Evangelina and the Boys: Hold the pepperoni, bring the rock at Extreme Pizza

You say it's weird to have a show at a joint like Extreme Pizza on Wilmington's recently revived Lower Market Street area (or LOMA for short). 

You say it would be odd to be munching on one of Extreme's signature pizzas, which go by names like Peace In The Middle East, Mr. Pestato Head, Pandora's Box or Poultry Geist, while taking in a set of sultry tunes merging alt-pop with a variety of other sounds by Evangelina and the Boys.

Evangelina has a new side band, and they're called The Boys.

You say a pub-type place, like Dead Presidents or the Del Rose Cafe, is more appropriate for that sort of thing.

Well maybe you weren't around Newark in the mid-1990s, when Jam'n & Java was one of THE spots to catch live music.

Or maybe you forgot about one of the most amazing moments in music video history, a moment so amazing that whenever I see it again, I still can't believe it.


And, if you don't have a kid, you probably never saw "Lemonade Mouth," and in that case you never saw the scene where Dante's Pizzeria is the only place that will let the banned kids' band play. True, the pizza place show got a bit out of hand, but still:

But Extreme Pizza has become a sneaky cool place to catch a show, and it's not quite like Dante's or Al's restaurant on "Happy Days." It's a swank, relaxing, low-lit establishment where the typical Wilmington Yuppie douche faction is surprisingly non-existent.

Evangelina and the Boys perform at Extreme Pizza, 201 N. Market St., Wilmington, on Friday April 26. Singer song-writer Chad Michael Jervis opens at 8 p.m. Best part: It's free. Visit Extreme Pizza's website for more info.

Classic Newark: My Name is Drew at Mojo Main

My Name is Drew reminds me of the kind of stuff you might have heard back in the days of Old Newark, or at least Old Newark circa 1993-1997, aka the Old Newark I know.

[pause to put on Grumpy Old Man costume]

Back when there was no Grotto, or Cold Stone Creamery, no Barnes and Noble, no wine bars, no yuppie-ass speciality stores. When Treats served up what was then deemed “hippie” food down at the west end of Main Street. When there were FOUR record stores. When the Stone Balloon still existed. When the East End still existed (although, truth be told, Mojo Main is an upgrade in a lot of ways). When the presence of overwhelming douchebaggery did not.

"DBs on Main Street." New Stones LP?

Maybe there’s more of a modern emo tinge to Newark’s My Name is Drew, but they wouldn’t have looked too out of place next to Schroeder, Caterpillar, The Caulfields, Razor Blue and other bands that roamed the landscape of that Old Newark circa 1993-1997.

Singer Ethan Freeman, guitarist Curtis Jackson, bassist Zach Schroeder and drummer Rob Graves can do dissonance ("Absofreakinlutely"), but they can do weirdo pop-jazz ("Little Mistake"), and I'm a big fan of the well-placed but not overdone handclaps - a la Boston's "Foreplay/ Long Time" or Chris Mars' stick clicks in The Replacement's "Left of the Dial" - in "Relax," which features some pretty beefy Dave Grohl-esque drum work by Graves.

But their torching of Oasis's "Wonderwall" is, well, interesting.

The band headlines a night of rock that also features Our Wrecked Machine, My Worst Critic, Weekday Warriors and Here for the Night at 9 tonight (March 22) at the aforementioned Mojo Main, which is at 270 E. Main St., Newark.

Tickets are $5 and can be had here.

Here's the band performing "Absofreakinglutely" during a recent show: