Saturday, February 24, 2007

New Jewish Podcast produced by Ari Goldwag

This is great. Two new Jewish music podcasts launching within the last month. I already blogged about Keith Wolzinger's new Klezmer Podcast. I listened two his first two 'casts on Thursday and they're a blast. Keith is obviously people who knows people. He's got great interviews with Lorin Sklamberg of the Klezmatics, David Krakauer, and Socalled.

The second podcast couldn't be more different. The host of the 'Jewish Music Podcast' is Ari Goldwag. I had never heard of Goldwag prior to his podcast, but I think I'm going to become a fan. He's part of the 'shiny shoe' orthodox/chassidic pop scene and presents about a half hour of music and interviews per podcast. He also includes one of his own songs. It turns out that Ari is an accomplished musician. According to his bio, he was "accepted into the Miami Boys Choir, and went on to become star-soloist, appearing on five albums of the choir and three of their videos" Since leaving the Miami Boys Choir he has since released at least three solo albums.

I was taken by how much I enjoyed the 'casts. Goldwag has great taste. And for me to say that says something, since I typically don't enjoy shiny shoe recordings. His second podcast was paricularly good. I had heard of the Diaspora Yeshiva Band before, but this was my first time hearing one of their tracks. I was blown away. None of the slick production. Just hands on instruments with a strong sense of what they wanted to accomplish. And then Goldwag's track "Bemay Matisyahu" from his album "Pure Soul - Flippin In." It's over produced, slick, and dated (check the 80's guitar licks). But it worked. I've relistened to the track about 10 times and will have to buy the album. Maybe it reminds me of the early heavy metal band Blue Oyster Cult? Nah.... But it's really good.

It actually isn't easy to find the podcast. Goldwag hasn't set up a homepage for it yet, but you can search for it in iTunes. I'll grab the URL from iTunes when I'm back in the office on Monday and will post it here and to my podcast lists.

Here the RSS feed for Goldwag's podcast: http://www.puresoulband.com/podcast/AGJMpodcast.rss

2 comments:

nanassetta said...

Love to hear from Elliott Yamin! His teaser is out on iTunes and his CD is dropping 3/20/07!

Jack said...

Hi Nanassetta. Thanks for stopping by. I'll admit I hadn't heard of Elliot Yamin before you're comment. Did I have my head in the sand? For those clueless like I was, Yamin was a very popular contestant on American Idol. And he's Jewish. According to the Cleveland Jewish News, he was "born Ephraim Elliott Yamin in Los Angeles in 1978 to an Israeli Jewish father of Iraqi background and Jewish-American mother Claudette Goldberg"

You can out more about him at his myspace page and his unofficial fan site. I'll admint that my wife and I are occasional American Idol watchers, but somehow I missed the Yamin frenzy. I'm rooting for him to get his album out, but I doubt I'll buy it. He's good, but it's not my style of music.