The cover of The Thousand Pities’ 2011 album, “Believe in Sound.”
Memories of a summer day on the Jersey Shore take on a dreamlike quality in “Point Pleasant,” by Jersey band The Thousand Pities. Frontman Matthew Davis, who lives in Montclair, sings — with support from guest vocalist Deena Shoshkes, of The Cucumbers — of standing on the beach, watching a threatening storm roll in. Everyone else is scrambling for cover, but he remains frozen in place.
“Keep quiet, keep perfectly still/I look straight up at the great gray sky/Do with me what you will,” he and Shoshkes sing with a childlike sense of trust.
This feeling is echoed by the video, which uses home movies of the family of song co-writer Billy Donohue (the Thousand Pities keyboardist and a former member of the Jersey band The Blasés) vacationing at the beach, seemingly without a care in the world.
The band released the song in its 2011 album, Believe in Sound.
New Jersey celebrated its 350th birthday last year. And in the 350 Jersey Songs series, we are marking the occasion by posting 350 songs — one a day, for almost a year — that have something to do with the state, its musical history, or both. We started in September 2014, and will keep going until late in the summer.
If you would like to suggest any songs to be included, please let me know in the comments section underneath the video. And if you want to see the entire list, either alphabetically or in the order the songs were selected, click here.
