We hope you’ll like our story
Although there isn’t one
That is to say there’s many
That way there is more fun
-the Monkees
“The Mod Bunker,” (aka Crazy House I) in 2015. It obviously had some new siding put on before it was demolished as part of the building boom in Jersey City, brought to you by Jared Kushner.
“Crazy House II: Electric Boogaloo” on Van Reipen Avenue, circa 2015. It was located just around the corner from the Stanley Theater, Eastern Seaboard Headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
About us
Mothra and Sloth aka the “Jersey City Mods,” met in the eighties at Drew University where they did a radio show with Liz Lixx aka “Vicious.” Like chocolate and peanut butter, the scheduling of our shows back-to-back resulted in a tasty treat. It was a mystical merger of sixties garage rock, Beatle-esque power pop, and hardcore punk. In 1982 it was an unthinkable combination in the wake of Johnny Rotten’s pronouncement that the Beatles and Mick Jagger were boring old farts (he has since disputed saying it).
After graduation they relocated to Jersey City at the start of a recession and slogged it out at numerous boiler-room telemarketing and answering service jobs. Sloth finally landed at Tower Records in the Village and worked his way up to management at the Paramus, NJ store. Mothra became office manager at Filmakers Library, a distributor of educational films, where she unwittingly helped to promote EDI long before it was fashionable. They reveled in a cornucopia of music and videos and threw parties that still echo in the minds of the attendees.
In 1994, the Jersey City Mods relocated to Philadelphia where the same nonsense continued, only on a more epic scale. Sloth was now at Tower Records in King of Prussia, and Mothra became the in-house publicist for an indie record label called Big Pop. The Big Pop roster included Melting Hopefuls, All About Chad, Mexico 70, the Holy Cows, Blessed Ethel, the Flamingoes, Animals That Swim, and most notably, El Vez “the Mexican Elvis.”
They are back in the New York area now. As frequent visitors to the old stomping ground, they have learned that their former party pads are already becoming distant memories, obliterated beneath the footprints of new skyscrapers. And while the Mods have not joined the ranks of the “normies,” if you learned their true identities, they would have to kill you. That’s why all the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
What they can tell you is that they are already hard at work on In the Spirit of Crazy House, II: Adventures in the city of big brotherly love. Slated for publication, July 4, 2026, it will be just in time for the sesquicentennial! It’s already being touted as essential reading for those who want more information on the city where freedom-dum was born.
Don’t blame us! We are Generation Jones.
About Little Caesar, Official Mascot of March Music Madness
In 2018, Little Caesar was discovered yapping in his yard in the Fleetwood section of Mount Vernon. He could have been a senior citizen of Boston, but he took a wrong turn and ended up the official mascot of the Jersey City Mods annual March Music Madness contest [“but he’s clean!”].
Begun in 2016, participation in the tournament has more than doubled since Little Caesar got involved. You too can play along. It coincides every year with the official NCAA tournament. For more information Click here