New Brunswick, New Jersey had a problem. Rutgers University sat in the middle of it, 30,000 undergrads with nowhere to go, because the city had no all-ages venues worth the name. So the kids did what kids do: they went underground, literally. Basements on Handy Street and Commercial Avenue became the rooms where emo was assembled from spare parts, years before anyone called it that. The scene that produced Thursday, Saves the Day, and My Chemical Romance didn't start with a label deal or a magazine cover. It started because there was nowhere else to play.
The band that rewired the DNA of what those shows could sound like was Lifetime. Formed in 1990 by singer Ari Katz and guitarist Dan Yemin, Lifetime built their sound in direct opposition to what the surrounding New York hardcore scene was doing. At a time when hardcore was awash in macho theatrics, Lifetime set their own course. Where New York hardcore contemporaries pushed negative and sometimes violent themes, Katz's lyrics emphasized more positive and personal ones, packed into two-minute songs. That was the break. That was the thing that mattered.
In September 1995, Lifetime released *Hello Bastards* on Jade Tree Records, produced by Steve Evetts and the band, recorded at Trax East Studio in South River, New Jersey. The album solidified their lineup as Katz on vocals, Dan Yemin and Pete Martin on guitar, Dave Palaitis on bass, and Scott Golley on drums. *Hello Bastards* marked a shift in direction, incorporating more melodic punk leanings over a driving hardcore tempo. It was their second album, following 1993's *Background*, and the one that turned them into underground heroes.
Then came 1997. In June 1996, the band recorded a follow-up at Trax East in South River, New Jersey. After returning home, they completed recording *Jersey's Best Dancers* in January 1997, again with Steve Evetts producing. Jade Tree released it on June 10, 1997. Pop punk had intersected with emo before, particularly with Jawbreaker, but it was Lifetime who brought crisp guitars and a sugary, unabashedly poppy sound to the fray. By *Jersey's Best Dancers*, Lifetime bloomed from their hardcore origins, softening their songs with addictive melodies and pleading thematic content. The album opens with "Turnpike Gates," a fast-tempo shot of lost-love guitar, and builds toward track eight: "Theme Song for a New Brunswick Basement Show." That title was a mission statement. On it, Katz tells a story about sitting next to the girl of his dreams at a basement show and wonders if she could take the place of the current object of his heartbreak. Feelings, out loud, in a hardcore room. That was new. Lifetime had even released "The Boy's No Good" as a single in August 1996, months before the album dropped, to build anticipation. It worked.
As Lifetime dwindled down towards the end of 1997, playing their packed farewell show at the Melody Bar in New Brunswick, one of the support acts on the bill was an eager young band from 40 minutes down Route 1 called Saves the Day. Saves the Day frontman Chris Conley was a fan of Lifetime, and once said about them: "Lifetime wrote songs about inner turmoil, while other bands were screaming about who had the best straight edge tattoo." That inheritance passed fast. Thursday was formed in 1997, and the group began playing basement shows in New Brunswick where they were students at Rutgers University and the surrounding New Jersey and New York areas, playing their first official show on December 31, 1998 in Rickly's basement alongside Midtown, Saves the Day, and Poison the Well. One night, four future scene pillars on one basement bill. The scene was a room with a low ceiling and a borrowed PA.
The Bouncing Souls and Lifetime had started doing house and basement shows because the city lacked all-ages venues. After Bouncing Souls and Lifetime really codified and organized the New Brunswick house show and basement scene, even more bands started getting record deals and garnering national and international audiences. The city kept trying to shut the shows down, which only made the community tighter. The difficult and less-than-legal status of these basement shows made for a tight-knit DIY scene that took its ideals very seriously. Labels eventually came to find what the basements had already built. Vagrant became a nucleus, along with Drive-Thru and Jade Tree, for what people decided was the new phase of emo. Labels like Deep Elm and Drive-Thru helped increase emo's popularity by signing lesser-known artists, while Vagrant used the internet and extensive touring schedules to market emo to wider audiences, benefitting bands like Dashboard Confessional and Saves the Day. Victory Records became the onetime home to bands like Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, and Hawthorne Heights.
In 2003, Thursday signed to Island Records and released *War All the Time*, marking the first transition from New Brunswick basement shows to a major label within the scene. Vice cited *Jersey's Best Dancers*' influence on future pop-punk and emo acts such as Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, and Taking Back Sunday. The whole third wave, the Warped Tour years, the Victory Records years, the MySpace years, the years when emo filled arenas and sold Hot Topic out of eyeliner, all of it runs back to a college town that couldn't get a venue permit. Ari Katz wrote songs about basement shows because that's where he lived. Turns out, so did everyone else.
