Ok, I'll ignore the non-existant war on Christmas being waged elsewhere and focus on what's really important: Why I don't like Hanukah and why Pesach is far superior. We'll take this point by point:Shalsheles has posted sheet music for songs off of Shalsheles III and Shalsheles Junior.
The songs: Pesach has Had Gadya, Ehad mi yodea, Avadim Hayinu, Dayenu, the list goes on and on. What does Hanukah have? The Dreidel song. Idiotic drivel! Mi yimalel is a great song, but it's odd to hear religious folks singing such an anti-religious song so joyously. A while ago I heard someone explain that the song takes various verses from Tanakh that praise G-d and changes the words around so it praises the Jewish people instead. Very neat idea in the abstract, but as a religious guy myself I'm uncomfortable with that.
Over at the Jewish Music Blog, Aryeh critiques the Sameach Music Podcast new "60 second Music Review.
Here are some quite hilarious quotes from this weeks "review" of Pi Shnayim (at 21:40 of the podcast): "Has anyone seen the 'great hit album' Pi Shanyim", "It's such an amazing album, with songs composed by 'the great' Yossi Green", "The vocals are arranged and conducted by 'the one and only' Gideon Levine", "It's a great album full of great music and the vocals top it off with. . . phenomenal voices"....Of course Sameach Music can do whatever they want with their podcast, but I feel that these "reviews" cheapen the albums by not even attempting to describe what makes them unique.He's updated the post to include a response from Sameach.
Rokhl has started a KlezKamp blog.
Alexander Gelfand pens an article on an attempt to make Sephardic music hip.
