I may have a bias because I've been listening to Ted since his pre-Chisel days in the 1980s, but knowing where he came from makes where he's at in 2001 even more enjoyable. Since Ted's first solo record a few years back, he has cleaned up his rough edges but does not lose any of the punk edginess found on this record. His breadth of knowledge of popular music gives him a wealth of influences to draw on as he works to create the coolest pop songs.

I think that in the past, I've compared him to a cross between Paul Weller of the Jam & The Style Council and Mac McCaughan of Superchunk, and that is the most dead-on comparison I can think of. Ted tries to reach the soulful vocal range of Mr. Weller while maintaining the nervous energy of Superchunk, and does it quite well while forging ahead with his own sound.

Unlike Ted's past records that had a small smattering of weak songs thrown in the mix, every song on this disc is a killer. One of my favorite records of 2001, so far.

Russo's early work here takes you deep into the small-town life of Mohawk, NY, an industrial town with characters as lifeless and depressing as the dying industrial economy. There is no satire or tongues-in-cheeks here (see Rob Levandoski's delicious novel, "Serendipity Green" for a biting take) as Russo brings to life characters who go nowhere and do nothing.

Russo painstakingly crafts each character like you knew him or her all of your life, placing you right in there as a resident of this upstate hamlet and joining your neighbors in gossiping behind their backs. However, this book is like a beautifully-painted picture -- rich in detail and depth and provocative at times, but like all paintings, it doesn't move. Throughout the whole book, nothing much really happens. There is a run-in with the police near the end of the book, but the incident is brief and hard-to-follow, and the resuming trial reads more like a misdemeanor trial than a sensational courtroom drama fit for a felony. In fact, the crime and trial are a small, relatively insignificant part of the book -- just like the lives of the characters.

The inept, gambling drunk Dallas Younger is perhaps the only redeemable character in the book, and that's stretching it. The rest of the book's characters are a bunch of small-minded, petty and boring individuals whose self-doubts and fears are of no real consequence to anyone but themselves. Nothing really interesting happens to these people, although Russo does a magnificent job of making these bores seem realistic.

I was looking for a rust-belt Faulkner from this guy, and I've heard better things about Russo's later books. I will give those books a try. His characterization is his strong suite; he is horrible at creating any action.

People who think that New York City reached its low point in the 1970s (or the 1980s) as the Bronx burned and crime seemed to be on every streetcorner sometimes tend to idealize the past. Perhaps it was shaped from movies from the 20s and 30s that seemed to show a simpler NYC, or maybe it was just plain misguided nostalgia.

Sante does a fantastic job of recounting the dark underbelly of New York City in the 19th and early 20th century, going into gory details about the horrible poverty along the Bowery and Lower East Side (areas that have seen extensive gentrification since the late 1980s), the filthy streets and disease outbreaks among the city's immigrant masses, the proliferation of street gangs (some of whom were representing NYC police) and other, well, "low lifes." Sante gives an engaging, well-paced description of the oft-overlooked problems a booming industrial-age city like New York was going through and boldly goes where no historian has gone before.

Required reading if you are a NYC (or urban) history fan.

Having lived in Jersey City myself, I was drawn towards Stapinski's book of growing up with a horribly dysfunctional family that, like many Euro-American families of the mid 20th century, were intertwined with the urban political machines of the day (although my family was, thankfully, quite normal).

Stapinski gathers many of the old time Jersey City political anecdotes and stories found in Thomas F.X. Smith's "The Powerticians" (written by a former Mayor of Jersey City whose book is now out of print) and puts a personal spin on them. Her descriptions of ethnic traditions (like Polish food), the political hijinks of the day and her many warped relatives were the book's strong points, and I wish she wrote more about them in this book. Like many other great Jersey City writers (Tom Fleming and Bob Leach come to mind), Stapinski has a talent for vivid and engaging storytelling.

Stapinski's negative attitudes and comments about Jersey City echoed many of the "white flighters" who left the city in droves from 1940 to the present for the suburbs. On just about every page, she complains how ugly, dirty, corrupt and polluted Jersey City is, and at times, I felt that her criticisms bordered on snobbery because she, unlike her blue-collar peers and relatives, received a degree from an elite Eastern university and was able to see Jersey City from a "higher perch" as a newspaper reporter.

It appeared that she used those issues as excuses all too often for her family's problems. Even worse, Stapinski appears to find redemption later in her book by moving to Brooklyn, another urban area that shares many of the same ills as Jersey City, but with far higher rents and more traffic.

This book held real promise as a classic collection of urban tales, and the positives outweighed the negatives. Even though the work is a memoir (and therefore, can be as subjective as the author wants), Stapinski seems to carry a big chip on her shoulder, constantly reminding the reader how horrible her hometown is and fails to convince the reader that the good times described in her book were any good at all during her childhood and her adult life (It worked in Frank McCourt's memoirs but failed in Five Finger Discount).

I still eagerly look forward to future works by this writer, and I hope that she takes a fairer and more balanced look at things next time she sits down at the word processor.

I gotta give the author some credit for participating in activities than millions of Americans do every day - canoeing, biking, hiking, etc. However, very, very few Americans do this along overdeveloped NJ highways or in urban drainage ditches that were once bucolic streams, so I give Mr. Rockland many bonus points for originality.

Rockland has a sharp, entertaining writing style that held my interest throught this book, and this collection of stories was a great complement to Looking for America on the NJ Turnpike, his first work.

Before the Feelies made a name for themselves with the release of "The Good Earth" in 1986, their first record emerged out of the suburban haze of northern New Jersey in 1980. This unknown, scrawny band of musicians cut a record that was vastly different than the punk or new wave sound of the day and subsequently, influenced a whole generation of musicians. The entire album feels as if each band member drank an entire pot of coffee before stepping into the studio due to the nevous pop than permeates almost every song here. Is it any coincidence that the opening track is titled "The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness"?

This is certainly not the Feelies' best record. They will disappear for a few years before coming full-on with the rich, warm sounds of "The Good Earth", an appearance in the film "Something Wild" and a spot opening for R.E.M. six years later. However, this is an interesting piece of material that can be considered as one of the earliest nuggets of what was later called in college circles as "indie rock."

For years, the only digital recording you were able to get of this disc was from Germany. The sound quality was lousy and lacked the cover of "Paint It Black." I hope A&M did a better job with this CD.

Ted Leo, who staked his claim to fame over the years for fronting the mod-punk band Chisel, has released a follow-up EP to his Pharmacists CD. While his first solo disc was more of a trip through his large record collection and exposure to many different forms of music, Treble in Trouble leans more towards the traditional Ted Leo playing an angsty guitar and singing about things that matter to him. Leo's sound also matures from the bare-bones tape loops that characterized his first record to the more-polished "full band" sounds on Treble in Trouble.

While many listeners may be stirred by the provocative "Abner Louima V. Gov. Pete Wilson," Leo reassures his fans that he can still write great pop songs with bouncy melodies, solid guitar and intelligent lyrics on "Come Baby Come" and "The 11th."

The 1889 Johnstown Flood, perhaps one of the most infamous disasters in American history, was vividly captured in this early work by biographer & historian David McCullough. His book is *the* definitive work on this subject.

McCullough masterfully creates a vivid picture of Johnstown in the 1880s - a booming industrial city with a teeming immigrant population. He parallels his story about the city of Johnstown with the area's reputation as a summer home for the steel magnates of nearby Pittsburgh, and how those two worlds would tragically collide on a rainy May day in 1889.

He goes into almost minute-by-minute detail about how the heavy rains ate away at the earthen dam that held back the private lake of the South Fork Fishing & Hunting Club, and the frantic efforts to save the dam, complementing engineering reports on the dam with great storytelling as the workers tried to prevent the dam from giving way.

McCollough's finest literary moment comes when the dam does give way, and the millions of gallons of water come rushing downstream towards the unsuspecting citizens of Johnstown. It almost seems as if he is bringing the reader along for the ride, yard by yard, as the water rushes down the valley and picks up virtually everthing in is path -- railroad cars and locomotives, trees, fences, livestock, homes, etc. Again, he goes into incredible detail as the torrent of water moves downstream, and he paces this tale like a well-written suspense novel. McCullough's descriptive style made it easy for me to picture the carnage and chaos in my head before the flood hit Johnstown, and this was my favorite part of the book.

When the flood finally reached the city, it sloshed back and forth against a RR bridge and the nearby hills like a kid playing in a bathtub, killing some 2,000 people and virtually levelling the entire city. The author's details again shine through as he describes the suprisingly well-orchestrated attempts by the city fathers and others to help the living and the dead and get the city back on its feet.

Even if you do not regularly read historical works of nonfiction, McCullough's book is fast paced and does an excellent job of holding the reader's attention. He also does not weight the book down by sidetracking the story with minutiae, but uses fine details when they are needed. This work not only gives a exhaustive account of a famous American disaster, but is a colorful window into industrial-era America.

Hey Amazon, name this disc an "essential recording," because it's one of the greatest rock & roll records of all time! The Sonics pick up where "Louie Louie" leaves off. You can almost imagine the Sonics playing a Delta frat party at Faber College back in 1964 with Bluto, Otter and the boys of Delta house dancing the night away.

Energy-laden three-chord guitar hooks and the screams of vocalist Gerry Roslie capture the dance-crazed world of the early & middle 1960s before the hippies took over. All garage bands that are around today, and many punk bands of the 70s and 80s, were heavily influenced by this band. The legendary opening organ notes of "The Witch" can be interpreted as a call to worship for garage-o-philes around the world.

Rather than the three-cord melodies of their previous work, these Boston garage legends expand their musical universe a bit. The songs become a bit longer (we have an instrumental, too) and complex, and the liner notes (at least on the LP version) were a neat collection of photos and a "family tree" diagram of the band's storied history.

A few much-needed live tunes are also thrown in on the CD version, including a cover of the Sonics' "The Witch."