Congrats to Glass Cow, winners of First Night’s Battle of the Bands!

The first First Night Battle of the Bands has a winner, by popular vote: Glass Cow!

Thanks to everyone who voted in the contest, and congratulations to the Cows.

Here’s the band’s bio:

Glass Cow is a rock band from Warren Township, NJ.  The band has been
performing together since 2008, and consists of four members:  Ben
Overzat, lead guitar and vocals; Max Picut, rhythm guitar; Ed
Weisgerber, bass; and Henry Wolfson, drums.  All members are 15 years
old.  Band members are students at Watchung Hills Regional High School
in Warren Township, and Oratory Prep in Summit.

The band was formed when Ben met Henry during a Warren Middle School
jazz band rehearsal.  Henry asked Ben to enter a school talent show,
and through word of mouth they soon recruited Max and Ed.  The band
started by playing classic rock covers from The Beatles, the Who, Led
Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones, and then began writing their own
lyrics and music.  Glass Cow performances have evolved to include a
mix of originals and covers.

Glass Cow has performed in such venues as Ha! Comedy Club on West 46th
Street in Times Square, Crossroads in Garwood, the Somerset County 4H
Fair, and at private clubs and parties.  They were the summer 2011
winners of the Warren Township Battle of the Bands.  Glass Cow’s
recent performance at Greenberrys of Morristown earned them their
place in the First Night Morris 2012 band competition.

STAY TUNED FOR MORE PHOTOS AND VIDEOS FROM FIRST NIGHT!

 

Video preview of tonight’s First Night 2012 in Morristown from News 12

Our friends at News 12 came to Morristown for a preview of tonight’s First Night Morris County.

The fun runs from 7 pm to midnight and features 80 performances at churches, government offices and Morristown High School; a $25 badge gets you into as many shows as you like. Children under 4 are free, and there is a discount if you buy four badges.

Virtually every style of music imaginable will be offered, along with comedy, drama, dance, kids entertainment, and more.

Programs, performer bios and ticket info are here.  The forecast is for a clear evening in the 40s. So grab someone warm and ring in the New Year with style, at Morris County’s 20th annual First Night.  See you there!

Highlights from last year’s First Night:

Federal drug regulators approve Pfizer’s Prevnar for adults

"The FDA approval of Prevnar 13 for these adults offers the potential to contribute to the health of millions of aging Americans," Ian Read, Pfizer's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

New canine sport heads to N.J., as ‘nose work’ dogs find scents humans could never find

Dogs prepare for two-day Canine Scent Work Trial this weekend at Centenary College, the first such event in New Jersey for a dog sport that has quickly spread across the nation

New canine sport heads to N.J., as ‘nose work’ dogs find scents humans could never find

Dogs prepare for two-day Canine Scent Work Trial this weekend at Centenary College, the first such event in New Jersey for a dog sport that has quickly spread across the nation

Dugan’s Hooligans farewell, Dec. 30, 8 pm at the Minstrel: This time they really mean it

Tropical Storm Irene had a silver lining for Nancy Dugan: It delayed the inevitable until tonight, Dec. 30, at The Minstrel in Morris Township.

She has had all these extra weeks to anticipate the rescheduled farewell concert of Dugan’s Hooligans, the band she formed with her husband, George Leszczuk, and their children, Connor and Sharlys, about a decade ago.

“This is the ‘This Time We Really Mean It Farewell Show,‘” joked Nancy, a classically trained pianist and harpist who wonders if Connor, a gifted fiddler studying at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, ever will perform en famille after tonight.

“It’s fun to play with them,” the mom acknowledged. “I don’t think they think it’s fun to play with their parents… It probably will be years before Connor will play with me again.”

Their swan song had been scheduled for Sept. 2, but the Minstrel lost power in the storm’s aftermath. About 40 people who came to the venue were re-directed to the Dugan-Leszczuk living room in Madison for an impromptu house concert.

Sharlys, a high school senior, will do some solo gigs in coming months, including an opening spot for the Nuala Kennedy Band at the Minstrel in March.

In addition to singing and playing harp and tin whistle, Sharlys is a Celtic dancer. She pulled double duty on New Year’s Eve last year, singing two sets with the Harmonium Choral Society and two more with the Hooligans at First Night Morris County.

Video of Sharlys at First Night:

This will be the family’s first quiet New Year’s Eve in years. George, a Postal Service mechanic who got recruited on drums because “it was annoying watching him sitting having a beer” while they performed, is happiest about the band’s breakup, according to his wife.

“He gets the worst brunt of the whole thing,” said Nancy, who works as an esthetician in a plastic surgery practice. “He gets the equipment, and fixes it when it breaks down. He’s got the grunt work.”

The parents have no plans to tour as a duo. Nancy wants to learn Dixieland jazz on the piano, “so when I’m in the nursing home, I can entertain everyone!”

Meet the Hooligans: Please click icon below for captions

She is very proud of the Hooligans, of course. This modern spin on the Cowsills/Partridge Family paradigm served its purpose.  The parent-teen clashes that roil so many households largely were absent from theirs.

“I observed how people were with their teenagers. I didn’t want to have that,” Nancy said. “This way, we would always have something to communicate together. They weren’t wandering the streets. They were making some money (for music and dance lessons, harps, fiddles, etc.), and meeting adults.

“They grew up through that time without any problems, not even once. They never had any reason to prove anything. They were proving it every day,” on stage.

And if her talented kids surprise everyone and skip music careers, that’s okay, too.

“I just wanted them to have something they can do for the rest of their life that nobody can take away from them,” Nancy said. “That’s pretty cool.”

MORE ABOUT DUGAN’S HOOLIGANS

The Minstrel show starts at 8 pm at the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship, on 21 Normandy Heights Road in Morris Township. Tickets are $7; children under 12 are free. Call (973) 335-9489 for details.

Connor and Sharlys perform in this video:

Looking back on 2011 in Greater Morristown: Wicked weather, manhole madness, sensational shot and festival fun

The year 2011 has been a busy one, news-wise, in Greater Morristown.  Here is a look back at some of the big stories and newsmakers.  What are your picks for the year’s top local stories?

MOTHER NATURE:  She was restless, all right. First came the earthquake. Centered in Virginia, it rattled Morristown on Aug. 23.  Everyone barely had calmed down when Tropical Storm Irene blew through, four days later. The Whippany River submerged much of the Second Ward and fried an electrical substation, plunging thousands in Morristown and Morris Township into darkness for days. Those unpleasant memories had hardly faded when a freak snowstorm struck two days before Halloween. Autumn leaves had not even fallen yet. Heavy with gloppy snow, limbs crashed everywhere, bringing massive power outages once more and curbing Trick or Treating.

MANHOLE ROULETTE: Morristown’s underground electrical problems–suspected of blowing up the Morristown & Township Library in 2010–came to an ugly head in the summer of 2011. On Aug. 31, with Greater Morristown still reeling from Tropical Storm Irene, a manhole exploded at the intersection of James and South streets just as two cars were driving by. A Morris Township mom who was taking her kids for ice cream sustained burns on her arm, while another motorist was mildly singed. An investigation is ongoing. The library blast, meanwhile, remains unsolved.

JCP&L: It would be hard to find a more unpopular acronym in Greater Morristown. Jersey Central Power & Light cannot be blamed for a ferocious tropical storm or a bizarre autumn snowstorm. But officials and residents across northern New Jersey complained bitterly about communications breakdowns that left them in the dark regarding when electricity would be restored. The state Board of Public Utilities held hearings and the power company got an earful. In 2012 everyone will be watching to see if the message sunk in.

The Year in Pictures: 2011. Please click icon below for captions. Photos by Sharon Sheridan, Bill Lescohier, Hal Crosthwaite, Berit Ollestad, Shea Jonah, Scott Schlosser and Kevin Coughlin.

ALL HAIL THE VOLUNTEERS:  The flip side of all the calamities was the magnificent performance of volunteers and emergency personnel in Greater Morristown. Firefighters, police, ambulance squad volunteers and public works employees worked long hours throughout the storms and their aftermath. Red Cross volunteers staffed shelters at Morristown town hall and Mennen Arena. Berit Ollestad, an MG contributor, organized a town-wide relief effort for victims of tornadoes in Alabama. Churches from across Greater Morristown sent volunteers to help the Bethel AME Church recover from Irene flooding. Morristown Mayor Tim Dougherty used his charity fund to host meals at town senior centers affected by power outages.  Electricity may have been scarce in 2011, but Greater Morristown had no shortage of  people willing to help each other.

TRAGEDY ABOVE, MIRACLE BELOW: Five days before Christmas, a private plane crashed on Route 287 in Morris Plains, killing a family of four and a business associate aboard the aircraft. Astonishingly, the worst injury on the ground was a flat tire on a passing pickup truck.

CRIME DOES NOT PAY: A young Morristown man copped a plea in the shocking 2007 execution-style shootings of four college-aged friends in Newark.  And jurors in a Morristown courtroom convicted a former church janitor of fatally stabbing a Chatham priest in a case that rocked Morris County.

THE ECOCENTER: Even if the Morristown EcoCenter never flies, the proposal stirred the imagination and galvanized citizens and entrepreneurs to consider the future. Converting a former car dealership into a tech incubator/food hub/civic center with a rooftop greenhouse was a tall order. But nobody ever should be faulted for aiming high in Morristown.

MORE PROPOSALS: Massive plans to redevelop portions of Speedwell Avenue in Morristown and the Honeywell campus in Morris Township lurched forward in 2011.  Approvals for a major condo complex on Morristown’s Maple Avenue took almost everyone–including us–by surprise.

HELLO, GOODBYE: Morristown’s downtown added two upscale steak joints, a fancy hamburger restaurant, a cupcake palace, a kebab restaurant and a froyo (frozen yogurt) shop, among other eateries. It gained a music school, too.  The downtown lost a bridal shop–to the dismay of many brides who ordered gowns there–and said so long to a musical landmark, Scotti’s Record Shop.

GROWING PAINS: Downtown Morristown is where everyone wants to be…and sometimes, that’s too close for comfort.  Established daytime businesses and thriving nighttime bars often have different viewpoints of the Morning After. Likewise, buyers of multimillion dollar condos are not always keen on loud early morning trash pickups or loud late-night pub crawlers. And while most people welcome the big name stars that play the beautiful Mayo Performing Arts Center, Pine Street businesses and residents would prefer that the stars’ giant trailers park somewhere else.

KING OF THE HILL: Year-end sports reviews usually shower accolades on quarterbacks and point guards. But Nick Vena, Class of 2011, made shot put the must-see sport at Morristown High School. He broke every record in the book, and he did so with grace, humility and excellent grades.

BEST PROMOTIONS:  Morristown’s Ticket-Taker Guy–a..k.a. Fluffy the Bouncer--received a Caddy from the Dark Horse Lounge in a feel-good night worthy of Hollywood. The Morristown bridal shop i do…i do gave away dozens of wedding gowns to military veterans. Hooah!

FESTIVAL FUN:  Greater Morristown was Entertainment Central in 2011. Things started with a bang at First Night Morris County. Morristown’s Got Talent and the Morris County St. Patrick’s Day Parade had banner years.  The Morristown Partnership’s ever-popular fall and Christmas festivals on the Morristown Green were joined by two more crowd-pleasers, the first Mayor’s Jazz Festival and the Gran Fondo cycling extravanganza. MorristownGreen.com teamed with Sustainable Morristown to present six community events at the proposed EcoCenter, and Tropical Storm Irene could not dampen our fifth annual MG Film & Music Fest.  Music Without Borders, a joint effort of the Arts Council of the Morris Area and the Mayo Performing Arts Center, brought free summer concerts to the Green for the second straight summer.  There were excellent free concerts once again at Ginty Field in Morris Township (movies, too) and Roberts Garden in Morris Plains. And organists from distant churches converged on Morristown  for a thunderous convention.

The Year in Videos: Click for Playlist

ART AROUND THE TOWN:  Morristown lost Gallery Egan, but Art Around the Park tours celebrated year one, the Halloween pumpkin illumination entered year two, MG Kids showcased youth art, and drawing sessions at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and Zebu Forno won fans.

WACKY NEWS:  A minister mimicked a polar bear for charity. Morristown police chased a black bear down South Street for safety.  And firefighters scrambled to find a ladder long enough to rescue two construction workers trapped against the steeple of the Morristown United Methodist Church. They needed a crane.

MILESTONES: On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, Morris Plains dedicated a memorial featuring steel from the World Trade Center. Morristown’s Burnham Park marked its 100th anniversary, Morristown High’s WJSV turned 40, and Aztec Two-Step celebrated 40 years as a folk duo in concert at the Minstrel in Morris Township, where swing group Za Zu Zaz performed in a rare reunion.

IN MEMORIAM: Bobby McCann fulfilled the dream of generations of Morristown kids, making the NBA. The former Morristown High School star, who played for six pro teams, died in July of cancer at age 47.

Milt Goldband coached Bobby at the Morristown Neighborhood House and remembered a youngster who played hard and never forgot where he came from.

“He was always the most gracious, nicest kid you would ever want to meet,” Milt said.

Donnie Forster coaches the New Jersey Panthers A.A.U. basketball program, and knew Bobby from the third or fourth grade, when he was a “big, clumsy kid” who wanted to be a guard.

“If there was one kid we didn’t think would make the NBA when we were kids, it was him. But he worked the hardest when he got older,” said Donnie, who believes Bobby belongs in the MHS Hall of Fame.

When Bobby was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in 1987, there was a party in Lewis Morris Park. “Six hundred people came,” said Helen Arnold.

Derick “Franco” Harris played with Bobby in the Junior Colonials. “He wasn’t a flaky-type guy. No jewelry. He was just Big Bob,” Derick said. “A lot of guys go to the NBA and forget where they came from. Not him.”

Bobby’s brain cancer came on very quickly, right after Christmas in 2010. He was “incredibly brave” in trying to hide the extent of his illness from family members, said his kid sister, Ashley McCann.

“It was almost as though he was protecting us rather than us protecting him,” said Ashley, who worshiped Bobby.

“I passed around his basketball cards all through grade school. What’s cooler than having your big brother play for an NBA team? As an adult my most memorable time spent with him was always in the kitchen. Arguing about who knew how to make what, who did it better, and who taught who how to cook and then spending time eating and reminiscing. The last conversation I had with him was about what I was getting from the grocery store for our 4th of July barbeque. He waspassionate in everything that he did. Truly a great brother.”

Twins Bill Braunschweiger Sr. and Herb Braunschweiger died about a month apart this summer, at age 82. As members of the Braunschweiger Jewelers family, they were anchors of Morristown’s business scene for decades, starting in the 1950s.

Family members described Bill as the quiet, details-oriented brother who shunned the limelight. Herb was the public face of the store, a president of the Morristown Rotary, trustee of the Morristown Green and founding member of the Morristown Partnership.

Herb’s daughter Gretchen, who carries on the family business, remembered her father as a forward-thinking businessman whose “best lesson was to listen to the ideas of others and move forward, not stay stuck in the past. We were computerized by the early 1980s, for example, when many small business owners still are not today.”

Herb realized that even the historic Morristown Green needs sprucing up from time to time, his daughter said. He loved planting flowers all over town with fellow Rotarians, and saw the Morristown Partnership as a way to bring cohesiveness to the business community and create a “better Morristown for all to enjoy,” Gretchen said.

Another power outage in Morristown: This time, birds are to blame

It’s been a chilly few hours for 23 households on Hamilton Road, Franklin Road and Franklin Place in Morristown. They lost power Thursday morning, and remained out as of 1:30 p.m.

The culprit: Birds.

They knocked out power equipment at Glenwood Road and James Street, said Roberta Sheridan of Jersey Central Power & Light.

“It was bird contact,” she said. “They did significant damage out there.”

JCP&L aimed to restore service by early afternoon, the spokeswoman said. It was not immediately clear whether this incident was connected with one that knocked the Morristown & Township Library and nearly 900 nearby customers offline on Thursday morning. Service to those customers was restored within about an hour.

Blown fuse causes brief power outage in Morristown

A blown fuse knocked out power to nearly 900 Morristown customers, including the Morristown & Township Library, on Thursday morning.

Everyone was back online by 10:04 a.m., about an hour after the outage was reported, according to Jersey Central Power & Light.

Morristown has been plagued by underground electrical problems, but JCP&L spokeswoman Roberta Sheridan said this incident involved an above-ground fuse on James Street.  Customers along James, Dogwood, Miller, Carla, Ogden, Knollwood and South Street were among those impacted.

More than 3,000 customers in the vicinity of Cutler Street and Sussex and Speedwell avenues  lost power during Tuesday evening’s heavy rains and wind. That outage was the result of a tree that knocked down power lines, Roberta said.

READ MORE ABOUT JCP&L

Morristown says so long to Scotti’s Record Shop

Like quite a few college students, Liz DeSimone  has re-discovered the retro joys of music on vinyl. On Wednesday she had two words for the closing of Scotti’s Record Shop in Morristown:

“It stinks,” said the Mendham resident, clutching LPs by Bob Marley, Dizzy Gillespie and Stevie Wonder in the closing hour of the landmark store at South and DeHart streets.

Die-hard music fans picked over the racks for T-shirts, used records and CDs. Everything was at least 30 percent off; many of the CDs went for 99 cents. Today, Thursday, owner Gary Scotti moves everything to his Summit store, the last vestige of a chain that once also boasted shops in Madison, Gillette and Chester.

Please click icon below for captions.

“The last few days have been phenomenal,” Gary said of his post-Christmas clearance sale in Morristown, where he has had a presence since 1983. “If it was like this all the time, maybe we would have stayed.”

But Gary’s 25-year lease was set to expire in mid-2012, and he said it had become a struggle to break even in the age of cheap digital music. Used vinyl has enjoyed a resurgence–yet that’s not enough, he said.

Alan DiDino has worked at Scotti’s in Morristown for eight years, and was on hand for closings at the other locations.

“It’s bittersweet,” he said. But he added that it felt good to move on; he grew weary of fielding customers’ questions about when the Morristown shop would close. While everyone now remembers coming into Scotti’s, he said, few actually made purchases there in the iTunes era.

“I’m happy (the day) is finally here. You can only struggle for so long before it gets to you. Really, I think we’ll be able to do better” focusing on one store in Summit.

The last-day shoppers in Morristown included Sandy Snider, her husband Rick and their son, Sean, 12. They were visiting from West Virginia and stopped into Scotti’s to buy “Life Is Good” t-shirts. “They’re hard to find,” said Sandy, a Sussex County native.

Brandyn “Adeo” Heppard, lead singer of Universal Rebel and RAI Nation, found vinyl copies of albums by UB40 and Peter, Paul and Mary, along with The Woman in Red soundtrack, produced by Stevie Wonder.

“It’s the way of the world,” he said of Scotti’s closing. He remembered growing up in Morristown with three record shops in the area: Scotti’s, Sam Goody’s at Headquarters Plaza and Alwik Records in the Morris County Mall.  “It was great to have music in town.”

“It’s a sad thing to see, but expected. We were lucky they were here this long,” said Craig Clausen, a Mendham schoolteacher who lives in Morristown. He was buying some AC/DC records;  a couple of Christmases ago he got a turntable and now he prefers vinyl to digital. “It’s a truer sound. It’s the real sound.”

Morristown High School junior Zaji Zabalerio said the sales clerks at Scotti’s introduced him to the music of Led Zeppelin.

“In my time here there was always a connection between this place and the music scene,” Zaji said. “It’s kind of sad…now it’s all iTunes and Amazon. It’s very impersonal.”

Ironically, online sales may be Scotti’s salvation.

“We have an eBay store and an Amazon store, and we sell a lot of our product on the internet, and that’s been growing, and that’s part of the reason we don’t need another location,” said Gary Scotti. “We’re shipping out 40 or 50 boxes (of merchandise) a day.”

READ MORE ABOUT SCOTTI’S

 

 

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