Sunday, August 17, 2008

Michael Croland on Jewish Punks and Non-Jewish Jewish Punks

A while back I wrote about Michael Croland, Jewish Air Guitarist. It turns out that, like me, Michael has a thing for any intersection of Jews and punk music. And he's written a lot more than I have about it. His most recent piece "The Non-Jewish Side of My Jewish Punk Research" is a hoot, chronicling a wide range of non-Jewish punks with some association or affinity for Jews. Take Total Passover, "a Jewish-themed punk band that played in Iowa in the early 1990s" led by the Jewish Andy Levy. Michael quotes bassist Tom Meehan saying, "While I'm not Jewish, I did think the band was a good fit for me. . . . Even though I was born and confirmed Catholic, I proudly wore the Star of David around my neck. This really freaked my parents out!" And on it goes, including discussion of bands ranging from the Dead Kennedy's to the Mexico City based Polka Madre, a punk polka band that uses Hebraic lettering and Jewish star in their log.

If you're at all interested in Jewish punk, read the article and check out some of his other articles and blog posts.

3 comments:

heebnvegan said...

I'll e-mail you personally in a second, but this is great. Toda Rabah!

The below quote doesn't refer to my post from today, but your title reminded me of a great quote from Lenny Bruce (which Steven Lee Beeber uses in his book The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's to explain the cross-section of Jews and punk in NYC):

"It doesn't matter if you're Catholic, if you live in New York, you're Jewish."

Anonymous said...

I remember Total Passover. They did the Jewish people proud. In a punk rock sort of a way. I think there are videos on YouTube of them performing live-- check it out!

TOMMER said...

You Tube links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkZ8eIEibJU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3fnGEjAVms&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNsSalkVSqs&feature=related