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The Black Hollies -

Paisley Pattern Ground
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As a group, Scott Thomas Bolasci, Jon Gonnelli, Justin Angelo Morey, and Herbert Joseph Wiley V are four seasoned instrumentalists with a reverence for rock and rolls past. Combined, the 4 create sounds that are new, exciting, colorful, rudimentary, and complex. Their sound speaks in pictures and it channels pop musics vast vernacular by revamping the idioms of rhythm and blues. In the vein of The Yardbirds, The Pretty Things, The Who, The Pink Floyd, The Cream, the spirit of Stax/Volt +Tamla/Motown and a lifetime of immersion in rock, soul and their accompanying revelations, The Black Hollies set out to create future classics by harnessing relics left by those who came before them.

Not content to compromise their vision, The Black Hollies submerged themselves in their own home crafted studio under the trained ears of long time friend/engineer Mike Olear and then completed the project with the assistance of Alap Momin. The end result is their debut LP Crimson Reflections, a remarkable outpouring of toe-tapping beauty from the center of the universe. Scott Thomas Bolasci is The Big Bang Theory spontaneously nurturing the hip shaking swing into existence with his precise interpretation of time. Jon Gonnellis rhythm guitar efficiency is planet earth to Herbert Joseph Wiley Vs outer-space lead guitar time travel. Electric bassist/lead vocalist Justin Angelo Morey's seemingly simple odes to beautiful women cloud the listeners looking glass, revealing upon closer inspection the imagery of the blues, the weeps and the wails of addiction and desire.

In a brief existence The Black Hollies have already made their impact. They've played with The Greenhornes, Joan Jett, Ted Leo/RX, Detroit Cobras, The Dansettes and Blue Cheer and and they've rattled the walls of every room they load into. Their well-tailored look is aligned with their song structures adherence to form, while the playing, the happening of it all, the revolution, and the sound itself, are all departures from form into the nether regions of FREAK-OUT. Crimson Reflections is a journey through the looking glass mind. It is the culmination and aural paradox of making too much happen in not enough time, an echo of what we miss with each blink, breath, and passing moment. Too much can be said and not enough understood - better heard than written about, as the hearing IS the seeing. Ladies and Gentlemen, we give you The Black Hollies.

Black Hollies Pull Some Nuggets From the Pan

By BRET McCABE
March 11, 2008
New York Sun

The 1960s continue to be pop music's most cannibalized decade. Whether it's white Englishwomen updating American girlgroup pop, Brooklyn indie bands revisiting the Beach Boys or the Rolling Stones, or hip-hop producers crate-digging through the endless hooks and breaks to be lifted from Blue Note and Stax, the 1960s remain a gold mine for musical inspiration and appropriation, for better and worse. With its new album "Casting Shadows," the Jersey City quartet the Black Hollies isn't the first ? or even the 901st ? outfit to mine the era's pioneering output, but it does nail the sound and attitude of one of the earlier entries of '60s memorabilia: the vaunted "Nuggets" compilation ? what some call the blueprint for garage rock.

With its warbling vocal reverb, random fade-ins and fade-outs of songs, whirling sitar lines, ragainfluenced melodies, and buzzing guitar hooks, "Casting Shadows" captures the Nehru-jacket and sweaty-club vibe of the bygone rock era with startling sincerity. Former Rye Coalition guitarists Herb Wiley and Jon Gonnelli fire punchy, trebly riffs through songs such as "Paisley Pattern Ground," "That Little Girl," and "If You Won't Let Go." Drummer Nick Ferrante moves from garage-rock stomp and groove on "Whispers in the Forest" to the popcorn rustle of wood block ripples in "The Autumn Chateau."

Throughout the album, the band's songwriting bassist-vocalist, Justin Angelo Morey, sounds as if he just tuned in and turned on at the Electric Circus and is trying to explain what his third eye saw. "Searching high and low everywhere we go," he sing-speaks in the bubbling echo-chamber rock of "Under a Winter's Spell," before sighing, "Doesn't seem to be going well."

But "Casting Shadows" is not merely the product of a talented retro act, nor the nostalgic appropriation of this year's model. The Black Hollies mostly refrain from knowing allusions or winks at the time period, opting instead for a serious, artful take on the music from this frequently over-romanticized era.

And well the band should. The two-LP "Nuggets" compilation was released by Elektra Records in 1972, and was co-organized by the writer and Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye. It focused on American bands between 1965 and 1968, such as the Standells, the Seeds, Count Five, and other generally forgotten acts. But "Nuggets" wasn't just the model for scruffy do-it-yourself startups and advocates of out-of-print LPs; it was also a finely tuned peek into the music being made almost exclusively by draft-age Americans as the country's involvement in Vietnam progressed from simple escalation to riotous confrontations in our cities'

streets. Yes, big-name acts also captured this time in lyrics and attitude, but so many more regional acts ? most of whom never appeared on Top 40 radio ? smelted a sound that captured the time in much more immediate eruptions.

This was music made by young people who had no idea what the next day would bring. With "Casting Shadows," the Black Hollies offer their own jittery, basementband take on stylish carpe diem rock. And the band takes nothing for granted: Ten songs fly by in a little more than 35 minutes. No filler, no wasted motion, no injokes ? just songs about girls, talking to girls, wanting to see a particular girl again, being fascinated and flummoxed by the world, and trying to figure out just what the hell is going on. Some pressing matters, regardless of the decade, never change.

Collective Black Kids? holy smokes.

Why aren't they playing All Points West?

How is this line up all that different? I just changed one word.

Alberta Cross Amadou & Mariam Andrew Bird Animal Collective Black Kids Cat Power Chromeo CSS De Novo Dahl Duffy Earl Greyhound Forro in the Dark Girl Talk Grace Potter and the Nocturnals Jason Isbell Juana Molina Kings of Leon K'NAAN Little Brother Mates of State Metric Neil Halstead Nicole Atkins Radiohead Rodrigo y Gabriela Rogue Wave Sia Spearhead The Black Hollies The Felice Brothers The Go! Team The New Pornographers The Roots The Secret Machines The Virgins Underworld Your Vegas Youssou N'Dour

The Black Hollies will play at the Hamilton Park Festival on June 14, 2008, along with Bryan Beninghove and 3 other bands.
The complete list will be posted soon.

http://www.myspace.com/theblackhollies

Boston Globe: Jersey City's Black Hollies have found their psychedelic groove



'I think you have to go through different phases to find out who you are and finally realize what makes you happy and why you like it,' says Justin Angelo Morey, leader of the Black Hollies. "I think you have to go through different phases to find out who you are and finally realize what makes you happy and why you like it," says Justin Angelo Morey, leader of the Black Hollies.

By Jonathan Perry
Boston Globe
February 29, 2008

Justin Angelo Morey wasn't even born when the music he loves most was being made. But his bass guitar - a 1967 Epiphone Rivoli - was.

"It took me 10 years to find that one," says the 30-year-old Morey, singer-songwriter for the Black Hollies. "I always wanted an Epiphone because Paul Samwell-Smith from the Yardbirds had one and I always associate that bass with him."

When he finally came across that make and model being auctioned online - and better yet, won it for an undisclosed but, he insists, reasonable sum - he screamed with joy. Mission accomplished. Well, one of them, anyway.

The mission at hand right now for the Black Hollies is undertaking a tour, including a stop at the Abbey Lounge tomorrow night, in support of their decidedly Yardbirds-esque sophomore album, "Casting Shadows." Released in two weeks, the album features lyrics and music drenched in a kaleidoscopic whirl of psychedelic imagery and sound but cut with a dose of lean garage pop. The Jersey City-based band's approach is a far cry from the noisy post-punk squall that Morey and Hollies' guitarists Herb Wiley V and Jon Gonnelli favored with their old outfit, the Rye Coalition.

"When you're growing up, a lot of what you're exposed to in high school has to do with who you roll with, so you don't really find yourself until a couple of years later," Morey says. "I think you have to go through different phases to find out who you are and finally realize what makes you happy and why you like it."

"If you see the guys play, you get it immediately," says Pete D'Angelo, who founded and runs the Brooklyn-based Ernest Jenning Record Co. and signed the Black Hollies after inviting them to play as a last-minute fill-in during a label showcase. "Halfway through their opening set, they said, 'This next song is going to be our single coming out on Ernest Jenning,' which was a surprise to us. But after hearing them, I thought, 'Yeah, we are putting this out.' It was fate, I suppose."

While it's easy to spot the influences on "Casting Shadows" - the opening riff of the Animals' "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" that launches "Hamilton Park Ballerina"; the electric sitar melody purloined from the Yardbirds' "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor" on "Patient Sparrow" - that doesn't mean the album isn't loads of fun. Quite the opposite, in fact. Much like the Electric Prunes, Chocolate Watchband, and other like-minded garage-psych combos of yesteryear, the Black Hollies filter their British Invasion jones through a gritty, Americanized lens.

Speaking of touring, time, and cocoa-confection connections, Morey had to ask for a furlough from his day job as a senior production coordinator for a Jersey City-based chocolate company. With Easter coming, he says, he's been especially busy overseeing production of the company's "semi-hollow items." Like those hollow chocolate Easter bunnies some of us grew up eating? "Exactly," Morey says. "It's our busiest time of the year."

Press Morey on what else specifically drew the Black Hollies to a pop epoch that predates their existence by several decades, and he pauses over the phone. He loves the blaze of color, fashion, sound, and energy that defined that era, he says. But first and foremost, he loves the scenery.

"I think when you view old photographs from that era, the biggest inspiration for us would be the girls in their mini-dresses and their miniskirts," he says with a thoughtful, deliberate tone before breaking into a laugh. "It just makes you wish that America - and the world in general - was still at that place, because there's nothing better than seeing that, you know?"

Morey pauses, as if he's summoning up a picture in his mind. "Fortunately at our shows," he adds, "a lot of girls do dress the part."

the Black Hollies ARE aweome.


more awesome Jersey City music at Maxwells THIS WEDNESDAY - Feb. 13 -

Billy Filo

and

WJ & The Sweet Sacrifice

not mentioned in this article is where the jersey band will be playing in jersey...

Sunday, February 17 at 830pm

The Black Hollies (Jersey City)
The Insomniacs (Englishtown)
The Coffin Daggers (Jersey City)

Maxwell's
1039 Washington St.
Hoboken, NJ 07030

New bands look back to the psychedelic era

By MICHAEL GILTZ
New York Daily News
Saturday, February 9th 2008, 4:00 AM

Grooves are groovy. That's the vibe of the bands that are mining the soul of the psychedelic era for inspiration.

Jersey City denizens the Black Hollies are celebrating their upcoming second CD, "Casting Shadows," with three shows in three days in the New York area, starting with Magnetic Field in Brooklyn on Friday. You'll hear sitars and fuzzy bass on truly psychedelic numbers like "Paisley Pattern Ground." They join groups like Midlake, the Coral, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and countless others who revel in the classic sounds of classic rock.

Vancouver collective Black Mountain - with their acclaimed second album, "In the Future" - stomp through the '70s at the Bowery Ballroom on Feb. 22, complete with a 17-minute epic called "Bright Lights."

And the Welsh band Super Furry Animals, which plays the Bowery Ballroom Feb. 25 in support of the new CD "Hey Venus!," are sure to offer their usual trippy light-and-slide show to complement their tunes.

"A lot of newer bands feel like they have to make a point by sounding different," says Matt Camirind, the bassist in Back Mountain (and, in the current vogue for multitasking, the bassist in Blood Meridian as well).

"I make music that I like listening to and yeah, we like a lot of older music - country, blues and classic rock. Music is like a rock 'n' roll fantasy. You grew up worshiping music and the people who made it. I want to feel the way it feels to make that music. We're not trying to break ground. We're just trying to have fun."

Name-checking bands from 40 years ago makes sense for a group like the Black Hollies, since that's the music they've always listened to and loved.

"I hold my mom responsible," says Black Hollies lead singer Justin Angelo Morey. "She always had great soul records and the Beatles and the Yardbirds."

Morey also soaked up classic tunes via the radio.

"As a child growing up in Jersey City, you had to like rap," says the 31-year-old. "But I'd listen to the Rhythm Revue [radio show] every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Jazz 88. It became routine. I'd be in bed, hanging out, having breakfast, looking through books and having it on in the background. Then later, I'd be in a car and go to thrift stores, like the Salvation Army on Martin Luther King in Jersey City. We'd find really amazing '60s gear because nobody was picking it up and Edwin Starr records for a dollar."

Black Mountain has picked up increasing press attention in the U.K. and "In the Future" will clearly dominate Camirind's life for the next two years. Like so many groups, it's a shifting collective, with everyone seemingly involved in two or three other bands. "It's perfect because I can tour with these guys until we're thoroughly sick of each other and then I can switch to Blood Meridian," jokes Camirind.

Like Camirind (who is a health-care worker when not touring), Morey has a day job, at the Al Richards Homemade Chocolates company. But he doesn't do everything old school. The Black Hollies will have a song featured in the new Dell computer TV ads, following quickly on an online Nike campaign with Lance Armstrong and another song being highlighted on the Denis Leary drama "Rescue Me." True to form, however, Morey doesn't have a DVR and never saw it.

"Unfortunately, I was working the night it came on and missed it," says Morey. "I have a black-and-white TV with the rabbit ears and a dial. I don't even have an iPod."

The Black Hollies play Magnetic Field in Brooklyn on Friday. 97 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn; (718) 834-0069.

Black Mountain is at Bowery Ballroom, Feb. 22. 6 Delancey St., (212) 533-2111.

Super Furry Animals are at Bowery Ballroom, Feb. 25.