If you have ever spent a week or more in any beach town from New Jersey to the Carolinas during the summer, you’ve had to have at least heard of, if not seen, Mr. Greengenes — a real staple of the Ocean City experience for many years now. This band has toured constantly and successfully for as long as I can remember, a statement that is perhaps, in part, redundant, in that you would hardly be able to tour constantly if you were not making money — and you probably would not be making money if you “sucked.”

The one mental obstacle that I had to overcome in all the time that I have heard friends talking about this band is that I never thought that its members were songwriters. I knew that they have a very proud reputation for being amongst the top shelf of “cover” bands on this east coast circuit, but because my fake ID got confiscated before I graduated high school and would have “headed for the Ocean,” and because by the time I was legal to drink I already hated crowds of drunks in the sun, I never had the card carrying experience that every O.C. goer has had of seeing Mr. Greengenes in their element. However, I must say, that for this application, I’m glad, because I was able to listen to their CD, Violation, without bias and with no memory of them to compare.

Approaching this CD from that perspective, I heard a fabulous mix of well-written songs that was not derivative enough to be mocked, and, yet, consistent enough to be marketable. My favorite jams on this record are tracks 2 and 3. Track 2, “Shot Glass,” is a smooth song that rings of the quiet storms of Stevie Wonder or more currently, Jamiriquai. It confidently stays free, but never dreamy like a half-baked Grateful Dead drum solo. The third track, “Go Away,” comes at me like a South Philly trip-hop. While I was listening to it, a friend commented that it sounded too much like G-love and Special Sauce. My friend is an idiot! It was certainly of the same genre of “urban”-meets-white-kids-with-guitars, but their whole take is fresh and true. My guess is that having played so many other people’s music well for as long as they did has only helped harness their skills for writing.

Throughout the album, I enjoyed the directions this band ventured in, because they never got lost or started sounding either overly- or non-ambitious. I will see them in concert as soon as I can, and hope to hear them play some of these songs live. The members of Mr. Greengenes have earned their place on the map and deserve to be taken very seriously.

The Clarks Live album was recorded in the obviously packed Nick’s Fat City in Pittsburgh. Although they will not win awards for originality, there are points to be earned for simply writing well-structured songs, as they have done. Like their Canadian alter egos, The Clarks have a knack for executing killer dynamic changes in their songs by starting many of their pieces with a signature acoustic guitar riff — the kind of riff that makes you gradually aware of the song that is coming, but does not let you have it quite yet. It helps the building effect tremendously if the audience knows the material and can be expectant of the band’s songs as they come.

The Clarks’ fans sound very knowledgeable of their band’s catalog and are fully convinced of their greatness. That enthusiasm is difficult to feign and, harder still, to capture on tape. The Clarks have pulled it off. You cannot ‘can’ this type of cheering and to-date, I know of no electronic device that can recreate fans singing the words to a band’s music — though I would not be surprised if it wasn’t too far off.

It amazes me that some of the most simple chord structures in a song never get outdated. There are at least four songs on this record that start off in a predictable “pop” fashion, but work nonetheless. The fact that there are two songs on the album with girl’s names as the title (“Courtney” and “Caroline”) suggests to me a youthful innocence that might appeal to many young, “pop” music fans. My favorite song on the album is, “Apartment Song” which starts of like The Kinks song, “Lola,” but really gets the crowd going and made me wish that I was at that show, as well.