Mickey Mouse and The Tarot Cards

Goodbye El Goodo

By Robert Gordon

Alex stuck his finger down his throat and gagged, showing me that’s how much he hated Memphis. We laughed about it. He didn’t like me much either (something I wrote perhaps, or his interpretation of my horoscope charts), but that didn’t mean we couldn’t laugh together, and it didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy Memphis. He’d recently boarded a flight for a European tour, and the movie showing was The Firm, shot in Memphis—he gagged again. Memphis was a cloak that was hard to shake.

Alex Chilton became a public figure at the age of 16 when, not long after he’d first seen the inside of a recording studio, a song from that session became a 1967 #1 worldwide hit, “The Letter” by the Box Tops. At that impressionable age he became a product packaged and sold, considerable talent yielding considerable profits—for the manager and not the artist. Soon, the monkey walked away from the organ grinder to do his own thing.

His thing: He channeled the future by capturing the underground zeitgeist, three times in the 1970s alone—an audience for the clean pop of the first two Big Star Records caught up to the music a decade after it was made; the third Big Star album was nihilistic and beautiful (hello Elliot Smith and the ‘90s); the shambolic Like Flies on Sherbert deemed hip the wealth and diversity of Americana roots while becoming a punk rock classic. The art of these efforts has become canonized, but the financial return was—again—basically nil. So the monkey bit the hand that fed the banana and cut its own path.

Instead of profit, he was assigned prophecy. But the Replacements only got it half right in their tribute song. Children by the million might have screamed for Alex Chilton, but he’d never have come running. Waves of admiration and love were an assault, and he was scornful of those who needed to make more of his songs than he did. His lifelong interest in astrology makes sense: What is colder, more beautiful, more distant than the stars? Astrology is the province of the seeker, not the sought.

Alex Chilton’s career in song is a testament to his seeking, to his eye for precise detail, his adventuresome ear, his empathetic heart. In a few lines he could chillingly evoke the angst and maelstrom of young adulthood, touching strangers in a personal way (their responses leading to his notorious friction with admirers). He could be a sweetheart as often, and less notoriously, than the contrarian. His mind remained curious all his life, making its own way through politics, the humanities, and sciences with the same zeal he mined R&B, country, classical and all music. He was never predictable, and kept his audience on its guard. In the same late-night late-1970s radio appearance when he sang Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You”—years, of course, before Whitney Houston made a career out of it, he also broke into a filthy racist ballad. His songs were not unlike William Eggleston’s photographs—crisp, saturated, and composed, with an underlying menace, with a throat-aching wistfulness.

Alex was as complicated as Memphis itself. XL Chitterlings, my favorite of his stage names, stole Wilhelm Reich books from the Memphis Public Library because he said no one checked them out, and he gave them to people whom he thought would appreciate them. When a friend heard him explain his world view, he chided him, “You're right Alex, the world is wrong.” Telling me about this later, Alex added “And, hell. I believe that. The world is wrong, I am right.”

To the end, he did it his way. Apparently he’d been feeling bad for several days, but not so bad he couldn’t refuse advice to visit the doctor. Dead at 59, the loss magnified by its abruptness, this meteoric musician is stilled but his great recordings live on. The eulogies will too, much to his likely irritation.


Download:

"I Will Always Love You" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1975.
from WLYX, Memphis, Radio Broadcast.

******************************************

Mickey Mouse and The Tarot Cards

by Ted Barron

A couple of Wednesdays ago, I got off the train on the lower west side and started walking towards Gary's Chop Shop, a recording studio where my friend, Nicholas Hill, hosts and records a show called the Radio Free Song Club. I chose my path carefully, avoiding crowds outside bars. It wasn't any ordinary Wednesday. It was March 17th, Saint Patrick's Day, and the streets of New York were overflowing with inebriated revelers, mostly of non-Irish descent, celebrating their alcoholism.

But that's not the point.

As I approached Hudson Street, my phone rang. It was my old friend, Jared, who calls infrequently, and told me he had some bad news. "Alex Chilton died," he said. I didn't believe him. "Are you sure?" I asked. In this age where information flies around so quickly and sometimes incorrectly, it just didn't seem right. He said it was confirmed by the local Memphis paper. I thanked him for calling to let me know, and still didn't quite believe it. It's funny, because neither of us could say we were friends with Alex, but still, it was the kind of thing that people who were affected by his music would be compelled to share with one another.

When I got upstairs to the studio, I don't think I even said hello, only "Alex Chilton died." It was still breaking news and I had to consult Google to be sure. Everyone assembled there were also in disbelief. I checked, and indeed, it was true. The Radio Free Song Club is a loose conglomeration of songwriters, all of whom have been affected by his music, either directly or indirectly. For that evening's taping, the scheduled phone interview was with Peter Holsapple, who was a friend of Alex's, and also recorded with him. Peter had accompanied some fellow North Carolinians on a pilgrimage to meet Alex and Chris Bell in Memphis in 1978 that was chronicled at this blog a few years ago. Nick wanted to be sure that Peter already knew before the call, so we we checked a certain social networking site where the deaths of many are first publicized by the ubiquitous R.I.P. status updates.

Peter knew.

Still processing the loss of his friend, he had this to say: "It's hard to say how much Alex influenced me and a generation of people to pick up guitars ... you hear him in so many songs, and especially recently ... and I'm just grateful that the mythology of Big Star, that he kind of fought against for years, finally kind of seems to have won out, and people realize what a superb band they were and are ... he will be missed."

The special guests for the March 17th taping were Beth Orton and Sam Amidon. They walked in and we shared the news. Sam said he knew Alex's early Big Star song "Thirteen," and I went to work looking up the lyrics on the internet. Beth and Sam worked out a version, accompanied by the more than able house band of Dave Schramm and David Mansfield, and recorded it in one take. None of the assembled musicians had ever played this song together. It's exceptionally beautiful and was recorded only hours after Alex's death. You can hear it HERE.



******************************************

To a lot of people, Alex Chilton was "that guy from Big Star" or "the singer in the Box Tops." He was, of course, a lot more than that. Some, first learned of him from Paul Westerberg's song, "Alex Chilton" on the Replacements' 1987 record, Pleased To Meet Me, recorded in Memphis with producer Jim Dickinson - who also died prematurely this past year. Dickinson collaborated with Chilton on his two most important records: Sister Lovers and Like Flies on Sherbert. They are records that are both dark and full of light at the same time - the sound of things falling apart and settling into a beautiful mess.

Producer Jon Tiven also tried to record Alex in 1975 in another attempt at capturing the mayhem that was midtown Memphis. He was duly treated as a carpetbagger, and arrived to find Chilton unable to play guitar - his arm was broken. The sessions went on, regardless, and produced a few minor masterpieces, and several other things that probably should have never seen the light of day.



I probably saw Alex Chilton play about twenty times. He was, at times, brilliant, and other times just half-assed. Alex was as good as anyone when he felt like it. Talking to a musician friend of mine who also knew him, I suggested that Alex was a guy who just didn't give it a shit. He corrected me, "No, Chilton was a contrarian." The more I think about it the more I think it's a pretty accurate picture of a guy who did whatever he felt like, especially if it was contrary to what others expected him to do. God bless him, he made a career out of it, and re-invented himself continually while always staying true to his ideals. He would have made a fine aging New Orleans bluesman.

The first time I actually saw him play, was also on a Wednesday night, at Folk City's Music for Dozens - shows for three bucks booked by a pre-Yo La Tengo, Ira Kaplan. I was awestruck. Alex was embarking on a new phase of his career, and had (I think) yet to release Fuedalist Tarts, where he covered Slim Harpo, Willie Tee, and Carla Thomas. For me, and a generation of younger post-punks, we learned about a lot of music from Chilton. His records from the 80s have some songwriting by him, but are mostly flavored by his excellent skill as a song-finder. So were his shows. An incredibly talented songwriter (he could rhyme "Flakier" with "Tammy Baker") and a musician who could effortlessly play nearly anything, including Bach and Jazz standards. He approached songs from an astoundingly democratic position, and was at ease in covering "Volare" (in Italian), as well as K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Jimmy C. Newman, Brenton Wood, Porter Wagoner, Troy Shondell, The Velvet Underground, Frank Sinatra, The Seeds, Guitar Slim, Ronnie and The Daytonas, The Carter Family, The Troggs, Sir Mack Rice, Loudon Wainwright III, Carole King, Ernest Tubb, The Beach Boys, or "Disco Lady" by Johnnie Taylor.

The last time I saw him play, he was also booked by Ira Kaplan, at one of Yo La Tengo's 2007 Hanukkah shows at Maxwell's. I felt lucky, because when buying tickets for these shows, no one knows who the special guest is gonna be on any given night during the eight-night stand. I met Alex a few times over the years, photographed him, made small talk, smoked a joint with him (as most people that spent any time around him did) and after the show with Yo La Tengo, talked to him about sending some photographs that I had made of him. I asked him for his email address. He said he didn't have one, and that he'd never used a computer in his life. He may have been pulling my leg, but I kind of believed him. I took my notebook out of my bag and handed him a pen, and he wrote down his home address in New Orleans. We talked a little bit about New Orleans, and how he had gone "missing" during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Friends tried to persuade him to flee with them to Memphis, but he stayed behind giving them his car. For about a week, no one knew if he was dead or alive. He survived, and was eventually air lifted from his house in Treme. In the Replacements' song, "Alex Chilton," Westerberg sang a line that probably never sat well with Alex, "If he died in Memphis, then that'd be cool, babe."

He didn't.

On March 17th, 2010, while cutting his lawn, he suffered a heart attack and died en route to the hospital in New Orleans, the city that he called home for nearly half of his life. Thanks for the music, Alex.

Flags in Fluville are still flying at half mast.



"Alex Chilton" (alternate version) mp3
by The Replacements, 1987.
available on Pleased to Meet Me

******************************************

Download:

Alex Chilton and Yo La Tengo
Live at Maxwells, December 8, 2007.

"Banter" mp3
"I've Had It" mp3
"The Oogum Boogum Song" mp3
"Let Me Get Close To You" mp3
"Femme Fatale" mp3
"Baby Strange" mp3
"Hey! Little Child" mp3
"Government Center" mp3

******************************************

Download:

"Mod Lang (alternate mix)" mp3
by Big Star, 1974.
available on Keep An Eye On The Sky

"Guantanamerika" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1989.
available on Black List

"Windows Hotel" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1978
from Dusted In Memphis
out of print

"Shakin' The World" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1977
from Dusted In Memphis
out of print

"Train Kept A-Rollin/Mona" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1978.
with Peter Holsapple
available on Beale Street Green

"All Of The Time" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1975.
from Bach's Bottom
out of print

"Singer Not The Song" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1975.
from Bach's Bottom
out of print

"Hook or Crook" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1979.
available on Like Flies on Sherbert

"Alligator Man" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1979.
available on Like Flies on Sherbert

"Stuff" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1985.
available on Feudalist Tarts

"Take It Off" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1987.
available on High Priest

"Lipstick Traces" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1999.
available on Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy

"My Baby Just Cares For Me" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1994
available on Cliches

"Motel Blues (demo)" mp3
by Big Star, 1973.
available on Keep An Eye On The Sky

"Free Again" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1970.
available on Lost Decade

"Nobody's Fool" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1987.
available on High Priest

"Take Care (demo)" mp3
by Big Star, 1974.
available on Keep An Eye On The Sky

******************************************




******************************************
video: outtake from Stranded In Canton, 1974.
by William Eggleston and Robert Gordon.
© Eggleston Artistic Trust

photos:
top to bottom

Alex Chilton at Trader Dick's, Memphis, 1977.
© Pat Rainer

Beth Orton and Sam Amidon, March 17, 2010.
© Ted Barron

Alex Chilton, 1977.
© Stephanie Chernikowski

Paul Westerberg and Alex Chilton, Maxwell's, 1987.
© Ted Barron

West Texas Sound

A few years back, I was talking to a friend of mine about Neil Young's guitar playing, and he said: "You've gotta be really good to play that badly." I knew exactly what he meant. The same can be said for singers who scream-- the best ones are great singers to begin with. Look no further than James Brown. In my opinion, there's no greater screamer in American music of recent years than Greg Cartwright, who happens to be a great singer as well.

By the photograph and title of this post, you may have thought you were gonna get some of Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs. Sorry, that's not the case. Cartwright, a veteran of several seminal Memphis punk bands, was fronting the Reigning Sound (with whom he has since relocated to Asheville NC), when the Toronto band The Deadly Snakes came through town and asked him to produce their second record, I'm Not Your Soldier Anymore. Cartwright, not only produced it, but played and sang with the band, most notably on a track called "West Texas Sound." I'm not exactly sure what this song is about, but I get, and it's riveting, forceful, and driving punk rock. Below, is the said track, as well as some other excellent examples of Cartwright's vocal prowess, including two versions of "If You Can't Give Me Everything," screamed and then sung.

photos: by Ted Barron © 2010.
top: Near El Paso, 1987.
below: Reigning Sound, Brooklyn, NY, 2006.



Download:

"West Texas Sound" mp3
by The Deadly Snakes, 2001.
available on I'm Not Your Soldier Anymore

"Talk To Me" mp3
by the Oblivians, 1995.
available on The Best of the Worst: 93-97

"Stop & Think It Over" mp3
by the Compulsive Gamblers, 2000.
available on Crystal Gazing Luck Amazing

"Straight Shooter" mp3
by the Reigning Sound, 2002.
available on Time Bomb High School

"If You Can't Give Me Everything" mp3
by the Reigning Sound, 2004.
available on Too Much Guitar

"If You Can't Give Me Everything" mp3
by the Reigning Sound, 2005.
available on Home for Orphans

A Message From The Meters

It's snowing in New York today. It's lovely and picturesque, but I wish I was in New Orleans. Today is Fat Tuesday, and it's time for us to listen to four sides from 1971 by the Meters.

Download:



"A Message from the Meters" mp3
by The Meters, 1971.
available on Zony Mash



"Zony Mash" mp3
by The Meters, 1971.
available on Zony Mash



"Good Old Funky Music" mp3
by The Meters, 1971.
available on Zony Mash



"Sassy Lady" mp3
by The Meters, 1971.
available on Zony Mash

Valentine's Day (sort of)

I've done a Valentine's Day post every year here at the BWF, and seriously considered taking this one off. Partially, because I'm not thrilled by this particular holiday, and also I've found writing to be increasingly difficult as of late - hence the relative silence here. Writer's block, I guess, which is funny because I'm not even a writer, I'm a photographer.

So, happy Valentines Day to all of you who are lucky enough to be attached and happy about celebrating it on this particular day. Personally, as time goes on I find this day to be a bit of a farce - another Hallmark enforced holiday to make us feel like shit whether we're in love or not - but that, of course, is strictly subjective and contingent upon my own current milieu. I don't mean to be a bummer here, and perhaps I am. There's thousands of songs about how great it is to be in love - some of them are great, but most of them are lies. Love, like a rose garden in the dark is sticky, prickly, and dangerous. It's constantly shifting and rarely meeting for any length of time between the parties involved. When it does, though, it's a beautiful thing. I believe in the wonder of love, and that ultimately it can conquer all. Unfortunately, it can also be slippery, elusive, and painful. But enough about me.

In physiological terms, new love creates all kinds of chaotic brain chemistry: endorphins, adrenaline, dopamine, and seratonin, that actually causes a euphoria not different than that which a drug addict controls though daily use. Unfortunately, these things level out after a few months and only the strong survive. It's no accident that most new love affairs lose their passion after this initial burst of electrical transmission of brain synapses.

When compiling this little playlist I noticed a number of songs that refer to love as an addiction or affliction. It can be, and it ain't no joke. In 12-Step programs, "insanity" is defined as trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Where else is this more prevalant in our everyday lives than in love relationships.

Carla Thomas finds herself weak and defenseless over her lover in "Strung Out," a term used to describe addiction itself. She's powerless and can't help herself. Peter Perrett (The Only Ones), who wrote dozens of thinly veiled love songs about drugs gives us, "Oh Lucinda (True Love Becomes a Habit), which is somewhat less transparent. "Love Is The Drug," by Roxy Music needs little explanation. Bryan Ferry has the hook in him he's trolling downtown looking to score. You can substitute love for sex in this one. Sonic Youth's 1980's side project, Ciccone Youth, does a tongue- in-cheek take on Robert Palmer's hit "Addicted To Love," which is best known for it's MTV video of Palmer singing the the song with cloned super-models acting as his band. It's another song about withdrawal and looking for a fix.

Anyway, do enjoy your Valentines Day, regardless, and I should also like to remind you that this year it coincides with (on a cosmic level) the new moon and the Chinese New Year of the Roaring Tiger. Be safe, lovers and romantics, and have a happy whatever you choose day.

I'm going to Chinatown.






Download:

"Strung Out" mp3
by Carla Thomas, 1969.
available on The Complete Stax-Volt Soul Singles, Vol. 2: 1968-1971

"Oh Lucinda (True Love Becomes a Habit)" mp3
by The Only Ones, 1978.
available on
Baby's Got a Gun

"Love Is The Drug" mp3
by Roxy Music, 1983.
available on Siren

"Addicted To Love" mp3
by Ciccone Youth, 1988.
available on The Whitey Album

top photo: © Ted Barron, 2010.

Howlin' at the Moon

There's a big, beautiful, Wolf Moon in the sky tonight.


*******************

Download:

"Howlin' at the Moon" mp3
by Hank Williams, 1951.
available on Hank Williams - 40 Greatest Hits


"Moanin' the Blues" mp3
by Hank Williams, 1950.
available on Hank Williams - 40 Greatest Hits

"Moanin' at Midnight" mp3
by Howlin' Wolf, 1951.
available on Howlin' Wolf/Moanin' in the Moonlight

"Baby Ride With Me (Ridin' In The Moonlight)"mp3
by Howlin' Wolf, 1952.
available on Memphis Days: Definitive Edition, Vol. 1

Three Years In Fluville

January 8th means two things around here. It's the anniversary of the Boogie Woogie Flu and it's the day on which the baby Elvis came into the world. I like that this blog shares it's birthday with the King, and I can also assure you that it's no accident. The very first post here, was a look at a few records that we can speculate Elvis had in his own record collection. That post is once again active, and you can listen to it in all of it's crackly glory HERE.

In 1957, the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller began working with Elvis as he was beginning work on the film, Jailhouse Rock. In their first sessions with him they recorded and produced (among others) "Jailhouse Rock" and "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care." In Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography, Mike Stoller recalls Elvis making a request:

One day he approached me as we were leaving the set.
"Mike," he said "I want you to write me a real pretty ballad."

And so they did.

Three days later they recorded "Don't" which became a number one hit for the King in January, 1958. No one sings a ballad like Elvis, except maybe Keith Richards, who recorded his own solo piano version of "Don't" while he was waiting around in Toronto in 1977 to stand trial for a minor misunderstanding he had with the customs authorities there. We usually celebrate Keith's birthday here as well, but in the flurry of the holidays, it was sadly overlooked. Keith is still among the undead and turned a youthful hundred and something on December 18th. Elvis would have been seventy five today, and the Boogie Woogie Flu is three.

Download:



"Don't" mp3
by Elvis Presley, 1958.
available on Elv1s 30 #1 Hits

"Don't" mp3
by Keith Richards, 1977.
Out on Bail (and out of print)

From the Amen Corner

Download:

"You Midnight Ramblers" mp3
by Rev. J. M. Gates, 1929.
available on Rev. J.M. Gates Vol. 7 (1929-1930)

"Midnight Rambler" mp3
by The Rolling Stones, 1973.
Live in Perth, Australia
from Exiles Afternoon "Revisited"

(Fast, and the best version of this song that I've ever heard.)

******************************

BONUS:

"Married Man's A Fool" mp3
by Ry Cooder, 1974.
available on Paradise and Lunch

Blue Moon

Tonite is an astrologer's wet dream. Did I just say that? I know very little about astrology, but the moon in our skies is a blue one, or more precisely the second full moon of the month, with a partial eclipse, and it's made of (blue) cheese. It's also New Years Eve. The term, "once in a blue moon" has come to mean seldom, rarely, or perhaps never. Apply this as you wish, to whatever may be your current milieux. A full moon is prone to wreak emotional intensity or mahyem. Wolves howl at them, and singers sing about them.

"Blue Moon" is a Rogers and Hart standard. Lorenz Hart wrote four different sets of lyrics to it for four different Hollywood films. The one that stuck, has been recorded by hundreds of artists, and the Elvis Presley version of 1954, is in my mind, one of the most beautiful and haunting records ever recorded. Sam Phillips summoned up some real magic that day in Memphis. Another beautiful and different song of the same name, was recorded by Big Star, in the same city twenty years later with another shaman producer--the late great Jim Dickinson--at the helm.

Bill Monroe's 1947 hit, "Blue Moon of Kentucky" is also a standard, in bluegrass, country, and rock 'n roll. Elvis recorded it in the same sessions that yielded "Blue Moon." In Monroe's version, it's a sad and plaintive waltz to a lost love, ("It was on a moonlight night/ The stars were shining bright/ and they whispered from on high/ Your love has said goodbye"). The stars are whispering to Monroe and he asks the moon to shine on the one that's gone and left him blue. Bill Monroe was a spiritual man, and made some of the spookiest records I know. In some folktales, a blue moon has a face and talks to those in it's light. Elvis, states the same, but asks a favor of the moon in a new set of lyrics for the introduction, "Keep on shining bright and bring me back my baby tonite."

What does all this mean? I haven't a clue. Consult an astrologer.

Happy New Year, and may the moon shine on you and yours, brightly, tonight.




Download:

"Blue Moon" mp3
by Elvis Presley, 1954.
available on Elvis at Sun

"Blue Moon" mp3
by Big Star, 1974
available on Keep An Eye On The Sky



"Blue Moon of Kentucky" mp3
by Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys, 1947.
available on Bill Monroe: Anthology

"Blue Moon of Kentucky" mp3
by Elvis Presley, 1955.
available on Elvis at Sun

Of Loss and Longing and Sloppy Satori

by René Spencer Saller

I wish I didn’t have to write this obituary, elegy, tribute, grief porn, whatever. I got the assignment on Christmas night––after spending the day hoping, recklessly and stupidly, that Vic Chesnutt might emerge from his coma and, even more improbably, be magically scoured of his chronic death wish––and, with the full understanding that an obit should be, if nothing else, timely, I put off writing it and slipped a DVD into my iMac instead: Jean Cocteau’s frothy fable in glorious grisaille, La Belle et la Bête. This failed attempt to distract myself only reminded me of Chesnutt and his catalog of beautiful beasts. I was unaccountably pissed off. Couldn’t I postpone my sadness, pretend for a night that the gravity of the situation was not, in fact, apparent to us all? Sugarplums and baby Jesuses should have been dancing in my head, not drafts of sentences about how some poor sad fucker offed himself and why we should be sorry.

“The Gravity of the Situation” (live) mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 1995.
from WFMU's Radio Thrift Shop
at the Museum of Television & Radio
(courtesy: Laura Cantrell)

"Myrtle"(live) mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 1996.
from WFMU's The Music Faucet
(courtesy: Nicholas Hill)

“Bernadette & Her Crowd” mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 1998.
available on The Salesman and Bernadette

"Sultan, So Mighty" mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 2003.
available on Silver Lake

I regretted the lack of oxycodone, tried to console myself with my mother-in-law’s macaroons. I put away the Cocteau DVD and replaced it with The Salesman and Bernadette, Chesnutt’s 1998 masterpiece, and the man I never knew but loved came alive to me again, my own beautiful, unattainable, much-mourned Bernadette: Vic, I honor you. Vic, I owe you some.

Maybe it’s wrong to mourn him. Maybe we should respect his right to kill himself no matter how much it hurts the people who love him, because that's his choice, and life loses all meaning if it’s mandatory. Maybe it's selfish to ask additional favors of a man who suffered more in his 45 years than most of us can imagine. How many times have you heard someone say that he (and it's almost always a he) would kill himself if he ever became paralyzed? Chesnutt faced this nightmare and stuck it out for a long time. A car accident made him a paraplegic at the age of 18, and he spent the remaining 27 years in a wheelchair. In a weird way, maybe this qualifies as what some theologians call the Fortunate Fall, a bad event with good consequences. Maybe it helped transform him from, in his words, “a redneck bum from Georgia” to a sui generis musical genius, a songwriter’s songwriter, championed first by Michael Stipe and then by countless others, from Madonna to Jonathan Richman to Patti Smith. Without that formative misfortune, could he have written a song like “Sultan, So Mighty,” an odd and lovely little number from 2003’s Silver Lake, which he sings, in a spectral falsetto, from the perspective of a court eunuch? Would he have had the imagination, the empathy, to cast his lot with the freaks, the rejects, the degenerates? (Consider, for example, his heartbreaking, definitive cover of Daniel Johnston’s “Like a Monkey in the Zoo.”) At any rate, despite or because of his suffering, he made more people happy in his brief time on this planet than most of us can hope to do if we live twice as long. As he sang in a tender, revelatory cover of Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain,” “Life is sad, life is a bust/All you can do is do what you must.” He did what he must do, and he did it well.

"Like A Monkey In The Zoo" mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 2004.
available on The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered

"Buckets Of Rain" mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 2003.
available on Crossing Jordan

"The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia" mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 1995.
available on Star Power!

He called himself “a brokeback atheist,” so I'm not going to hope he's in a better place, or at peace, or hanging out in heaven with his mama, eating pecan pie on a fluffy pearlescent cloud. What do you say on the death of an atheist? What can you wish for him? A miraculously intact spinal cord, pleasure in place of pain? For most believers, heaven is the absence of all hardship, the end to all desire, a magnificent tautology. Heaven, even the hypothetical heaven that nonbelievers believe in, is deadly dull. Chesnutt was many things, but he was never boring. It’s impossible to imagine him in that sterile libido-proof realm, this beautiful broken man who plucked blossoms from the muck, who found his consolation in the imperfect here, in the brutal now.

You could easily turn his suicide into an argument for single-payer health care, as several commentators have done. It’s especially tempting because Chesnutt, who had racked up more than $50,000 in medical debt despite the fact that he had health insurance, railed against our colossally corrupt system in recent interviews. As someone who knows all too well the unique agony of bickering with some midlevel insurance rep when you’re way too sick to care anymore, I have to wonder if he simply got tired of fighting. Maybe he figured, “Fuck it all, I did what I must do, and I did it well. Now I’m through.” He made many great records, he had thousands of fans all over the world, if nowhere near as many as he deserved, and a bunch of people he admired and respected admired and respected him back. What more could anyone reasonably expect? Maybe he got sick of always having to make that extra effort, always having to measure up.

But using Chesnutt’s death to advance a political argument seems reductive and wrong, and speculating about his motives won’t bring him back.

Suicide, unfortunately, inducts you into a special club, and you might not like the other members. There you are, wedged between Ian Curtis and Sylvia Plath, Mohammed Atta and David Foster Wallace, Kurt Cobain and my maternal grandmother. Everyone starts reading your life backward. They start inferring dark shit from your every innocent pronouncement, imposing new, unintended meanings. Skinny girls in black lipstick flop around in their darkened bedrooms and mouth the words to your songs, carve your lyrics into their flesh. Suddenly, despite your best intentions, you’re, ugh, kind of goth. Chesnutt, whose best songs are, like all great works of art, life-affirming and happy-making regardless of their subject, deserves a better fate.

I wish he wouldn’t have done it, of course, but more than that I wish he wouldn’t have wanted to do it. But then we’re back to the old Fortunate-Fall paradox: Maybe his curse was his gift. The ability to experience joy and share it comes with a price, the necessity of pain. Numb yourself to the latter, and you deny yourself the former.

And joy abounds in Chesnutt’s canon, a joy that’s always pitted against pain but somehow prevails. He grapples with the can’t-go-on-must-go-on quandary in Silver Lake’s transcendent closer, “In My Way, Yes,” a touching argument against self-annihilation. After he runs through a litany of life’s little compensations (“Driving fast all night/Bursting into song at first light/Sharing breakfast from one plate/Holding hands over loved ones’ graves”), a stern Greek chorus of alter egos asks him if he thinks he deserves his happiness, to which he replies, “I say yes, in my way yes.” Never has self-affirmation sounded so heroic.

“In My Way, Yes” mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 2003.
available on Silver Lake

“Flirted With You All My Life” mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 2009.
available on At the Cut

In the recent song “Flirted With You All My Life,” which Chesnutt described as a “breakup song with death,” he informs Death, the “You” of the title, that he’s not ready, not yet ready, to die. In hindsight, it’s far from reassuring. I said I wouldn’t speculate, but I can’t help myself. Why did he do it when he said he wouldn’t? Guess what, Vic: We weren’t ready either. We still aren’t.

Let’s try to be grateful for all the beautiful songs he left us––about 15 albums’ worth, depending on how you count them––and stop being greedy, wishing for more.

Here are a few that I’ve been comforting myself with lately, from my favorite Vic Chesnutt albums, The Salesman and Bernadette and Silver Lake.

There’s “Old Hotel,” which I recently decided is a metaphor for the human body, the way it can both betray and redeem us. The original version, on Salesman, is strange and a little off-putting, with Chesnutt’s multitracked mutter bobbing above Lambchop’s funereal horns. The vocal effect makes him sound slightly detached, at some remove. The lyrics are among Chesnutt’s best, though, a stoneristic riddle that starts out sordid (“I can see my old hotel down amongst the smells. I’m up above that ancient city river. It’s filtered by my lousy liver. It’s filtered by my wilted lily liver”) and accumulates an unlikely grace (“I’m giddy like a tipsy Mary Poppins”). The live version, from a 1995 performance on WFMU’s Radio Thrift Shop, is knee-bucklingly beautiful, with a more intimate arrangement of keening cello, shivery vibes, and Chesnutt’s plangent rasp.

“Old Hotel” (live) mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 1995.
from WFMU's Radio Thrift Shop
at the Museum of Television & Radio
(courtesy: Laura Cantrell)

He’s one of those lyricists whose words can fall flat on the page––deliberately, operatically flat, like a slapstick stunt that makes you laugh all the harder because you know how much it hurt. For every perfect line, there’s a real howler, and it’s this friction between the sublime and the silly that sets Chesnutt apart from lesser poets. He is endearingly unafraid of looking stupid. He makes ridiculous rhymes, or more precisely, he reveals his own ridiculousness by stretching for them and failing extravagantly, like a sitcom drunk. He doesn’t embrace so much as tongue-kiss the absurd.

Sometimes he rhymes like a very stoned person trying to be funny, which, it turns out, can actually be really funny. Then, while you’re all relaxed and giggly, he tosses off a couplet so devastatingly gorgeous that you’d swear he ripped it off Yeats. He’s often quite crude, in an almost self-consciously juvenile way, as on the horndog pastorale “Maiden,” a sweet and slow art-soul high-five to fucking that begins, “Dogs are barking. Birds are chirping. The only thing better is if I was squirting.” It’s one of many songs in which he pokes fun at himself, at the male ego.

"Maiden" mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 1998
available on The Salesman and Bernadette

He has always reminded me of Stanley Elkin, another dirty-minded genius in a wheelchair, another crass and extravagant lover of life. Elkin, who had multiple sclerosis, was a big-shot novelist at Washington University in St. Louis, where I attended grad school. I never took a class with him, never had the nerve, but more than once I saw male students awkwardly heaving him up the stairs of the old elevatorless building where Hurst Lounge, site of most of the fiction and poetry readings, was located. It seems unfathomable now, in light of the Americans with Disabilities Act and insurance regulations and the potential for lawsuits, that anyone, much less a literary lion, would have to undergo that particular humiliation, but endure it he did, probably several times a semester. All the petty indignities, the physical and emotional pain: How did they imprint themselves on Elkin’s work, on Chesnutt’s? To what extent are they responsible for that radiant empathy?

“Stay Inside,” another standout from Silver Lake, is the atheist’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” an introvert’s manifesto. Supported by a mournful choir and stately Wurlitzer, Chesnutt’s slippery moan sounds soulful and reverent, as timeless as Dylan or the Bible. Printed on a page, the words are almost unbearably sad: The last verse goes, “Suddenly everything’s different and/Everyone’s on edge/I just wanted to bring folks together/But it seems that I am the biggest wedge.” It’s hard to resist staying inside, the siren call of the chorus, when you know that shutting yourself off is the only sure way to keep from causing further damage. Somehow, though, the song demolishes its own argument, comes out on the side of the communal. It is so perversely beautiful that it almost sounds holy, more holy than a song that references stinky bedclothes has any right to be. The band comes together, gingerly at first and then with a loose but locked-in grandeur, as if they’ve all tapped into the universal mind. We’re not alone, not yet.

Come back outside, Vic. We owe you some.

"Stay Inside" mp3
by Vic Chesnutt, 2003.
available on Silver Lake

***************************************

If you would like to make a contribution to VC's family, to help defray his medical bills, follow THIS LINK.

Joe Strummer

Joe Strummer died seven years ago yesterday. He was pretty cool.

Download:

"Johnny Appleseed" mp3
by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, 2001.
available on Global a Go-Go

"Julie's In The Drug Squad" mp3
by The Clash, 1978.
available on Give 'em Enough Rope

"Groovy Times" mp3
by The Clash, 1979.
available on Super Black Market Clash

"Broadway" mp3
by The Clash, 1980.
available on Sandinista!

******************

"Redemption Song" mp3
by Johnny Cash & Joe Strummer, 2001.
available on Unearthed

Mistaken Identity

By Chris O'Leary

"Listen, I told you I'm not a Jew."
"I don't give a damn what you are," he turned his half-dark eyes to me, wrenching his arm loose. "You talk like a Jew."
"What does that mean?" Some part of me wanted to laugh.
"How does a Jew talk?"
"They talk like you, buddy."

-John Berryman, "The Imaginary Jew"
The Kenyon Review, Vol. 7, No. 4, Autumn, 1945.

Although my name is Christopher Paul O’Leary and I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church (that’s as far as it went: no communion, no confirmation), I am regularly taken for a Jew. This could be simply because I have a beard and wear glasses, or maybe whatever Irish Catholic residue I still carry reads instead as Jewish: a faulty translation.

I grew up in southwestern Virginia, where there are few Catholics, let alone Jews. My identity was fixed then. My third-grade teacher had me stand in front of the class and explain what a Catholic was. I stammered and tried to remember something from the masses I attended in the summer, when I was under the care of my grandmother in Connecticut. At last I said, “Well, we have the Pope.” The teacher, a brutal mountain-bred descendant of Covenanters, nodded. “That you do,” she said, and silently consigned me to hell.

Something changed. The Jewish confusion, let’s call it (it would be a good band name), first occurred in Boston, while I was in college. A Hasidic teenager with a clipboard (I never learned what he wanted) was approaching students on Commonwealth Avenue. He quickly appraised me: “Jewish, yes?” He startled me and I sharply replied no. He stepped back, stared at me again and said, “Well, good!”

It was a backwards curse. Once I moved to New York, the Jewish confusions multiplied. A typical example: I was walking on Eighth Avenue and ahead of me a man was passing out fliers for a strip club while he kept up a running patter. “Hey come on down. Come on down the block. Your wife don’t have to know. Your girlfriend don’t have to know.” He spun towards me. “Your rabbi don’t have to know. Come on down the block.”

I was even Jew-bashed once, in Sunnyside, Queens, while walking to the subway. As a group of teenagers passed me, the largest one nearly knocked me to the sidewalk as he sneered, “Well if it isn’t our friendly neighborhood Jew!” The rest laughed and cursed. I stewed over the encounter for days—angry at being harassed for something I wasn’t, then feeling guilty for being indignant about that factor. But there are more legitimate reasons to harass me, I countered. I was the victim of inaccurate bigots. I grew paranoid and wondered if people in the local market called me “the friendly neighborhood Jew” after I left. I stopped being friendly.

I married a half-Jew (I still have a menorah in the basement), we moved to Massachusetts, we divorced. Soon after the latter, I had to drive to Old Greenwich, Connecticut, to cover a conference. Old Greenwich is the sort of place where money goes for its retirement. Even the sewer grates look pristine. I pulled into a palatial hotel. The attendant at the gate was a West Indian man who offered me a wide smile and pointed at my chest: “Let me guess---you’re Jewish!” he boomed.

He seemed to savor the last word, drawing out the vowels. He seemed elated he had found a Jew. Was he one too? Was he grabbing at the opportunity to bond with any type of perceived outsider? Or was he just some lunatic? I denied the charge yet again, shaking my head no, took my ticket and drove past. He looked so sad. I’ve since regretted not temporarily converting for him: for a moment I finally would have been what the world wanted me to be.

Download:

"Dem Rebin's Nigun, Oy Tate (The Rabbi's Tune/That's The Way)"
by Lt. Joseph Frankel and Orchestra, 1919.
available on Klezmer Music 1910-1942: Recordings from the Yivo

top photograph: by Garry Winogrand Untitled, c. 1950s.

Hanukkah Party

by Pamela Harris

Years ago I got invited to a book party at Warner Leroy’s apartment. A foodie Jew, Mr. Leroy owned Tavern on the Green, The Russian Tea Room, et al. He came from a line of uber Jews -- his grandfather, Harry Warner, was Warner Brothers. and his father, Mervyn, produced The Wizard of Oz. (When filming completed, little Warner inherited little Toto.)

His apartment was in the Dakota -- Roman Polanski, naughty Jew, shot Rosemary’s Baby there -- a gothic fantasy of a building that looks massive from the outside, but inside is divided into quadrants around a large courtyard. (It was built this way to let more light in.)

The party was for a best of New York cookbook and took place on the last night of Hanukkah. My date was a nice Jewish boy. We entered the courtyard and a friendly gatekeeper directed us to a rickety elevator that was manned by an equally rickety attendant. The elevator creaked to a rise and a well-dressed woman behind me whispered to no one, "Warner’s neighbor is Leonard Bernstein," West Side Story musical genius Jew. But he also wrote "Kaddish" and "Mass."

And he was in The Revuers with Judy Holliday, a fellow Dakotan. I knew who she was because when I was a kid my dad and I would watch Creature Double Feature movies on Channel 38 and I’d sometimes get screaming. Most of the movies looked like they were made out of paper plates and glue, but occasionally the programmers would slip in Terror in the Wax Museum or Night of the Living Dead and I’d howl in the pillows until my dad changed the channel. The day he flipped the channel to Born Yesterday, a Judy Holliday (b. Judy Tuvim) fan was born.

I was wishing that Judy was still alive; maybe I’d see her upstairs and we’d share a latke, when the elevator stopped and a smiling blond welcomed us through the apartment’s heavy doors. She took our coats and we walked through a foyer into a hall. The ceilings were so high a T. Rex could roam upright -- Marc Bolan, singing Jew (b. Marc Feld) was front man for the band T. Rex -- and my date and I immediately snagged two grease-free mini latkes off a passing tray. We made our way toward the sound of the crowd, trying to be elegant as we downed three caviar blintzes and a quick glass of champagne.

At the end of the hall was a small living room. A Willem de Kooning – husband of Jewish painter Elaine - hung across from a Jasper Johns and I glimpsed the edge of what looked like a drawing by macho Jew Richard Serra. Central Park was lit up through deep-pocketed windows and the buildings far across the park were framed in a way that made their staccato heights look like a Menorah. I could see the old territory of Dutch Schultz – gangster Jew (b. Arthur Flegenheimer) –- and from this vantage point I understood why he wanted to own the city. This was New York, just like I pictured it.

My date wrote for an entertainment magazine and knew everyone by sight. We stood by the windows and stuffed our faces as he pointed out publishers and company presidents. I perked up when he gestured to a nondescript 30-something man. “His last name is Witz. I think he’s related to Gene Simmons.”

“From Kiss?”

My date nodded. “Simmons’s real name is Chaim Witz. He went to a yeshiva in Brooklyn.” My date grabbed four champagnes off a passing tray and gave me two. “Aerosmith’s drummer, Joey Kramer, is from the Bronx.” We downed the champagne and he gracefully cornered four more glasses. Barbra Streisand, Funny Girl Jew, quietly sang from speakers. “Blue Oyster Cult – Sandy Pearlman and Richard Meltzter started that band. Us Jews can rock.”

My date was nebbishy, nasally and nerdy. I was beginning to like him. We finished off two more glasses of champagne and lined up six more on the window seat. “Mama Cass was a big Jew,” I said. “So was Carole King.” Now he was starting to like me.

I snagged a handful of mushroom cups – I was getting drunk – and handed some to my date. “My uncle was a poet,” I said. “He lived on Leonard Cohen’s couch until he ended up in a loony bin in Massachusetts.” Pop pop – I tossed the mushroom cups down my throat and chased them with champagne.

My cuter by the second date did the same then said, “My uncle Milton knew Barry Manilow when he was Barry Alan Pincus.” Why that was funny I don’t know but I snorted a laugh and champagne came out my nose. Wendy Wasserstein – Pulitzer Prize winning Jew – grinned at us then took a seat next to a man who looked like Don Kirschner, the monotone maven of 1970’s televised Friday Night Rock Concerts.

“Oh my god – “ I said a little too loud then pointed my elbow at Joey Ramone, punk Jew (b. Jeffrey Hyman.) My night was made. I had just been turned on to "I Believe in Miracles" and had worn the type off the ‘repeat’ button on my boom box. My date stumbled over to talk with him and I went to look for a bathroom.

A waiter pointed me past an elegant staircase into a master bedroom. I went into the master bath and as I washed my hands it registered that the little painting above the sink was a Renoir. I wanted to put it in my pants, the way we used to steal steaks from Waldbaums when I was in art school. Was that who I was still? Was that who I wanted to be? I smoothed the hand towels out and exited fast.

My date was at the windows, waiting for me. I grew up a lone Jew in New England’s Irish Catholic-ville where the Festival of Lights was Santa and his sleigh bells. I always felt too Jewish for there and not Jewish enough for New York. I walked to my date and we stood side by side, silent, looking out over the lights of Central Park. Etta James’s "At Last" came on the stereo and suddenly too much or not enough no longer mattered.

Download:

"At Last" mp3
by Etta James, 1961.
available on At Last!

"Telegram Sam" mp3
by T. Rex, 1972.
available on The Slider

"I Believe In Miracles" mp3
by The Ramones, 1989.
available on Brain Drain

"The Magazine Seller" mp3
by The Revuers, 1940.
Judy Holliday, Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, Adolf Green
from NBC Radio Broadcast

"Cities on Flame With Rock & Roll" mp3
by Blue Öyster Cult, 1972.
available on Blue Öyster Cult

"Seasons of Wither" mp3
by Aerosmith, 1974.
available on Get Your Wings

"Got A Feelin'" mp3
by The Mamas and the Papas, 1966.
available on Gold

"Way Over Yonder" mp3
by Carole King, 1971.
available on Tapestry

*****************

Bonus:

The intro track to the Channel 38 Creature Double Feature.
[ed. note: It's very scary.]

"Toccata" mp3
by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, 1973.
available on Brain Salad Surgery

The Jew Hall of Fame

The Chanukah Song @ Yahoo! Video

by Jason Gross

The editor here didn't want me to write about this and I understand why. It's mainstream corn, which doesn't have a place here otherwise, where roots music and under-rated artists get feted. Even though the idea of celebrating Jewish music around Chanukah time is admirable, in covering this, it also reminds us of the uncomfortable problem that Sandler's song brings up in the first place.

When he premiered it on Saturday Night Live in December 1994, he started it out like this:

"When I was a kid, this time of year always made me feel a little left out because in school, there were so many Christmas songs and all us Jewish kids had was the song 'Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.' So I wrote a brand new song for all you Jewish kids to sing and I hope you like it."

And then he launches into a song with a weird folky melody and hilarious lyrics that no one can remember except for the chorus. That didn't stop "The Chanukah Song" from becoming an instant classic.

Sandler had been on SNL since 1990 but this particular song was one of the reasons that he became a break-out star, going into a movie career the year after he sang this on the show.

The one thing in particular that struck me about the song is that it's still a classic fifteen years after the fact. When Billboard Magazine published its list of holiday hits based on radio play, "The Chanukah Song" came up as #3 on the rock list, beat out by Trans-Siberian Orchestra and U2 but charting higher than Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas," Springsteen's "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town," No Doubt and the freaky Bowie/Bing duet. In fact, it's the only Jewish song on the list. So like it or not, it's a holiday mainstay.

Not only did Sandler give us a funny song that the goyem themselves loved but he also got to show off some of the biggest stars in our ranks: David Lee Roth, James Caan, Kirk Douglas, Dinah Shore, Sha Na Na's Bowser, Arthur Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler), Paul Newman, Goldie Hawn, Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nemoy), Howard Schultz (football owner), Ann Landers, Dear Abby, Three Stooges. He flubs Rod Carew (who does have a Jewish family otherwise) and Harrison Ford (not a 'quarter-jew' as he says). OJ Simpson and Scrooge ain't Jewish, he says but Tom Cruise's agent probably is (another wanna check that?). In a 1999 live version, he includes Winona Ryder, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, the Beastie Boys, Lenny Kravitz, Courtney Love, Harvey Keitel, Dustin Hoffman and Bob Dylan. For a 2002 movie version, he name-checks Melissa Gilbert, Michael Landon, Jerry Lewis, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Tom Arnold, Harry Houdini, Sean Penn, Perry Farrell, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Connelly, Lou Reed, Paula Abdul, Joey Ramone, Natalie Portman (and for some reason, adds Willie Nelson to the list).

Since he’s a pop artist, he picks up on the most obvious stars, mostly from film with a few token music biz people thrown in for fun and more specifically American Jews in the entertainment biz. Still, he obviously had a much bigger, broader list that he could have worked with that could have included other popular Yankee Jews like: Pat Benatar, Blue Oyster Cult, the Cars, Mama Cass Elliot, Tony Curtis, J. Geils Band, Andy Kaufman, Barry Manilow, Bette Midler, Randy Newman, Gene Simmons, Paul Simon, Steely Dan, Tony Randall, Geraldo Rivera, Joan Rivers, Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg, Howard Stern, Barbara Streisand, Tiny Tim, and Gene Wilder.

But of course, that's just for starters. Sandler didn't wanna look like a fogey so he left out some great oldies: Harold Arlen, Milton Berle, Irving Berlin, Charlie Chaplin, Fanny Brice, Sid Caesar, Eddie Cantor, Cecil B. DeMille, George Gershwin, Benny Goodman, Elliot Gould, George Jessel, Al Jolson, Danny Kaye, Marx Brothers, Walter Matthau, Beverly Sills, Phil Silvers, Neil Simon, and Mel Torme.

For us culture junkies, we can always dream of a version of "The Chanukah Song" that would give shout-out's to some of our own alternative faves: Jonathan Ames, Diane Arbus, Asleep at the Wheel, Richard Avedon, Milton Babbitt, Bad Religion, Saul Bellow, Carl Bernstein, Harold Bloom, Lenny Bruce, Paddy Chayefsky, Aaron Copland, Albert Einstein, Jonathan Safran Foer, Robert Frank, Alan Freed, Kinky Friedman, Jerome Kern, Stanley Kramer, Tony Kushner, David Mamet, Meyer Lansky, Norman Lear, Jonathan Lethem, Helen Levitt, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Meredith Monk, Barnett Newman, Robert Oppenheimer, Harold Pinter, Steve Reich, Jerome Robbins, Jonathan Richman, Richard Rodgers, Philip Roth, Mark Rothko, Mort Sahl, Maurice Sendak, Rod Serling, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Susan Sontag, Gertrude Stein, Lee Strasberg, Studs Turkel, and Elie Wiesel. Think of it: Sandler could come up with some great rhymes for Forer, Oppenheimer and Wiesel alone.

And then there's the 100's of others that Sandler and I both missed...

Neil Diamond (a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn) covered the song on his recent holiday album (A Cherry Cherry Christmas), which included Christmas songs otherwise. But I seriously believe that the tune is ripe for cover versions many times over, where any of the names above that Sandler missed could be thrown in.

And why not? Anyone who scoffs at Sandler and his song misses the point. Compare him to later-day Jewish musical comedy and he's brainier than 2 Live Jew but not quite up there with Good For the Jews or M.O.T., which both happen to feature great music scribes (Rob Tannenbaum and Roy Trakin respectively). There's Jewish musicians who explore their faith in much more complex way, especially John Zorn and the Klezmatics (and more recently film-makers the Coen brothers), not to mention Jewish artists who don't explicitly explore their faith but seem to use it as a springboard for inspiration and exploration, like Dylan, Paul Simon, Woody Allen, Leonard Cohen. But Sandler is a comedian first and foremost and the boy ain't no artiste. He's unsubtle but good at what he does, which is getting over-the-top laughs, just like the Three Stooges or Mel Brooks, all of who are nice Jewish boys from Brooklyn, just like Diamond and the author of the song discussed here.





Think of him what you will but Sandler's tune was also groundbreaking and not just for his career. For one thing, his song was a source of pride- alongside the yucks it served up, it name-checked several famous Jews. Though he didn't make it up to the level of kick-ass Jews seen in recent films like Inglourious Basterds, Munich and Defiance, "The Chanukah Song" was still an unashamed show of strength, saying "hey, look who we got in our posse!" In his own way, Sandler's song got the word out to the faithful and the goyem more than a dozen B'nai B'rith conferences could have.

And even though the orthodox of his faith and in the music community might frown on him, Sandler's song is also some kind of achievement. As he explained in his original SNL intro (and Diamond repeats in his version), he didn't have a lot of competition for Jewish holiday.

I like "The Chanukah Song" myself but I admit that it doesn't hurt that I'm Jewish myself. It's not just that I think the song's funny (it's fucking hilarious actually) but I also sympathize with Sandler about holiday songs. The dreidel song is cute enough and you've probably heard "Hava Nagila" without knowing it but unless you're deeply into the culture (which many of us non-orthodox believers ain't), you'll have a hard time remembering any other Jewish holiday tunes. And if some other goofball wants to write a wacky Chanukah (or Purim or Yom Kippur) song that millions of people love, I'm for it. Even Sandler would admit that he could stand some competition himself.