Jul 6, 2018
The Bergenfield girls were show promoters in the northern part of jersey who were made up of Melissa, Erin, and Kathy. They were just 3 awesome chicks who had a passion for punk rock and decided to start putting on shows. Back in the day, my old band Lanemeyer loved getting asked to play on the shows they put on. The majority of them were at the Teaneck American Legion which became a staple for watching great bands even though it was such a tiny space. This interview is pretty awesome because A. Melissa is the shit. And B, if gives you an inside look on what went into actually putting on a show between paying for the hall, getting bands to show up and play on time, dealing with potential brawls in the parking lot, and more.
Funny story is that after hearing episode 2 or 3 of this podcast, Melissa reached out to me and Jeremy from humble and asked what we thought of playing a reunion show. We thought it was a swell idea and that’s why you can see both of our bands play at debonair musical in Teaneck NJ on Saturday July 21 with special guests Jettison. You can purchase tickets at thiswasthescene.com Go there, scroll down and click on the purple button that says CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE TICKETS.
I asked Melissa to be on the podcast, she said hell yes and this is what we talk about:
- My Bronx Tale story
- Bands that we consider ours
- The Aquabats
- Paramus park mall
- Heckle
- How they booked bands by cold calling them
- How they found Teaneck’s American legion hall
- Were shows stressful to put on?
- How they had to keep the peace at some shows
- How local shows were very similar around the country
- Were any bands a pain in the ass
- The Westwood garage
- How did it come to an end
- How the Lanemeyer/Humble reunion show the July came about
- And a ton more
As always, thank you to the people who’ve donated to the podcast. If you’d like to do so just go to thiswasthescene.com and send whatever you’d like. It helps me with the $20/month to keep this thing live. I’m still in the process of designing shirts to sell to help keep this thing alive so keep checking the this was the scene facebook page for updates.
I’ve officially added merchandise to the website. If you’d like to check the shirts out just go to thiswasthescene.com.
I can officially announce that thanks to Rob Hitt from old school punk rockers Midtown, will be re-releasing Lanemeyer’s first album Stories for the big screen on vinyl. This will be on his record label I surrender records. This is a limited re-mastered pressing of 250 copies that’s on green vinyl, has an etching on one side that says GOD I MISS YOU GOD I MISS THIS PLACE, and be the only place to find our cover of with or without you since that won’t be released digitally.
Presale starts July 9 at 11am and the release date for the record is July 20 which is the day before our show at debonair in Teaneck. Yes, we will have copies at the show to sell.
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With that said, let's get started.