"Lizard one" writes:
This song sounds familiar its from a cartoon called castle in the sky. I would appreciate If anyone who recognizes it could tell me who "borrowed" it. Thanks a bunch!Marisa Wetzel forwards a link to "One Rapper Who Can't Seem To Blend In", a Forward article on Jewish rapper Y-Love.
Zal Schreiber writes:
Who is Jay Bee anyway???John Baker contributes another peep:
Whatevr...."Jay Bee writes: Please write something about Mickey Lee Lane, a Far Rockaway/5Towns native, the brother of R Yitzchock Schreiber *& Bernie Schreiber, who is one of the unsung heros of rock n roll. He scored a regional top 10 hit in the mid 60's with The Shaggy Dog. He is is in the madrega of a Chuck Berry or Gene Pitney but never reached the fame or money that they have. When The Rabbis Sons, with Boruch Chait formed in 1967 Mickey put together their sound. Let's hear something about him. In France & Germany they go ga ga over him like they do most old American rock acts.
What about Zal?"
Well, this is Zal.
Firstly, I noticed Ruby Harris' article...and Mickey commented to me when he caught the jiist of Ruby's claiming the FIRST Jewish Rock influence to be the DYB even before we knew of the article....
It would haave been safer to say that DYB was ONE of the first to inculcate Jewish Rock...NOT the first...but that wouldn't have had the same impact, the exclusive-ness, so to speak.
I remember playing at the Hineni Festival at Madison Square Garden's Felt Forum way before the beginnings of DYB, and Mickey's Jewish Bluish of about the same time, and their rocking Tain Shabbat with full fuzz guitar, and a bit of Tijuana Brass thrown in for good measure.
Secondly, and I hate to cause an uproar here, especially considering my guitar playing and focus, but is Jewish Rock really a good thing? Has it made us any more hailig??? Mind you, I had enough of much of the Jewish recordings of the 70s with the overabundance of circus like, brass oriented backdrops....but there still was some real nice stuff mixed in between. But it wasn't rock.
Mickey virtually got the Jewish acts into the studios in those days...the Rabbis Sons, Ohr Chodosh (which was the first album
played bass on since Mickey couldn't make it to that session), Bat Kol, David Nulman...etc...and he played on possibly dozens of the Jewish albums until the influx of musicians from Israel and then Russia eased him out of the top seat.... I played on about a dozen albums from Ruach Revival, Chavrei Chesed, Ohr Hakesef Singers, Yidid, etc....
Mickey had his own studio for awhile...recording his friend (and everybodies') Shlomo Carlebach. Chavrei Chesed recorded their second album there (it was never released. We recorded it in '75...and it was far rockier than anyting Jewish before or even after then...but with taste...Maybe someday it will be released if we can finish it up-properly)....
For one to claim to be the first, well, it needs to be researxhed out and put into perspective.Mickey has a great deal of that living through the history...the Rabbis Sons on the Alan Burke show...his playing for the Presidents....his top 40 song nationwide (top 10 in Mexico, Australia, and even number 1 in Salt Lake City).
Mickey was flown to England back in '97 to co-headline a Rockabilly festival at Hemsby 18, Great Yarnouth, on the easternmost part of the UK, on the North Sea.
He is still musically active, a member of the Holy Beggar's Band (doing Carlebach, of course) and the Honorable Mentchen (my band...I play with the Holy Beggars as well)...and is looking forward to releasing some of the recordings from his archives when we can get it together in the proper fashion.
I worked at Atalantic Studios doing mastering in their CD department for about 16 years, and mastered and mixed the last Emes (II) album. I have my own home studio, and just mastered a klezmer album, soon to be released....
For a very brief discography of albums I've worked on, type in my full name at AllMusic.com in the artist's box.(Zal Schreiber)
A Kiseeva vChaseema Tova to everyone!!!
PS. I played with the Stanley Miller Band ( a wedding band)for a dozen years, co-producing theirr 3 albums. Our second album, was "American Simcha" and it was half instrumental, and the rest had english lyrics with Jewish themes....at times, it was quite rocky...mid to later 70s if my memory serves me well.
How about the "relative of famous musicians"? Being me, that is.Ron Benvenisti responds to an old post from a few years back:
Dad was a trumpet player (long since retired), played in the Chicago Symphony in the 1940s, and taught at High School of Music and Art from 1966-1989. So if a trumpet player is old enough, I ask where he went to high school.
Dad's uncle Shlomke Beckerman was a major klezmer clarinetist in the 1920s, contemporary with Dave Tarras, Naftule Brandwein, and that crowd. Shlomke's son Sidney has taught a lot of the klezmer revivalists, whether directly (Margot Leverett) or at KlezKamp. Shlomke, along with my grandfather Harry Beckerman, were heirs to the family klezmer tradition in Ukraine/Volhynia.
I have a couple of MP3's of Rock B'Simcha that I posted on my website for those who may be interested:
I was given the original live tracks to mix (a nightmare of a job surrounded in anonymity):
"Yosi Be Good" (Ode to Yosi Piamenta)
http://soundassets.com/RBS%20JBG.mp3
"Jumpin' Jack Flash" (Goin' To Shul)
http://soundassets.com/RBS%20JJF.mp3
"Born To Be Frum"
http://soundassets.com/RBS%20BTBF.mp3
