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Thursday, November 2, 2017
The Gramercy Theatre
$187,000 in total fundraising

Winner: The Meltones of Greenberg Traurig for National Kidney Fund serving Greater New York
Judges' Choice Award: 1981 of Walkers Global for Community Food Bank New Jersey - Kids Café & Food Bank for New York City - Campus Pantries

New York City - center of the universe - and home of Law Rocks' biggest night! For the second year in a row NYC shattered the Law Rocks record of $156,000 with a total of $187,000 raised!

The Fourth Annual Law Rocks NYC shattered the Law Rocks record, raising over $187,000 (the record was $156K)! It was an amazing night at the sold-out The Gramercy Theatre with the nine bands playing to a huge crowd of cheering fans. The last hour was a head-to-head battle for the #1 spot in donations between The Meltones of Greenberg Traurig and The Objections of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP raising amazing contributions for National Kidney Foundation - Greater New York and Advocates for Children of New York, respectively. In the end The Meltones won the night for the fourth straight year, reaching over $42,000 for NKF! Also taking home a prize was 1981 of Walkers Law Firm, winning the Judges' Choice Award (while raising over $23,000 for Community FoodBank of New Jersey and Food Bank For New York City)! A giant thank you to all the bands for rocking out and working so hard raising funds.

A tremendous thank you to sponsors Greenberg Traurig, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, KLS Professional Advisors Group, Locke Lord, Day Pitney LLP, and Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP! We could not do Law Rocks without you.

Huge thanks to the esteemed Rock Panel: Anthony Bozza, Wendy LaManque, and Victor Bushell, our emcee, Chuck Jarrell, and the tremendous crew at Gramercy Theatre.

Finally a thanks to each and every audience member and donor who came out and contributed! You rock!!

Featured

1981

Featuring legal talent from Walkers Global
Rocking for Community Food Bank New Jersey - Kids Café & Food Bank for New York City - Campus Pantries

All the way from the Cayman Islands, 1981 are back and ready to rock the Gramercy with their unique blend of Caribbean cool and riff-driven heat. Leaner, meaner, and louder than ever before Neil, Tim, Andrew, Rolf and Natalie have the amps turned up to 11 and the attitude set to snarl. Stopping at nothing to make sure that the Food Banks of New Jersey and New York and their kids programmes get all of your support, 1981's goal is to raise USD25,000 to feed 100,000 kids in the Tri State area. Prepare to be boarded, New York - the real pirates of the Caribbean are coming for your bounty.

The Endless Thread

Featuring legal talent from Office of the Bronx District Attorney; private practice
Rocking for amfAR

The "Endless Thread" is happy to return to Law Rocks this year to battle it out for amfAR, Foundation for AIDS research, HIV prevention, treatment education, and the advocacy of sound AIDS-related public policy. Accordingly, and to put in a manner colleagues will understand:

We are writing this short bio with respect to the aforementioned musical performance by the above mentioned musical group professionally known as "The Endless Thread" (hereinafter "applicant"). Upon hearing all the facts, and reviewing the evidence in the form of the group's musical capabilities, the applicant has no doubt that your unequivocal verdict will be in its favor and that you will grant its application to be chosen as the recipient of first place at the "Law Rocks" event.

We appreciate your consideration, and please feel free to inquire further after the musical performance to be the first to receive our newly recorded album "FM Drift."

Put another way, the "Endless Thread" is a musical think-tank of lawyers and musicians whose ability to move the soul is so great, so compelling, it has caused prosecutors and defense attorneys to cross the aisles, get up on the stage, and join together to make music. This year be sure to listen-in on the finest of legal harmonies, as the band explores some of the hottest covers and even one of its originals. Yes, you heard it right - "The Endless Thread" is not just a spur of the moment band thrown together for the purpose of battling it out on behalf of amfAR. Rather, it is a full fledged, gigging and recording band in New York City made up of lawyers and musicians, and its members simply cannot wait to support such an amazing foundation as amfAR.

The Good Sheppards

Featuring legal talent from Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard; Giordano Halleran & Ciesla
Rocking for New York Civil Liberties Union

From CDAS, Scott Sholder on bass, Ben Jaffe on drums, Brittany Kaplan on keyboards, and Jon Peritz on guitar; from GH&C, Chris Marino on guitar; lead singer Michael Gruters. GS is playing to benefit the New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation – a cause we thought was particularly worthy nowadays. Looking forward to rocking the Gramercy Theatre with our selection of vintage alt-rock, punk, and grunge!

Law Dogs

Featuring legal talent from Hogan Lovells; K&L Gates; Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan; US Government
Rocking for Legal Services NYC

The Meltones

Featuring legal talent from Greenberg Traurig
Rocking for National Kidney Foundation serving Greater New York

Named for Greenberg Traurig founder Mel Greenberg, The Meltones have rocked many a firm gathering, everywhere from New York to Miami to the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

Mistrial

Featuring talent from Davis & Gilbert; Palantir; White & Case
Rocking for Her Justice

Mistrial was originally formed in 2014 by five lawyers in White & Case’s NYC office. Known to rock at events large and small, Mistrial features the vocal stylings of Brian Kim, the riffs of Charles May (guitar), the rhythms of Daniel Cohen (vocals/guitar), the grooves of Raj Gandesha (bass), the beats of Joshua Weedman (drums), and the talents of Kate Swisher (keys). Mistrial is excited to bring its spin on modern and classical rock to Law Rocks, and raise some money for Her Justice!

The Objections

Featuring talent from Davis Polk & Wardwell
Rocking for Advocates for Children of New York

“A band whose appeal can never be denied”

The Plimptones

Talent from Debevoise & Plimpton
Rocking for Jazz Foundation of America

The Plimptones may be the hardest working band in rock and roll, but that’s just their billable hours. Musically, they strive to walk on the right side of the fine line between clever and stupid, whichever that may be. Their combination of raucous rhythms, sonorous strings, honking horns and multi-part harmonies pays homage to the masters of rock, yesterday and today. They also are known, on occasion, to come up one alliteration short.

Rocke Lords

Featuring talent from Day Pitney; Locke Lord
Rocking for Connecticut Veterans Legal Center

The members of the ROCKE LORDS are honored to be raising money for the amazing veterans, lawyers, and staff at the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center in New Haven CT. The CVLC, with the help of its growing team of community volunteer lawyers, are helping to improve the lives of our veterans every day in overcoming life-impacting struggles. Please come and join us to help support the CVLC! Musically, ROCKE LORDS has one goal in mind: to play a face-melting set of some of the hardest rocking songs on the planet. Be prepared to rock hard with the ROCKE LORDS. The band will include the musical stylings of Gabe McCool (bass and vocals), Joy Whitney (vocals, percussion), Ted Bednarcyk (drums), Brian Lothson (guitar and vocals), Alex Forsythe, and Greg Kahn (guitar).

Featured

2017

Anthony Bozza

Anthony Bozza still has the first record he ever bought, Billy Joel’s Glass Houses. He also has the first record he ever “got,” which is a 45 of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” that he stole. Both records came from the same store, Record Town in Manhasset, Long Island. He was 9 years old, and has been obsessed with music ever since. Around the same time, he also figured out that he loved to read and began consuming long, detailed books, mostly from the UK, by Charles Dickens, J.R.R. Tolkein, and C.S. Lewis as well as Americans like Mark Twain and Walter Farley. Anthony went through school loving history and English while suffering through math and science and in college chose to study the only thing they didn’t teach him about in high school: the history of Africa and the Middle East. Simultaneously, he developed a passion for investigating the details he found in the fine print at the bottom of album liner notes and curated a library of bootleg studio and live recordings of The Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones, The Cure and The Smashing Pumpkins, who became his favorite local band during the four years he spent living in Chicago attending Northwestern University.

He graduated, spent a year ski bumming in Boulder, Colorado, intending to return to school with the goal of becoming a professor, but that didn’t happen. Instead, both of his passions came together when he got an internship at two very different culturally significant magazines in the same day: Paper and Rolling Stone. Though he preferred the downtown cool of Paper, it was obvious (as spelled out to him by a staffer at Paper) that the latter position held greater promise of a paying job, one which would allow him to quit bar tending at that horror-movie themed pub in the West Village.

And so it went. Anthony Bozza worked as an intern for the now defunct Rolling Stone Press division, becoming an adept researcher, tracking down the likes of Giorgio Moroder and Kim Fowley for the update to Rolling Stone’s Rock & Roll Encyclopedia (1995), which led to his salaried gig as an assistant to the magazine’s Librarian. From there it was a game of checkers: he moved over to the Music Department and was an assistant to several Music Editors (two of whom were fired – the 90’s were a tumultuous time). Through diligent perseverance, he began to land the odd piece in the magazine, usually by volunteering for whatever assignment the staff writers didn’t want to do. He moved up to a a featured columnist, helmed the Raves column, Random Notes, and did stories on all kinds of things, like the greatest Summer Songs ever written and whatever happened to Sly Stone (he learned, at the time, that Sly was living in LA with two nubile 19 year old twin sisters). Along the way Anthony ate pastrami with Bo Diddley and had Ozzy Osbourne tell him the now legendary story of how he snorted a line of live ants in order to show his upstart opening band, Mötley Crüe, who was boss. Anthony also hung out and profiled a bunch of actors and was the only staffer excited to go to Staten Island to interview Wu Tang Clan. In 1997 or so, he became obsessed with an unsigned white rapper from Detroit named Eminem and told his music editor all about him. His boss entertained Anthony’s enthusiasm, and two years later, when said rapper was signed to Interscope, did the right thing and dispatched him to do a short story about the making of the video for a song called “My Name Is.” What was assigned to be a 250 word piece ballooned into a 6000 word cover story, the first national coverage of Eminem anywhere. It was quite the story too, it made Anthony’s career, and Eminem’s too, in a way.

In the next few years, Anthony Bozza wrote six more cover stories, before leaving Rolling Stone to write what would become his first New York TimesBestseller, Whatever You Say I Am: The Life and Times of Eminem. The book was an international hit as well, lingering atop bestseller lists in England, Germany, France and South America. More than a biography, the book contextualizes Eminem as a signpost of the race, class and cultural temperature of America at the turn of the millennium.

He then turned to co-writing, jumping the fence with Tommyland, the NYTBestselling autobiography of Tommy Lee. Tommy moved Anthony into his house and into his world, and all of it is in the pages. The two of them remain the best of friends to this day.

Afterwards, Anthony relocated to Australia for three months, to research INXS Story to Story: The Official Autobiography. He met with just about everyone who ever worked for the beloved Australian band still living on the Sydney side of the continent. A detailed retelling of the band’s history, it is the definitive document of the Michael Hutchence era, including interviews with some of the deceased singer’s nearest and dearest, several of whom hadn’t spoken about him publicly since his death.

He then returned to LA to co-write another NYT Bestseller, Slash: It Seems Excessive But That Doesn’t Mean It Didn’t Happen, with the famously private, taciturn Guns n’ Roses guitarist. The result was dubbed one of the top five rock autobiographies of all time by Rolling Stone and it should be: equal parts debauchery and musicology, it’s as honest and timeless as Slash’s guitar tone.

Returning home to New York City, Anthony changed gears, signing on to write with veteran comedian, Howard Stern co-host, and fellow East Coast Italian-American Artie Lange. The resulting book, Too Fat to Fish, changed his idea of co-writing forever, and debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list, where it remained in the top 20 for twenty-two weeks. Both touching and hilarious, it transcended the comedian memoir as genre, making fans of readers who had never before heard of Artie Lange.

Next came a return to music analysis, with Why AC/DC Matters, a thesis arguing the merits of one of rock and roll’s most critically shunned yet essential institutions. Why AC/DC Matters set the record straight and inspired a series of similarly formatted Why (blank) Matters books in AC/DC’s native Australia with Anthony’s book being Volume 1.

I Am the New Black, co-written with SNL and 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan came next and was yet another challenge. Though Tracy’s off-the-wall perspective came through stylistically, the struggle and heartbreak he’s survived in life was what emerged most powerfully – and surprisingly – on the page.

Anthony’s next book, Purpose: An Immigrant’s Story, co-written with Wyclef Jean, detailed the Haitian musician’s impoverished childhood in his homeland and rise to hip-hop superstardom in America. It answered a question that had been lingering for nearly ten years – why exactly did the Fugees break up? The writing of the book was interrupted by two seismic events: the tragic earthquake in Haiti and Wyclef’s decision to run for President of his homeland. He came back from those experiences a changed man, and fittingly the book changed with him.

While working with Wyclef, Artie Lange reached out to Anthony to begin the process of writing their follow up to Too Fat to Fish. He had spent two inert years recovering from depression, drug addiction and a suicide attempt and had barely survived his darkest depths. They slowly began to piece together what became Crash and Burn, their second New York TimesBestseller and one of the hardest pieces of writing Anthony has ever undertaken.

In 2012, an assignment for Playboy magazine brought Anthony to Hawaii to interview legendary drummer Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac. The two formed a bond and embarked on two years of work and intense soul searching on Mick’s part, resulting in Play On: Now, Then & Fleetwood Mac. The memoir captures a life unlike any other, spanning forty years of rock and roll from the perspective of one of the most gifted, thoughtful and humble characters in the history of classic rock.

Throughout the spring and summer of 2014, Anthony tailed Derek Jeter, the greatest baseball player he’s ever seen play the game, as he prepared to take his final bow. The resulting interviews became the narrative text of Jeter Unfiltered, a collection of intimate photos commemorating his last season as well as his twenty year career. As a lifelong Yankee fan, Anthony was on cloud nine. As a sports fan, he had been eager to work with an athlete, and couldn’t have dreamed of a better place to start.

Victor Bushell

Victor is a founding member of Bushell Sovak Ozer & Gulmi LLP.

Victor and the firm have represented A list celebrities, musicians, authors and the industry for decades. Clients represented include (in no particular order): ICM, UTA, WME|IMG, MGM, BMI, FujiTV, Broadway Video, Vigliano Associates, VNY Model Management, Anne Hathaway, Harvey Keitel, David Byrne, Dan Lufkin, Candace Bushnell, Raven-Symone, The Moody Blues, and Onyx.

Wendy La Manque

Wendy is an Associate at Cohen, Weiss and Simon LLP, one of the nation's leading firms devoted exclusively to representing the interests of labor and working people. With over twenty years of musical experience, Wendy has found ways to integrate her love of music and performing into her personal and professional life, staying active in the music scene while representing major entertainment unions (and other terrific clients, too) in NYC and across the country.

In her spare time, Wendy is both an advisor to - and frequent performer with - The "Leave a Lasting Mark" Concert Series, a monthly event based at the world famous Bitter End, which brings local independent musicians (including Wendy on both vocals and flute) together to raise money for charities such as Oxfam, Foundation Fighting Blindness, Covenant House and others. The themes of the shows range from eras and events like Motown, Woodstock and 80's music, to artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Tom Petty, Madonna and more. Over the past 7 years, the series has worked with over 30 charities, and has raised over $70,000 for a variety of worthy causes and organizations.

During her 7 years living in Brooklyn, Wendy has also talked her way into performing on stage with such illustrious acts as Cousin Earth (formerly Ukulelien), BELT, Primate Fiasco, Uncle Ebenezer, the WarrenScott Band, the Whistles, and the New York City Bar Association Chorus. When not at work, Wendy can most likely be found on the road with the electric ukulele jam/folk/fusion phenomenon Cousin Earth (featuring her husband, Terrence Brennan on vocals, keys and lead kazoo) at venues and festivals throughout the northeast.