Twenty-five years ago (yikes 25!) I went to Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, NJ, to hear a band my buddy Mark said would blow me away with tunes that, according to him, were 'sometimes R&B, sometimes rock and sometimes a little of both'. Mark wasn't always that bright but this time he seemed to know what he was talking about so we borrowed my parents '77 Chevy Mailbu and cruised from Belmar, NJ, (yup, about 3 people lived there year round and I was one of them) to Jackson. Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes came on and I was 'swept away'. It only took one song and everyone was on their feet except when things slowed down for a bit...even then it was as if you were at a bible meeting and you were hearing the gospel according to Southside. I had heard rock bands before but it was only noise...the Jukes played music!

I followed the band to big arenas and bars from NJ to New Hampshire. It got so bad I had the blue satin Asbury Jukes jacket made up...I even got stopped in Boston by someone wondering if I was with the band. In college I opened and closed my radio show with 'Havin a Party'. Even though I moved from NJ to Massachusetts to NH to Maine to NJ and back to Massachusetts, I always knew where 'the' jacket was.

Life and career building and kid raising takes time and the satin jacket went into the closet (in a garment bag, of course) and there was little time to even listen to an album yet think about concert hopping. My daughter was going on nine and Britney and American Idol tunes were coming from her room and like any concerned parent, I wanted to be sure she did not give in to the dark side. Now, at 43 and summer on its way, I started to think of beach balls flying around a Jukes concert and wondered if the band was still there. I know Labamba and Pender were playing for Conan but what about the rest of the band? The internet answered that question and before long I had tickets in hand for my wife, daughter and I for the NJ pilgrimage to Toms River Fest to see Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes outside. The sun was shining, the beach balls were flying and the Jukes were pumping. My daughter was up in a matter of minutes and we could not get close enough to the stage. Poor kid never knew what hit her.

As a side note, we stayed in Belmar the day after the concert and there on the front page of the Asbury Park Press was a picture of the three of us with the caption 'Steve and Penny Kohut along with the daughter Katy, age 8, enjoying Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes at Toms River Fest' and you know Katy was wearing that satin Asbury Jukes jacket.

Thanks Jukes - keep playing - we'll never stop listening.

Steve Kohut