Local musician makes a splash on the Internet
BY MARC CAVELLA
Staff Writer

CHRIS KELLY staff Joe Carelli strums a few chords outside his Matawan home on March 28.

MATAWAN — It’s no secret that it takes talent, drive and determination to succeed in the music business. Sometimes, it takes a lucky break. And sometimes, it takes two and a half decades, as local musician Joe Carelli has discovered.

Carelli, 42, of Matawan, is finding success on the Internet music scene 25 years after he began playing guitar. His first single, "I Wonder," is No. 1 on the Alternative British Pop charts of Soundclick.com, a highly trafficked music Web site. The single is also ranked No. 13 on the Web site’s Alternative Music chart.

"I Wonder" is a bouncy, synthesizer-driven pop song that somehow manages to be moody at the same time. This may be due to the fact that the song — along with much of Carelli’s other material — is influenced by bands such as the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Cult.

"[It] seems like all my music, whether I wrote it in 1982 or yesterday, sounds like it is from 1982," he said, adding that he feels the decade of 1975 to 1985 "will go down as the greatest era in music history."

But the technology that more modern times offer isn’t so bad, either.

"I think it’s just amazing," Carelli said of the Internet scene. "I don’t even listen to the radio anymore. The artists [on Soundclick.com] are a lot more interesting and fun than what the multinational music corporations are force-feeding" listeners.

The Internet also provides Carelli with a large audience, something most bands traditionally accomplish by grinding it out on the road, playing numerous shows in town after town. That, however, is not really an option for Carelli.

He works full time as a technician for Verizon in Manhattan. He has a wife, a 5-year-old son, and a daughter on the way. And on top of his busy professional and personal life, he also finds time to serve in volunteer positions on both the Matawan Borough Environmental Commission and the Bayshore Regional Watershed Commission.

"I decided I wanted to make a difference," he said of his volunteer work, …"[even if it’s only] on a small scale. I try to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. I tend to consider it a balance thing, as we all pollute no matter how environmentally aware we are."

Carelli participates in local town cleanups with other Matawan and Aberdeen-area volunteers. He also works with Clean Communities, a program that awards grants to community groups for litter pickup and removal, and promotes educational efforts aimed at young people.

Still, Carelli did try to build a fan base the old-fashioned way. He began playing guitar at 16, and had been in and out of bands "that never went further than the rehearsal room" for several years before he decided to strike out on his own and start recording some of his original material.

In 1998, however, he was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, a type of arthritis that causes inflammation in and around the wrists, knees, lower back, neck and other joints. The disease severely affected not only Carelli’s ability to make music, but also his ability to live a normal life.

"In 1999 it would take me 45 minutes just to get up from a chair," he said. "Two years ago, I was walking like an 80-year-old man. I couldn’t even hold a guitar."

Despite the pain of the disease, Carelli was still doing some song composing on the computer, "where I could just type in the notes," he said.

Eventually, Carelli came under the care of Dr. Edward Allegra of Red Bank. Allegra prescribed the medication Enbrel, which is used to alleviate the symptoms of several forms of arthritis, and Carelli’s condition quickly improved.

"My worst day in the last year and a half is better than my best day two years ago," he said.

Since regaining his health, Carelli’s wife of seven years, Kristin, "had been bugging me to take up my music again," and this past February he resumed playing the guitar and keyboards. He purchased a computer-based music production program called Cakewalk, which in turn led him to Soundclick.

"All these people who were producing their own music kept talking about Soundclick [in the Cakewalk chat rooms]," Carelli said.

After visiting Soundclick, he posted a few songs, including "I Wonder," on Feb. 15. Since then, his page has received just under 3,000 hits.

"Music has definitely added a lot of balance to my life," he said.

The positive response from music fans all over the world has motivated Carelli to begin work on a five-song CD, "just so more people can get to hear the songs," he said. "It seems that if you give people a tape, they want nothing to do with it. But give them a CD, [and they’ll listen to it]."