JDub Records

Found this tonight.  Who knew summer camps were dancing to JDub tunes?!? One day, maybe I’ll tell you about my history as an Israeli line dancer. As you might imagine, it starts the summer after 5th grade…

The new JDub Webstore is here and it’s better than ever. We’ve teamed up with Insound/White Label to bring you the easiest and best in online shopping. We’ve added free downloads, new releases and our full catalog available in all formats. We are also proud to announce that all of our releases are now available in digital format for only $8.99 each (that’s $1 less than iTunes).  So, head over to store.jdubrecords.org to check it out and also keep your eyes peeled for new releases and free music to be updated regularly.  I’m sure there is something for everyone at the jdub webstore, no matter how you are!!

Bouncing Souls - The Freaks, The Nerds and The Romantics

START SHOPPING

Say what you will about the National Prayer Breakfast and its backers, but the news from JTA is that President Obama brought AWJS into the room in his remarks about Haiti relief:

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Obama cited the American Jewish World Service among groups that exemplify “God’s grace, and the compassion and decency of the American people.”

Obama, addressing the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, spoke of recent efforts to bring relief to Haitians after the island nation’s devastating earthquake.

God’s grace, he said, was expressed in Haiti “through multiple faith-based efforts. By evangelicals at World Relief. By the American Jewish World Service. By Hindu temples, and mainline Protestants, Catholic Relief Services, African-American churches, the United Sikhs. By Americans of every faith, and no faith, uniting around a common purpose, a higher purpose.”

Go Jews!

I re-met Marla Bennett at Pardes in 2001.  We knew each other through friends as teenagers, but developed a relationship and shared a tight social circle during my Junior Year abroad in Jerusalem.  After she and fellow Pardes-nik (and DJ) Ben Blutstein were killed in the Hebrew U bombing in July 2002, we were just getting JDub off the ground.  We shifted gears and our first event was a memorial concert for them called Zachor, which raised $25K for scholarship funds in their memory at Pardes.

Seven and a half years on, we maintain close relationships with Marla’s family and that social circle from Jerusalem.  We’ve grown up, gotten married, some of us have had kids.   Tonight, reading this challenging article about her parents’ lawsuit against the government of Iran (which awarded them $13 million), I was particularly struck not just by her picture, but her age: 24. As the youngest of our crew, to see that, on the cusp of my 30th birthday, brought back fully the devastation of her loss.  Visiting with the Bennett’s this summer, they said nothing of the lawsuit, of their efforts to put a lien on the Iranian embassy, or of their hopes for the good use the $13 million could be put to.  If and when conversation turned to Marla, it was not about the bombing, blame, or foreign governments.  It was about Marla, the sweet, young, caring friend and daughter.  The final line of the article perfectly sums up how the Bennetts, and Marla’s friends, remember her: ”‘I always tell people she was the best person I’ve ever known,’ said her father.”

Read the full article at LATimes.com

The results are in for the winners of  Soulico’s  Exotic on the Speaker Remix Contest. Big thanks to all who submitted remixes, it was tough to pick the winners, but we chose what we thought were the cream of the crop here. So congrats to the winners and all the producers who submitted a remix. Check the remixes below and if you haven’t picked up a copy of Soulico’s Exotic on the Speaker, it’s on sale for the next few days for only $5.99.

Grand Prize Winner:

Soulico - Exotic on the Speaker: BrainDeaD Remix

Runner Up’s: Exotic On The Speaker (Aryeh’s 12 Tribes Remix)

Vibetown Remix by Ori Shochat & DJ Alarm
Exotic on the Speaker Remix by polyp

JDub’s good friend Josh Kun is a founding member of the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, an outgrowth of Reboot dedicated to “incit[ing] a new conversation about the present by listening anew to the past.” He just posted their “limited edition” (I guess it comes down soon?) Hanukkah mix which includes JDub’s own DJ Sabbo of Soulico. In Kun’s words:

“Where else can you hear Charlton Heston mashed up with The Mexican Institute of Sound? George Jessel with Soulico’s DJ Sabbo? Barbra and Neil alongside Lionel Hampton’s take on “Hava Nagila”?

Answer: only in your dreams, baby. Check it out HERE.

Tracklisting after the jump
Read More »

We’re back with our 7th annual XMas Eve Jewltide party and this year promises to be the funkiest!! It’s going down at Southpaw in Park Slope on December 24th, boasting a fresh set of funk classics by Dan Saks (of DeLeon) & The Funkadeli All-Stars and funky rock n soul beats spun all night  courtesy of New York Night Train’s Mr. Jonathan Toubin.

JDub Records & Jewcy Present: Jewltide 7

Thursday, December 24th (Christmas Eve)
@ Southpaw (125 5th Ave)

Featuring:
Dan Saks & The Funkadeli All-Stars
New York Night Train’s Mr. Jonathan Toubin

$10 Advance / $15 at the door (ticketweb.com)
Donuts & Drink Specials!
Doors 8 pm / Show 9 pm

If you don’t have a tree, you don’t have an excuse.

Co-Sponsored by Brooklyn Vegan, Jewish Book Council, and Brooklyn Jews

Today the San Francisco Chronicle has a great piece “What I Do” piece by David Katznelson, owner of Birdman Records, and, as we learn in the article, the man responsible for the Flaming Lips major label signing to Warner in 1990.  I know Katznelson through Reboot, the secret society/open space retreating/incubator of new Jewish products and ideas through which he co-founded of the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation.  All I can say is the attention is well deserved. David’s one of the hardest working guys I know, with dozens of projects, companies, and affiliations, all of which he shows unbelievable passion for.

JDub & Idelsohn team up with the New Center for Arts & Culture Nov 10th in Boston for You Shall Know Us By the Trail of our Vinyl event at the Foundation Room at the House of Blues.  Tickets HERE.

So my bags are packed, the tour is set and I’m about to head out on the road with Soulico for the Exotic on the Speaker album release tour.  We’ll be hitting 10 incredible cities, and I’ll be blogging from the road about the whole experience.

Anyway, that’s me on the right in the picture above, DJ Rob of Soulico is on the left,  and if you see me at one of the shows, snap a picture and send it to info@jdubrecords.org with the subject, “I found Adam,” we’ll send you some cool JDub swag, including the new Soulico CD!

Here’s where you can find me:

Soulico on Tour:

10/26 DC @ JStreet, Rocking the Status Quo Party
10/28 LA @ Spaceland w/Ceci Bastida & Lyrics Born
10/29 Seattle @ Chop Suey
10/31 Denver @ Walnut Room
11/1 SF @ 330 Ritch w/ Toph One

11/2 Chicago @ Empty Bottle w/ MC Zulu
11/3 ATL @ Apache Cafe
11/4 Emory University (Students only)
11/5 Miami @ The Vagabond (((Shake)))
11/7 NYC @ Mercury Lounge
11/8 DC @ Lotus Lounge
11/10 Boston @ House of Blues

Last week I received a piece of fascinating Muppet news.  Sesame Street and Phish share genes.

Turns out Trey’s dad, Ernie Anastasio, worked at PBS when Sesame Street was being created and he served as the inspiration for Ernie of Ernie & Bert.  So Ernie and Trey basically share a baby daddy!

While I have found no substantiation of this online, nor any photos of Ernie A to back up the related claim that the Muppet was inspired by his facial features, its still an intriguing revelation for someone who is both a Muppet and Phish fan.

Both play important roles in the creation of JDub.  Other than working in the music industry, the only other job I ever seriously wanted was to work with the Muppets at the Jim Henson Company.  I don’t remember when the idea first took hold, but I have a strong memory of hearing of Henson’s death in 1991 and committing myself to mentioning Henson in my Bar Mitzvah speech two years later (didn’t happen). Sesame Street and The Muppet Show were great, but my interests in the creative world of talking furry creatures and the magical realism of their existence extended to pretty much all Henson projects (Labryinth!!!), perhaps with the exception of Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.  Still, when, as a sophomore in high school, I told my parents I wanted to apply to University of Connecticut, home of the only Bachelor of Fine Arts in puppeteering program, they were non-too thrilled.  Not the controlling type, instead of crushing my dream flat-out, they arranged a meeting with a full time puppeteer in New York City while there on a layover en route to the Alexander Muss High School in Israel.  It was the most depressing outing ever.  The puppeteer presented small shows in his tiny apartment near Washington Square, seemed to barely eek out a living, and, when I told him about my Henson Co dreams, told me he had once been lucky enough to wag a Muppet tail on Sesame Street.  ”Henson’s crew is a small clique,” he told me.  ”There’s almost no way to break in.”  And that was pretty much it.  Dreams crushed, I continued on to Israel, discovered The Roots, Sonic Youth, and the Pharcyde via borrowed cassettes, and spent the next two years convinced that the music industry was a much more sound career path.

In meetings with funders, I often share a very true anecdote about hearing Phish break into Avinu Malkeinu in ‘96 at a show at the Ventura County Fairground.  The pride in hearing a Jewish song (sung well, in Hebrew, by a non-Jew) played to a crowd of thousands, the awakening that Jewishness could be expressed (and lived) beyond synagogue, JCC, and Hebrew School walls, and  the awareness that  others around me seemed to be having similar thoughts all played direclty into my motivations for co-founding JDub six years later.

The Ernie revelation last week was fun to learn, pulling these two strands together for me.  Without either interest, I seriously doubt JDub would exist today.  Yesterday, the Muppet connection may have grown a tiny bit closer.  I met with a staff member at Sesame Workshop about the relaunch of Shalom Sesame, the 1987 mini-series that introduced American Jews to the Israeli version of Sesame Street, Rechov Sumsum, and served to empower positive Jewish identity in kids through overdubbed Hebrew songs by Bert & Ernie and new clips with Sarah Jessica Parker and Itzak Perlman.  Keep your fingers crossed for us, friends. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll see a JDub band or two dancing with Grover, Elmo, and Moishe Oofnik a year from now.

Which JDub band would YOU want to see on Shalom Sesame???

(watch it from 4:00)