Sharks Have No Bones!, or The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement

When I was a kid I loved books of trivia. Hundreds of pages of random facts (sharks have no bones! ) that sparked my curiosity and gave me a random sampling of information (often horribly wrong) to base my forays into the library or encyclopedia and lunchtime discussions with friends. To a budding info-junkie, those raw facts were pretty addicting.

As a kid, I might have loved Stephen L. Pease' book "The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement". With a studious tone and a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" enthusiasm Pease spends 500 pages chronicling amazing accomplishments by Jews. Did you know that

• Jews invented both holography (Gabor) and the ball point pen (Biro)!
• Between 2002 and 2008 fourteen Jews played major league baseball!
• After 1853 all De Beers' diamonds were sold to a London syndicate of 10 Jewish buyers!

You do now. You can thank me and Pease later.

This book's strength, and it's weakness is Pease voracious appetite and unrelenting boosterism. Like a true trivia book, there is no sense in the book of how any of the facts relate to each other and to Jewish history and no sense what facts were left out (it is only 500 pages, after all). It's all just a large pile of evidence for how cool Jews are. And, based on Pease's evidence, we are pretty cool.

This is a music blog, so of course I immediately turned to the music section. In this section I found a page and half jammed full of references to Jewish contributions classical music (there are LOTS) and three quarters of a page acknowledging that we've pretty much played no role in country music. As counted by awards, and paragraphs, we were pretty influential in rock and roll, musical theater, and jazz. And we have Babs. Pease awarded Jewish musicians one multi-page biography and that bio honor went Barbara Streisand. And, of course, no recognition at all of Jewish music. No klezmer, cantorial, or Yiddish musical theater. Debbie Friedman or Shlomo Carlebach never existed.

As a kid I might have loved the quirky randomness of the book. But as an adult I find it a joyless slush. There may be folks out there for whom the book, as Rabbi Harold Kushner says in his hyperbolic puff, "strengthens [their] pride in being Jewish."

It might.

But it also diminishes my sense of what being Jewish is. What ever being Jewish is, it is not to be found in this book. Knowing that sharks have no bones (and that they have several sets of replaceable teeth) really doesn't tell you anything about sharks. Knowing that, in 2008, 8 of the top 16 major department stores were either owned or started by Jews tells us even less about ourselves.

Abraham Inc goes "Tweet Tweet"

I'm totally digging the new Abraham Inc. album. It's a full on, head on, collision of klezmer, funk, and hip-hop music. Here's the blurb (I love blurbs.)

"An unprecedented collaboration between three cultural visionaries: DAVID KRAKAUER, champion of klezmer music and world-class clarinetist; legendary funk trombonist and arranger FRED WESLEY, celebrated for his work with James Brown and George Clinton; and hip-hop renegade and beat architect SOCALLED – Abraham Inc"

What underlies that blurb is a real depth of knowledge in each of the music styles, but what makes the album work the way in which Abraham Inc cleverly uses a very contemporary, stuttery, cut & paste, hip-hop oriented approach to the funk and klezmer merger. The hip-hop style breaks help deconstruct the two musical styles and reconstruct them as assembled fragments of the new compositions. In this collage of bouncing and popping fragments, it sounds totally natural to hear Socalled's Yiddish bounce against C-Rayz Walz's English raps or hear Krakuer's clarinet klezmer runs bounce against Wesley's horn sections.

Abraham Inc Tweet Tweet (Official Music Video)

While Tweet Tweet is the first single, and a worthy track, my favorite is the H-Tune, a reconstruction of "Yidlach Anthem" Hava Nagila. It's a great example of their style, Hava Nagila's melody is broken in to phrases all of which are layered on top of each other and over funk horns. What you end up with is NOT Hava Nagila, it takes some work to pull out the Hava Nagila phrases. What it is, is the H-Tune.

The H Tune (Hava Nagila)

For more info and to buy the album, check out the Abraham Inc. website and Facebook pages.

Hat tip to AliciaKraks for posting the H-Tune video (shot back in Feb 2010). AliciaKraks happens to be Alicia Krakauer, H-Tune vocalist and daughter of David Krakauer.

Dafna's Halilah Hazeh

Last week I got Dafna / ShirFun's "Halilah Hazeh" in the mail, just in time for Passover. I'm always excited to see new kids recordings, but am always a bit hesitant. Reviewing kids music is tricky, kids listen to music differently than adults do. I've been doing this long enough to have a few basic have a few elements that I listen for. If the recording's got them, we're in business. If not, probably not. I'm also in luck that I have two kids and lot of long car rides for album testing.

First, here's Dafna's offical blurb

"Shir Fun was created by Israeli music therapist, Dafna Israel-Kotok, whose passion for Jewish and Israeli music and culture has been cultivated all of her life. Growing up in a moshav on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, she learned to play the guitar from her father at an early age and together, they became a central musical figure to her community’s cultural celebrations. After her service in the Israeli army, Dafna attended university in the U.S, obtaining a degree in music therapy."

Second, before I do my review, here's a video of the title track...

Dafna's Halilah Hazeh


Ok...now for my thoughts. As I said there are certain things I listen for in a kids album.

1. Is the singer having a good time. Seriously. There are some depressing, self-important, kids albums out there. Dafna does fine here. She enjoys this music and her enjoyment is infectious.

2. Is the singer a songleader or a performer. Kids want to sing, jump, dance, thwack, or kapow. Pretty much anything but applaud. Music that invites them in is good, music that does clever wonderful things for show isn't. Halilah Hazeh is a bit mixed here. There are bit too many times where Dafna winds up for a big ending or does something else showy. Not bad, but iffy.

3. Are the vocals up front in the music. Can you understand the lyrics. Kids like guitar, drums, what-have-you just fine, as long as they don't get in the way. Seriously. It's all about the human voice and what the voice is signing about about. Mind you, the lyrics don't have to make sense and in many kids songs they don't, but they have to be clear. Dafna's got a challenge here. She's singing quite beautifully and clearly in Hebrew. For some kids, including mine, that's just fine. My kids don't speak Hebrew but they've got the rhythm of it through synagogue. Singing along with it, even though they don't understand the words, suits them just fine. But there were a lot of places where there was just too much guitar, shaky egg, or what-have-you. Again, not bad just iffy.

So my feeling, as the adult listener? A solid kids album but not necessarily a great one. Dafna's got a good voice. I enjoyed Dafna's interpretations of the classics. Her originals are well performed but not as compelling. But c'mon. We've been singing Dayenu and Eliyahu HaNavi for how many centuries? They're a tough comparison point.

How about the experts, my kids? They weren't much taken with the originals either, but sang right along with the classics. In fact, my elder daughter asked me to replay a number of them. We're using her version of the Four Questions (Ma Nisthana) when practicing for our seder. That's a pretty good sign. Would the originals grow on them? I'll have to report back later. I will say that my two favorite recent Jewish kids albums Oy Baby 1 and 2 and Shira Kleins Shirlala Chanukkah grabbed them immidiately, new songs or no.

But my little experts aren't yours. Hop over to Dafna's website and see what you think. Or better yet, put your little experts to work and see what they think.

Shlomo Carlebach: Songs of Peace and You Never Know

I've got a happy heart right now. I'm back at my computer after a night at the JCC Stephen Gottlieb Music Fest watching the Shlomo Carlebach documentary "You Never Know." All the way there and all the way back I was listening to a review copy of the new Sojourn Records album "Shlomo Carlebach - Songs of Peace" a posthumous release of material from a pair of 1973 concerts. This is as good as it gets, folks. I'm riding a serious Jewish high right now.

Carlebach was an amazing figure, a controversial Lubavitch Chassidic rebbe who took his faith to the streets and lifted the hearts and souls of the people he met there. And in the process helped revolutionize Jewish music and prayer in both the traditional and liberal Jewish movements. If you hear someone pickup a guitar and sing a prayer in Hebrew, you're hearing Carlebach's echo (as well a few others).

While rough in pacing and erratic in focus, "You Never Know" is an excellent documentary. It is less about Carlebach than it is about his legacy and his impact on people. It avoids narrative, historic or biographical, and instead hops around in time and place letting a diverse set of people talk, dance and sing about how Carlebach had touched their lives. It paints a picture of a rebbe who was more interested in inspiring disaffected Jews than delivering lectures to frum yeshiva students. The cost of this was his reputation in traditional circles, the benefit was his success at his mission.

And it's important to remember that if you get a chance to listen to Songs of Peace. This is a concert. It has a stage, a singer, a guitar. It's also a prayer gathering and religious experience. Carlebach breaks from his songs to tell stories and teach. The album admirably captures both the music and teaching. I'm not Chassidic and can sometimes get overwhelmed by the mystical language that permeates Chassidic thought, but I could listen to Carlebach any time (and often do). He has a gift for making the ephemeral concrete and relevant to daily life.

Carlebach has a long discography. Wikipedia notes 23 albums (5 of which are available on Sojourn Records) and I'm aware of a lot of other bootlegs and non-commercial recordings floating around. I'm not nearly enough of a connoisseur to say whether this is among the best of his records. But I can say whole heartedly that it's an excellent introduction. The recording has that wonderful audio distance of historic recording, but is clear and listenable. Carlebach's voice and guitar are in fine form and the teachings are well chosen, short and moving.

To hear samples from Songs of Peace, check out the Sojourn Records website. For a quick hit of one of the giants of Jewish music, check this video out. YouTube has a ton of Carlebach. I chose this one because it's from the same time period as Songs for Peace

Shlomo Carlebach Boi B'Shalom 1973

A couple of final notes. First, Sojourn Records also recently released a fine album by Carlebach's daughter Neshama. It deserves, and will get, it's own review sometime next week. Second, I've got an .mp3 of a great lecture explaining some of the reasons that Carlebach was controversial in the orthodox community. I'd provide a link, but I can't find it on the web anymore. If you're interested let me know and I'll get it to you.

Finally, the FCC wants you to know that I got no compensation for this review other than a free digital review copy of the CD. And I got in free to the movie because I was taking tickets. Isn't that exciting to know?

Like a happy rabbi eating tacos in Guadalajara at 3am- The Sherele Jazz Band Innovators

Klezmer music is one of those musical forms (the good ones) that both inspire and defy definition. I have some tounge-in-cheek definitions of my own...

• The shtetl band, wanting to perfectly recreate the sound of pre-war Eastern Europe. (e.g. Budowitz and Adrienne Greenbaum)
  
• The revival band, honoring their American golden age klezmer progenitors and Yiddish theater favorites, and so very (sometime depressingly) serious about making new Jewish culture (e.g. Klezmatics and the Shirm Klezmer Orchestra).
• The bongo band, klezmer by way of the 1940's pop Yiddish and 1950's Jewish Latin music crazes (e.g. Yiddishe Cup and the Klezmer Company Orchestra).
  
• And of course, the hard-working local simcha band (we play weddings, bar mitzvahs and brisses), actually expecting the audience to dance to songs with 'hora' in their name (e.g. Michigan's Heartland Klezmorim and New England's Wholesale Klezmer Band).
  
• And then there's the jazz-klezmer band, where violins become horns, accordions become upright basses, and Minsk becomes Manhattan (Frank London, Enrico Fink).
  
• The post-klezmer (or prog-klezmer) band, where klezmer is a point of departure not a destination (or something profound like that). (e.g. Klezmer Madness, Klezmafour)
• The Pop-klezmer, where pop music has an illicit love affair with klezmer (e.g. Oi Va Voi, Golem)
  
• And finally, the Roots / World music klezmer, where klezmer is whipped up with most any other rootsy music around to prove that every indigenous music form in the world loves accordion (Red Sea Pedestrians, JUF, Beyond the Pale)
  

I've been wanting to get that written down for a while. I'm sure that my friends in the klezmer community will take issue with this and with good reason. Categories are always limiting, often wrong and best are marginally helpful. But they can be helpful. And I needed a bit of help today.

The Sherele Jazz Band Innovators is one of my favorite contemporary klezmer bands, well grounded in the tradition but also well planted in their place (Mexico) and time (now). A fine woody clarinet over tockity drums, acoustic and electric guitars, and bass. Wailing and soulful, jangly and full of life. Their recent album, "Oy Mame Shein -Pickles, Chiles and Jrein" is great fun. And, of course, my categories both help and hurt my ability to describe them. Definately not a shtetle band. They've got the jazz feel of a late-revival band but happily weave in elements of (Mexican) roots and post-klezmer. The guitar playing was particularly fascinating, sometimes a Spanish, almost flamenco, style acoustic guitar sometimes a cutting electric guitar. All in all a lovely blend.

Here...give'em a listen.

Sherele klezmer medley

Sherele has gotten a bump in popularity late through their inclusion on the new Putumayo sampler cd "Jazz around the World."For a band who's self description is "Like a happy Rabi waking up in a Moldavian shtetl, dancing love letters in Buenos Aires, eating tacos in Guadalajara (3 a.m. after mariachi and tequila) and head banging to your grandmother’s music in 50 plus minutes of Latin American Klezmer extravaganza" a world music album is natural home.

You can get more info on Sherele at the Myspace page, their CD Baby page, and their Facebook fan page.

2 from Shemspeed: Darshan and Dreams in Static

When I stand in front of people, virtually or physically, and tell them that we're in a silver age of Jewish music, exhibit A is often the Jewish hipster record labels Shemspeed and JDub. Labels successfully packaging Jewish music, approached from both religious and cultural perspectives, for hip 20-somethings? If that's not evidence that something fabulous is happening, I'm not sure what would be. So I look forward to every new release from these labels and am always happily surprised and challenged by them. These two albums, though, don't quite live up to my expectations.

The first album, Darshan's "Lishma EP" has taken me a month or so of listening to get into it, but I'm getting there. Here's their official blurb...

Darshan is "astral rap, liturgical jazz, audio alchemy. Harmonizing Hebrew chant with hiphop, folk rock with electro-pop, love poetry with kabbalistic psychology, Darshan is a unique and organic weave of world wisdom traditions and modern musical styles"

Darshan is a project of one of my favorite new vocalists, Shir Yaakov, and rapper & producer Eprhyme. Driven by Shir Yaakov's liturgical melodies and slow slow slow delivery and built on Ephrhyme's equally slow, staticky productions, this album sounds in many ways more like an Aphex Twin electronica album than it does hip-hop. I'm not sure that it works. There's a riskiness; a certain urban dreaminess to it that I can appreciate, but also a certain grinding tedium I can't. I'm told by folks that have seen them that their live show is outstanding. I can believe it. The raw material in these tracks is great. I could see Yotzer Or, my favorite track on the album, shaking the house. I can imagine the interplay between Shir Yaakov's melodic vocals and Ephryme staccato rap. The EP, though, seems held back by the lack of stage energy.

Why imagine it? Here's Darshan performing Yotzer Or at their album release party a couple of weeks ago.

Good stuff. But for me the EP doesn't quite live up to it.

Similarly, the second new Shemspeed release, Dreams in Static, draws on a large sonic palette, but the resulting picture is a bit blotchy. According to the official blurb,

"Dreams in Static conjures up the aesthetic of James Bond, Prefuse 73, & Pulp Fiction. Each song is the soundtrack to a film in a genre of its own. This is music that exists beyond pop and yet overflows with it. Serene Poetic strikes a balance between Diwon, a Brooklyn-based hip-hop producer, and Dugans, a multifaceted guitarist-composer from Texas. Using live drums, samplers, analog synths, electric pianos and guitars, Dreams in Static transcends genres and breathes new life and depth with each subsequent listen. The album teems with life, beauty and depth; it's an instrumental masterpiece that resurrects live instrumental music and guitar-based symphonies. It pops in a world where popular music has been left in a state of static."

Ok. Whew. That's a lot to cram into an album. And the album feels a bit crammed into. I'm an electronica fan from way back and can be really happy with broad-brush sonic adventures like this. At its best, this recording is happily deconstructive, breaking down pop genres into bits and reassembling them into long tone poems. My favorite tracks, including American Pastoral and Standing in Shadow live up to hype. They have a rich internal life that gets me immediately invested. Many of the tracks, though, sound more like demo reels than a movie soundtracks. Sounds flicker and weave, but never resolve into anything. I really dug this album when I first listened, but over repeated listening it didn't wear well. Your mileage may vary...check Dreams in Static out on their myspace page and in this video. Let me know what you think.

Dreams in Static feat. Eytan "I'm Gonna Get Back Up" Live

I do want to point out that I'm a big fan of Diwon, and in particular love his Tikkun Klalki remix. Download it from Shemspeed here. And check out the video.

Tikkun Klali # 10 (diwon dancedancetantz remix of Erez Yechiel)

Two Views of Matisyahu

I ran across an fascinating description of Matisyahu's new album, Light in Chasidi News yesterday. Along with Light there were about twenty new Chassidic recordings featured, all of which were written up in the classic frum music promotion style. As I've mentioned before, I find this writing style both fascinating and frustrating in equal measures. It's fascinating because it provides a window into what this community prioritizes. It's frustrating because, to an outsider who prioritizes different things, the writing appears opaque and uninformative.

I've got a few thoughts on this, but first here's one view of the new Matisyahu album, Light, written by the Chasidi News. For twenty other album descriptions written in this style check the current issue of Chasidi News or any one of the frum music blogs I list.

Light - Matisyahu’s third album is now in the stores. After working on it for two years, ‘Light’, Matisyahu’s third album is released. After the meteoric success of his two previous albums, the Chasidic singer Matisyahu releases his third album which illuminates his unique musical style. Matisyahu worked on the album with best of musicians and musical producers, and together they brew the wonderful result, Light. The tracks on the CD range between different styles and let us feel Matisyahu’s modern special character, all of them together passing on a message of hope for peace and comradeship. The album, with 13 songs plus another bonus song, is not something to be taken for granted. “The meaning of being a singer, as far as I’m concerned, is to feel how the existence of the world echoes within you, and then express it,” explains Matisyahu, “It’s a process that changes all the time”. The album’s bonus song is called, “Two Child One Drop”, taking part in it are the cantor Yehuda Solomon and the musician Shalom Mor who plays the oud and the tar. Distribution: NMC United.

Now here's a second view of Matisyahu written by David Jeffries of the All Music Guide. The AMG, if you're not familiar with it, provides a database of music descriptions to a lot of commercial websites. I pinched this one from Pandora, but I'm sure it's on a hundred other websites as well.

As an American Hasidic Jewish reggae superstar, Matisyahu is an obvious outsider. After a debut album that felt live plus a follow-up album that was recorded live, the singer's ambition to do more with the studio presentation of his music left any sensible packaging up to the producer. The mismatch with fellow mystic Bill Laswell caused 2006's Youth to wander and sprawl, but industry vet David Kahne handles much of Light, and the difference is huge. Kahne packaged reggae-pop acts like Sublime and Fishbone -- whose members show up here -- before, but here he's primarily focused on Matisyahu's wide view, love of ancient history, and spiritual heart. The results are comparable to So and all the Peter Gabriel albums after, with high-tech and polish helping to drive home the artist's reverence and sense of wonder. Sounding like breakthrough hit "Chop 'Em Down"'s little brother, "Smash Lies" is an effective opener plus a dancehall-driven crowd-pleaser that'll give way to an album less reggae than any previous. Besides a little "singjay" in his vocal style, the grand, key track "One Day" has little to do with Jamaican music, and the equally moving "For You" is more likely influenced by Tears for Fears than Bob Marley. Joel Madden makes crunching punk-pop guitar the centerpiece of "Darkness into Light," and ethereal closer "Silence" could be passed off as from the Dave Matthews songbook if the lines written in Hebrew didn't give Matisyahu away. Whether using his voice as a whisper or as a giant call across nations, the depth of feeling comes through brilliantly, and if the musical soundscape isn't familiar, the empowering and sincere lyrics most definitely are. Add Kahne's instantly accessible production and Light is not only a welcome surprise, but an album that matches his debut.

Yeah, we're talking about the same album here.

What the frum music press prioritizes is tradition, community, and good character. Artist bios and album descriptions provide the artists credentials as frum Jews with familiar names and famous previous albums, and/or famous current collaborators. We're told the new songs are original, awe-inspiring, instant classics. We're told the names of individual songs, many of which were not written by the singer or band and were well known prior to the album. There will be vauge comments that the artist has an individual style, but there is rarely an attempt to describe that style. The result is that you're not given anything with which to discriminate the 20 album descriptions on the page from each other. But that's the point. The descriptions are to help you descriminate these recordings from the recordings not on the page...the million or so non-frum, non-community, non-Chassidic albums.

The fluffery used by mainstream Western popular music promotion and review writing, of which I am regularly guilty, tends to focus on and exaggerate minor stylistic differences, exaggerate artist musical prowess, and establish artificial musical lineages and comparisons. This is all in the attempt to help an audience understand how the bands or albums compare to each other and to previous albums the reader would have heard. The result is much more of a focus on the band's sound than on their suitability for a specific community.

There is a big caveat to this, though. If you read reviews or blurbs in zines or websites that are heavily focused on a specific narrow audience, you'll see a lot more Chassidic style writing. I remember being a teen eagerly tearing through print copies of Maximum Rock and Roll. A lot of the prose there focused on punk credentials as defined by what label the band was on and what well known punk band the members used to play in. Not much of a difference from the frum-pop writing. In both cases, the main thing was to justify membership in the community.

What's frustrating for me about the frum writing is that it's very difficult to deal with as an outsider. I'm not interested in discriminating based on community membership. I'm not part of the Chassidic community (though I happily rub shoulders with it on occasion). I'm trying to identify good music that I and my readers might be interested in. And the frum writing doesn't help at all. Which, of course, is my problem not theirs.

Teruah Teshuva - An Appology

Ok, folks. It's time for public teshuva (you don't get to see the private teshuva emails). One of the great things about writing this blog is getting to know a lot of the great musicians who are active in Jewish music. Sometimes I get a great CD in the mail. And while I've reviewed a lot of them, I haven't gotten to all of them.Which leads my my apology. I have a pile of CD's on my desk that have been sent to me for review. Some are brand new. Some are collecting dust. The challenge for me is that I take reviewing seriously and find it a bit intimidating. But that is my problem, not yours. If I accept your CD, I'm obligated to listen and review it.

So, to every musician who has sent me a CD for review and has been disappointed that I haven't made good on my promise. I'm sorry. I will try to get your review done soon and in the future will try to be more timely with the review.

Here's a list of the albums I've received that I haven't gotten reviewed yet. Every one is an interesting listen and well worth checking out.

	Pitom. "PunkAssJewJazz" by the fantastic jazz guitarist Yoshie Fructer, on the Tzadik Radical Jewish Culture label. JazzReview.com review
	All Hell, by Can Can a great punk band led by Patrick Aleph, who also does the Punk Torah video blog. Forward review.
	Yiddish meets Gaelic on Saints & Tzadiks, by Lorin Sklamberg of the Klezmatics and Irish vocalist Susan McKewon. BlogCritics.org review
	Sam Glaser's Rockin' Chanukah Revue Upbeat Chanukah pop from one of the hardest working guys in contemporary Jewish music. Jewcy review
	Hebrew School, by New York indie-pop musician and Six Points Fellowship grant winner, David Griffin. Featured on my second podcast. Review.
	FleytMuzik in Kontsert! is Adrianne Greenbaum, world class Klezmer flutist, and her ensemble performing live. Absolutely wonderful. Rainlore's World of Music review
	Brian Bender and the Little Shop of Horas eclectic klezmer / world-beat album "Eny Velt" . Klezmershack review
	Melech B'n Arieh's piano and electronica album "Lech Lecha" Interview on Jewish National Radio
	Polish combo Klezmafour's heavy klezmer/jazz/rock debut should get snapped up by Radical Jewish Culture fans everywhere. Klezmershack review. Hit their website contact and album info. (The website is hard to navigate, I've got their contact info too.)
	American/Israeli pop singer Nomi Teplow's new album "Like a Rushing Spring". Big pop sound to deeply felt Jewish lyrics. Reviews
	St. Louis Jewish rock project, Zeda's Beat Box's first full album "Seven".
	Wonderful Mexican klezmer jazz combo Sherele's Oy Mame Shein Pickles Chiles and Jrein Interview (in Spanish).

I'll do my best to review each and every one of these albums over the coming weeks. Just making this list has reminded me how wonderful many of these disks are. This should be great fun.

Oh, and if you've sent me an album and it's not on this list...double apologies. Email me and give a smack on the head.

Abby Gostein's "Each Blessing"

I'm listening to Abby Gostein's "Each Blessing" right now. I've got a lot to say, but am not sure where to start. How do you review an album that is as much an advertisement for sheet music as a recording to be listened to? How about this....

This past Shabbat I went to Kabbalat Shabbat services at the local Reform synagogue. Not as a guest, but as a member. Yep. I'm a life-long Conservative Jew who recently became a member of a Reform synagogue. I'm not going to get into why I switched membership from the local Conservatie synagogue, it was just time for a change. (For the record, I also will be davening regularly at the local Chabbad house too). I was pretty impressed by how much traditional (by my standards) Hebrew liturgy was part of the service. I also enjoyed the contemporary English readings in the new Mishkan Tefillah. They're direct and meaningful, if a bit vague about God and Torah. Sitting there I felt recharged and happy.

When I sit back in my chair, Gostein's "Each Blessings" playing through my headphones, I'm right back there. Her gentle vocals and piano* playing pick up the quiet warmth of the service and her more driving pieces are invigorating and make me want to sing along. Just right for a contemporary Reform service.

And that's the point of the album, right? Gostein describes it as ....

"Contemporary Jewish music, moving and accessible, with memorable melodies and riveting harmonies; prayer and blessing settings intended to be flexible in nature and easily usable by cantor or soloist, congregation and/or choir"

This isn't music for a concert, for listening to a car, or even for listening to over headphones in a comfy chair (though I've happily done the latter two already and would go to a Gostein concert if given a chance). It's for singing in a group. At synagogue. That's what the albums for. If you go to her website she's got lyric sheets ready, and if you want sheet music, she's got it ready to go.

As long time readers might remember, I've always had mixed feelings about Reform style songleader recordings. Part of it, I'm realizing, is that since I'd never been to a service that included them it was hard to understand their natural home. Part of it, though, is that I've often found them to be underwhelming rehashes of 1970's folk-pop with shallow feel good lyrics. Gostein's album, though, manages to avoid those traps. While some nod back to the 1970's, others pick up much more current musical influences and rhythms. There's drive and passion, but it never overwhelms. It creates a sound that is timeless, not dated.

Good stuff. Really.

And an album that I'll hand off to my choir director next Friday.

Here are samples of two of my favorite tracks...

Mi Chamocha

Yism'chu

For more info on Abby Gostein's "Each Blessings" check out her webpage and CD Baby. For her sheet music see OySongs and Transcontinental Music Publications.

* Update: Sigh. Another fact-checking goof. Abby just emailed me to let me know that while she loves the piano playing too, she can't take credit for it. Scott Leader, Jewish musician and proprietor of Southwest Studios, played piano on most of the album (including the two tracks above). Martha Mortensen Dudgeon took over the keys for the last two tracks. Dudgeon is an Austin pianist and artistic director of the Austin Chamber Ensemble. Thanks for the update Abby.

Binyomin Ginzberg's Purim Sameach

Unfortunately, timeliness is not always one of my virtues. Having my whole family sick for the last couple of weeks has meant that I missed a number of personal deadlines. One of which was writing about Binyomin Ginzberg's lovely album Purim Sameach. Before I get to the album, a quick note about Binyomin. This guy is one of the most interesting and engaging musicians in Jewish music today. He's a popular gigging simcha musician, playing the Orthodox and Chassidic parties across the northeast, and is a resident expert at the annual KlezKamp event teaching Chassidic music. Binyomin has a wonderful ear and encyclopedic knowledge for not only the traditional sounds of his standard repertoire and all it's contemporary variations (yeshivish, orthodox disco, shiny shoe) but for a wider repertoire of contemporary music (his Breslov Bar Band collaboration with the ever funky Yoshie Fructer of PITOM, being just one example.)

Purim Sameach reflects both Ginzberg's deep knowledge of tradition and an enthusiasm for exploration. On the surface it takes the form of an uptempo jazz standards album, polishing up one traditional Jewish Purim song after another. As such it makes a great business card for his gigging band, these guys are tight, joyful, and know the score(s). Hire 'em. Quick. Underneath, though, there's something else going on. Under the cheerful vocals and steady keys and clarinet, there's some happy mayhem churning. Rock guitar here, sharply syncopated jazz drums there, a fast keyboard break. Nothing so up front that it breaks the 'standards' mood, but expanding on the scope of what fits as a standard.

Ginzberg's Purim Sameach isn't a full-on Jewish jazz album in the mold of folks like Anthony Coleman or David Chevan. It's committed to the tradition and isn't out to deconstruct and improvise on the traditional repetoire in that way. It's clear, though, that given right opportunity (maybe the Breslov Bar Band?) Ginzberg could break-loose with some wonderful explorations. I really hope that happens. Soon. We need more folks willing to build deep chops in the tradition before getting experimental.

But in the mean time, Purim Sameach is a great album highlighting a musically under appreciated holiday and highlighting one of the best gigging Jewish musicians in America. Listen to the clips below, go order yourself a copy off of CD Baby, and, if in the need hire him for your gig. You'll be happy you did.

Clips from Purim Sameach

Rivkah - Daughters of Israel Hear Me

a traveling soul all alone trying to find her way back home the path she left seems out of reach, she's praying to be heard....you have a speck of God in you, you're a Jewish girl....

I thought I knew how this review was going to go. The album cover is labeled for women only and so I've had it sitting on my desk for a couple of months waiting for me to write about Kol Isha. I expected to make some nice comments about the singer, note the irony of the male music producer sending the disc to me for a review, and then write more on the women's only music scene. But something else happened. I listened to it and heard it.

Back when I was in college the first Tori Amos album came out. I remember being in the puppet lab at about 1 in the morning working on puppets for an upcoming show when one of the puppeteers came in. She waked over to the shared boom-box, turned off what ever was on and put the disc in. She told us to listen. We did. We've never been quite the same since. There was something about that album that was deep and scary and beautiful and true. The album got passed from hand to hand for weeks until we all new every word and the melodies were tattooed on our lives.

Rivkah Krinsky's "In Your Hands" is like that, though not scary, not shattered like the Amos album. Instead there is a vibrant joy here. But it is a knowing joy, one that feels and transcends pain. In his book "Inner Rhythms: The Kabbalah of Music" DovBer Pinson writes "When a person contemplates how far [s]he is from the truth, and how separate, alone and alienated [s]he is in this world, and from God, [s]he becomes frightened, bitter, and down on [her]self. This experience is called Marirrut....When someone is bitter about [her] situation, and examines [her]spiritual life, [s]he realizes that [s]he has distanced [her]self from the path ... [s]he is overwhelmed with a longing for Godliness and holiness." Krinsky's lyrics are filled with this kind of longing, and it resonates for me more than anything I've heard in a while.

In particular the song Jewish Girl speak volumes to me. It's the story of an identity crisis in a girl who longs for something but isn't sure what. That what turns out to be her Jewish identify restored to her through the help of holy rebbe. A story like that could easily have been insipid and cloying, but it wasn't. Instead I've listened to it over and over again. Something about her phrasing is both universal and so specific that it shook me. The chorus, which could have trite instead was fiercely proud. "Your heart it knows it's true, you have a speck of God in you"

I empathize so much with the girls uncertainty and longing it that hurts to listen to it. But I haven't had any happy ending yet. I'm just as alienated and confused as ever. Not fully committed, not part of a real Jewish community, not truly believing, but not giving up either. I don't think that giving myself over to a kindly rebbe is the answer for me, like it is for the girl, but who knows. I do know that listening to the song has me motivated to grab my tallis and teffilin off the shelf and get back to the Chabad house for morning prayers. I haven't been in over a year. And maybe this time I'll take up the rabbi's offer to come over to his house for a Shabbat meal.

By the way, I realize I haven't talked at all about what the album sounds like. Which is strange because that's where I usually start with music and Rivkah's music is well worth writing about. She has a sound that is reminiscent of Sara McLaughlin and Sinead O'Conner, a sound that is at the same time lush and understated, melodic and edgy. But here, listen for yourself....

Rivkah Krinsky Sampler

This sample is courtesy of her publisher, Sameach Records and the Sameach Music Podcast. You can buy the album at their Jewish Jukebox website. You can find out more about Rivkah at her website and MySpace page.

One last comment on the "women only" nature of this album. I hope if Rivkah reads this review she's not too upset that I (a Jewish guy) has listened to it. I promise to save it for my daughters when they're old enough. They'll love it and, I think, need it.

Klezwoods, and the art of being an Impromptu Jewish Wedding Consultant

I spent this weekend away from my computer, hanging out in Boston. The primary reason was to attend the wedding of my cousin, L. The secondary reason was to hang out with my wife's best grad school buddy. My little wigglers got their first taste of the big city. The subway was a big hit, though they could not get their head around the fact in Boston it's called "The T." I think the moment when the Red Line comes out from the underground to cross the Charles River is indelibly etched in my elder wiggler's imagination. She talked about it endlessly.

Back to L's wedding. L's a pretty secular Jew and married a fine fellow, T, who is as goy as they come. The wedding was a simple, hip affair, hosted in an art school gallery, with a secular humanist rabbi (why do secular humanists need rabbis?), catered lamb and brownies (yum!), a do-it-yourself DJ dance party, and one big splurge....they hired Boston's Klezwoods to play a chamber style klezmer set during the pre-and immediately post wedding cocktail hour(s).

Klezwoods did a great job providing a cocktail soundscape. It's hard to give them a proper review, since I was doing some heavy mingling and mojito drinking at the time. My recollection is that they have a nice warm, woody sound, mixing clarinet, accordion, upright bass, and violin. Their set mixed together some standard klezmer repertoire, a few out of the Yiddish folk tunes and a number of jazzier pieces that I didn't recognize. They even ended with a rollicking tune (Der Gassn Niggun?) that suggested that they could have done a dance set or stage set if they'd been asked. As it was, they provided the perfect backdrop and context setting for the wedding. You can find out more about them at the Klezwoods MySpace Page.

I think I've mentioned before that my wife and I went to a lot of trouble to have as traditional a Jewish wedding as we could. It was a wonderful experience for us and our guests. Since then, I've gotten asked to help out a couple of other family members inject a little Jewiness into otherwise secular, American, weddings. L's wedding, much to my surprise, ended up being another. I say much to my surprise in that I had no involvement in the wedding planning until about 10 minutes before the reception dinner started. Word got to me during the post-wedding photo shoot that T, L's new husband wanted to talk to me. It turned out that he and L were hoping that I could arrange a short-notice hora and chair-lift during the dancing.

Now, a dance leader I'm not, but as you know from reading this blog, I'm not shy about being ignorant in public. So, I corralled my brothers, a cousin, and some of the groom's men and gave them a crash course in how to hoist wooden chairs (no folding chairs, tip the chairs back a bit). The groom's man in charge of DJ'ing had one iTunes Hava Nagilia and a repeat button to work with. I couldn't remember the details of the hora dance step and would just have to wing it.

As it turned out, it was a magic moment. When Hava Nagilia started up, I grabbed a couple guests and got them moving in a circle. Once they were vaguely circling, I cued the guys to hoist the couple. Once the chairs were airborne, the crowd surged and circled on their own. We looked a bit more like a mosh-pit than a Yiddish dance, but hey, we had a lot of enthusiasm and a clockwise orbit. The look of exhilaration and love in L and T's faces as they were bobbed up and down holding onto each other via a cloth napkin said we did well enough.

After it was over, one of T's friends came up to me and told me that between the crash and cheering of the breaking of the glass and the swirling of the pseudo-hora, this was the first wedding he'd been to where he was actually personally excited and involved. It meant enough to him that he sought me out to tell me about it. The DIY DJ had a similar reaction. I'm mentioning this specifically because I've talked to a number Jewish relatives and friends who are afraid to include traditional Jewish elements in their weddings because their non-Jewish guests (and even many of the Jewish guests) may not be familiar with them and may feel uncomfortable or alienated. It just doesn't happen liked that. There's some pretty deep magic in a Jewish wedding done right and people of all types respond to it.

So if you know of anyone who is thinking of adding some extra magic to their wedding and needs an Impromptu Jewish Wedding Consultant, drop me a line. I can recommend some good references and suggest some specific elements that are easy to accomplish and meaningful for all in attendance.

George Robinson Jewish Week Articles

As much as I have fun with this blog, I'm well aware that I'm bluffing. I'm an amateur writer and music fan. But it's worth it because there aren't that many pro's working the Jewish music beat. George Robinson is one of my favorites. He's a frequent, and knowledgeable, voice on the Jewish Music mailing list and writes about Jewish music for the New York Jewish Week. I happened to swing by Jewish Week to see if any new articles had been posted and found a stack of them.

A couple of the links didn't work for me, but hopefully they will for you.

• A Klez Shot For The Ages - 10/17/07
• Putting Heschel To Music - 10/17/07
• Sing, Sing A (Yiddish) Song - 10/17/07
• ‘Hidden Melodies Revealed’ - 10/16/07
• Coming Home - 10/16/07
• The Cantors’ DJ - 10/10/07
• Dylan’s Back Pages - 10/10/07
• Present At The Creation - 10/09/07
• Mamele Theresa - 08/20/07
• The Anthropologist Jazz Pianist - 07/03/07
• Conquering The Screen - 06/22/07
• The Sound Of The Tsimbl - 04/16/07

If you enjoy these, KlezmerShack has an archive of older Robinson articles.

Mailbag: new reviews, albums, events, and record collections

Like I said last month, I'm borrowing the 'mailbag' idea from Blog in Dm. I'm just not getting to some of these emails fast enough.

Klezmer Podcast
Keith's added a review of "Budowitz Live" to his MySpace Blog

Aryeh Kunstler
"We are currently mastering Aryeh Kunstler's debut album as we speak and it should be out within the month. " Kunstler plays some snappy classic rock and alt-rock influenced frum-rock a la 8th Day and Blue Fringe. Check out previews at his MySpace page and his bio and tour dates at his band website.

Little Shop of Horas
BRIAN BENDER & LITTLE SHOP OF HORAS - "EYN VELT"

Original and traditional Jewish melodies blended with Latin, Caribbean,
African and Middle Eastern rhythms. With special guests:
Frank London (Klezmatics, Hasidic New Wave), Alicia Svigals (Klezmatics, Mikveh), Stuart Brotman (Brave Old World), Charles Neville (The Neville Brothers), Jose Gonzalez (Bando Criollo), Raquy Danziger (Raquy and the Cavemen)

You can hear sound samples at http://www.littleshopofhoras.com/musicstore.htm

JCom Radio

I got an email recently from Steve Newton of JCom Radio looking for "any help to build up a library of Jewish music will be much appreciated, we can take most formats, but audio CDs and digital files would be our preferred format." According to his website JCom based in England and "will soon be launching a whole new era for Jewish community broadcasting - on radio, online and on demand!" If you're a band or a promoter and are interested in sending review/broadcast copies of your work to JCom you can contact Steve at steve.newton@jcomradio.net

Judaica Sound Archives

JSA proudly announces the addition of four new online music collections.

• The four albums in the Children’s Village collection highlight holiday songs.
• Fran Avni acquaints children with their Jewish heritage through song and play in this collection of 14 albums. Sung in English and Hebrew her music educates and entertains youngsters of all ages.
• One of the first to record a comedy album in Yiddish, Benny Bell is sure to make you laugh. Many of the songs on these 18 albums were never commercially released and are part of his personal collection of material.
• You can hear the beautiful voice of Cantor Benjamin Maissner in this collection of 19 albums which includes holiday music as well as synagogue favorites.

Museum of Jewish Heritage

• Idan Raichel Songs for Peace: The Acoustic Series. October 8, 9, 10
  7 P.M. Featuring Idan Raichel, with Colombian singer/songwriter Marta Gómez, New African Jazz and Soul artist Somi, Ethiopian-Israeli singer Cabra Casay, and percussion master Itamar Doari. Join Israeli artist Idan Raichel for his very first series of intimate acoustic concerts in New York.
• Vladimir Feltsman Virtuoso Pianist: Music from Poland and Russia. Wednesday, October 17 at 7 P.M. Since his arrival in the U.S. from the Soviet Union in 1987, world-class pianist Vladimir Feltsman has graced every major concert hall in the country, including notable performances at Carnegie Hall and the White House. He will perform music from Poland's keyboard master, Chopin, and one of Russia's most dramatic piano pieces: Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
• Also, Catskills on Film, Jewish Resistance Reconsidered, and The Dreyfus Affair: A Democratic Legacy

'The Chosen Ones' are coming

'The Chosen Ones' are coming to a theater near you. That is, if the theater near you happens to be hosting a Jewish film festival. According to the promo for the film posted on the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (I miss San Fran)...

"Music is a calling, divine or otherwise. For some the calling is entirely secular, for others it is profoundly spiritual, but all the talented young musicians featured in Wendla Nolle's documentary The Chosen Ones feel deeply and undeniably the intertwining of the music they make and their religious experience."

I haven't seen the film yet and was really excited about it until I saw this review on the SFist website:

"...Tooth-grindingly frustrating! [The producer's] complete lack of any background in the subject drove us CRAZY. Why doesn't [the producer] seem to know anything about Judaism or Jewish history if she's so interested in learning how faith informs popular music (as she repeated on the voice over fifty bazillion times)? For instance, she seems startled to hear that a member of a Jewish acoustic-folk band she interviews doesn't buy German products. What could they possibly have against Germans?

And who were these guys? What did any of these musicians have in common besides being Jewish? Why didn't she translate any of the Hebrew lyrics? Why even make this movie if no one had anything interesting to say about their faith and music (beyond "I live in two worlds")? And why didn't she tell anyone any of the names of any of the bands? ..."

Sigh. I'll still go see "The Chosen" if it comes to Detroit or Ann Arbor, but my expectations have dropped a bit.

Beth Schafer: The universal and the particular

Back in March I posted about the Jewess interview of Beth Schafer and noted that I didn't know much about Schafer's 'contemporary Jewish music' scene. After the post I got a nice note from Schafer offering to send me a CD that would help. She was as good as her word and last week I got an advance copy of her new album, 'Build That Bridge,' in the mail. Schafer's got a good voice, plays a good guitar, and has a sharp backing band. She describes her album, saying that "she learned a big lesson when she won the 2006 American Idol Underground Faith Based competition. What was the lesson? That universality in songs is key... If you believe in God, trust in the potential of humanity and want to bring about an era of peace, AND if you love upbeat, well-produced contemporary rock, THIS CD IS FOR YOU!"

Unfortunately, this album is definitely not for me. It misses on many levels. Partly, it's a style thing. I just don't enjoy this style of music. I find the arrangements bland in a sugary upbeat way. I hit fast-forward 11 times looking for a track that grabbed my attention. But more than that, I find the lyrics gratingly shallow, in an equally sugary upbeat way. The only song that I resonated with at all was the first verse or two of 'Good Enough.' (Her website currently has it available for free download.) "You don't need to think that you're better, you need to believe that you're good enough. You don't have to know all the answers, just ask the questions and that's good enough..." In general, I found the lyrics vague, trite, and not much more interesting than the umm, umm, la, la's that fill up many of the tracks.

After listening to it a few times, I think I figured out what bugs me so much about this album. Schafer's comment about 'universality' being 'the key' helped me understand her a lot. Schafer is singing to a wide audience and is proud of singing in "both mega-churches and synagogues." She wants to write positive anthems that these audiences can sing together. To get this universality, her lyrics include nothing that couldn't be sung happily by both groups. The cost: there is nothing particular about her songs. For me, what makes a song strong is it's idiosyncrasy, what it says that nothing else could say. That's what I resonate with. And I didn't see much. It was all very smooth and forgettable. I also looked hard to find any sense of who Schafer is and, other than her genuine positive energy, I couldn't find it. And if I don't know who she is, then how can any part of me connect to her?

Anthems are hard and, I think, misunderstood. The best anthems become universal because they are deeply anchored in a particular context. Springsteen's 'Born in the USA', probably the greatest accidental anthem in the last 30 years, gets it power from its lyric not its chorus. Sure, it's the chorus that's burned in everyone's brain, but it was his lyrics that set the context. "I had a buddy at Khe Sahn. Fighting off the Viet Cong. They're still there, he's all gone. He had a little girl in Saigon. I got a picture of him in her arms. I'm a long gone daddy in the USA, Born in the USA." It's the particular combination of pride, pain, bravado, and futility of the lyric that infuses all of our late-night drunk encores.

That's what I was hoping for from 'Build That Bridge.' What are the particulars? Why is it important that we build a bridge? Why is it so hard to do? And why should we care? I listened to the album about 5 times and I still don't. Sorry Beth. I tried.

Wow, there's a really lively discussion going on in the comments section for this review. Check it out and add your opinion.

Mare Winningham's Refuge Rock Sublime

Is it possible to be big and small at the same time? Mare Winningham thinks so. In Refuge Rock Sublime, she, a convert, stands as if under Sinai at the giving of the Torah. And it makes her huge. And you can hear it in every note she plays. Her guitar and voice are passionate but restrained, small and yet so much larger. The best of the tracks, including the stand out Valley of the Dry Bones, have that quiet echo that country music does so well. But Winningham reminds us that such sounds can conjure more than loneliness. They can open us to the sublime and make us all huge.

This album is the kind of country I can handle, with none of the chest thumping boot stomping hysteria of TODAYS HOT COUNTRY radio. Musically it reminds me of Alison Kraus, Emmylou Harris, or Gillian Welch. It also reminds me of Andy Statman and David Grisman's albums "Songs of Our Fathers" and "New Shabbos Waltz." While not every track works for me (My Fixed Point and Oh Moses are a bit heavy handed) the best of them mix humility, passion, and love for God and Judaism with solid songwriting and musicianship.

I've said this a number of times, but I longed for this sort of thing when I was a teenager. I longed for some strong musician and song-writer to sing about things I cared about. I never got it then, but it's starting to happen more often lately. That's why I love this album and absolutely hate one song on it, the third track, What Would David Do. If you edit out the chorus, you'd have an adequate reflection on King David. Not fabulous, but adequate. But then the chorus kicks in "ask yourself, What Would David Do." I wince. I sweat. I shudder. I hit fast forward. C'mon Mare. In the middle of such a heartfelt Jewish album did you have latch onto one of the most trite Christian cliche's of the last decade? sigh.

Anyway, this album is a keeper. My wife's swiped my copy already and has it in heavy rotation in the car. You should check it out. You can find it at Craig N Co's website and at Amazon. And, of course, on YouTube:

Valley of the Dry Bones

Blue Fringe's "The Whole World Lit Up" sounds nice and the boys have nice voices

I guess I'm a real music blog now. A nice fellow at Craig & Co. sent me a copy of Blue Fringe's latest "The Whole World Lit Up" and Mare Winningham's "Refuge Rock Sublime." He hoped I might mention them on my blog. That was four weeks ago, so I'd probably should get at it.

I've got a couple of impressions about the Blue Fringe album and I'll get to them in a minute. The first thing I want to say is that my daughter really likes them. Now, she's four and not necessarily a great judge of music (her usual favorite include the Dora the Explorer album and Sandra Boynton's 'Dog Train".) but she hears a lot of 'Papa' music and usually wrinkles her nose at it. 'The Whole World Lit Up,' though, she liked enough that she's asked me to play it. When I asked her why, she summed up the whole review I'd been assembling in about 10 words.

"It sounds nice. The boys have nice voices"

And they do sound nice and they do have nice voices. I haven't heard Blue Fringe live (I'm told they are a great live band) and haven't hear their ealier albums (I'm told they're a lot grungier) so I can't compare, but this is a nice album. I'm not usually a big fan of nice albums, I tend toward things a bit scruffier or more complicated than nice but 'The Whole World Lit Up" has been in heavier rotation than I would have expected. I guess I needed a little nice lately.

While the guys aren't song writer's per se, only getting credit for English lyrics on a couple of the tracks, there are some really interesting and enjoyable arrangements. The lead off tracks 'Etz Chaim' and "Eshett Chayil" are great fun, as is "Anayni". Some of the other tracks are a bit bland for me, but pleasant enough.

I was particularly surprised by their cover of the Flaming Lips "Do You Realize." It's a fabulous song. I find it pretty soul wrenching, but in a postive way and well worth covering. The Lip's have a very off-kilter, rock and roll carnival, kind of sound that give their arrangement a court jester, only the fool can tell the truth, feeling. Blue Fringe's arrangement, and it's placement on an album with an unapologetically religious context, allows the spiritual qualities of the song come foward. Unfortunately, their nicer, smoother, arrangement waters down much of the musical tension in the song by adding some unnecessary 'ooh's' and "ahhs" that really annoyed me. Just a bit too nice.

You can catch clips of "The Whole World Lit Up" at the Samaech Music website. There are, as there should be, lots of just two Blue Fringe videos at YouTube and you can also check out the Flaming Lips original 'Do You Realize' arrangement on YouTube. Here' a live video of Blue Fringe performing Eishet Chayil from "The Whole World Lit Up" for Samaech's Podcast.

Blue Fringe - Eishet Chayil - Sameach Podcast


Nice, right?


Thanks to Julie for pointing out that there are only two Blue Fringe videos and for pointing me to the Blue Fringe website for the track "My Awakening" from their first album. It's pretty cool and gives me a better idea about where they've been, musically. I like how the song builds and releases tension. I bet that one's great to hear live. What's really interesting is that the website has two additional, hidden, tracks after "My Awakening." The first is a live track. I didn't catch the title but it's the best thing I've heard from Blue Fringe yet. These guys can really tight and really jam. I see why they're so popular live. The second is a great out-take from a recording session. Good stuff. It's acoustic with a rawer sound that works better for me. Darn. Now I'll have to go out and buy the album. Double darn. I just listened to title track to their second album '70 Faces.' It's outstanding. It's got this crazy 70's funk rhythm and horns and I am so a sucker for that. Now I'll need both albums.