JDub Records

Clare Burson - Baby Boy

In case you missed her last Joe’s Pub show, Six Points Fellow Clare Burson will be back in the neighborhood again to play her breathtakingly beautiful brand of folk-pop.  She is performing tomorrow night at Joe’s Pub in NYC.  It’s obviously going to be great, but make sure to get there by 7PM, because the last time Clare played this venue it sold out early!

Friday, 10/2 - Clare Burson @ Joe’s Pub

$15 / Tickets / 7PM

Many thanks to David Israel for this clip of Hidden Melodies Revealed LA.
Happy New Year from Team JDUB!!!

So I’ve been in Berlin now for a bunch of days and managed to go to at least Jewish or Israeli cultural event per day. That feels both comforting and world-shrinking. The highlight of my time here has been happening upon Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird as part of a gigantic city-wide free music festival. This is a musician that knows his Talmud, Brecht, and Holocaust literature - and can bring it all together in an engrossing, and totally transporting performance. Have you ever seen anyone sing into a megaphone and play the accordian simultaneously, not something to take lightly. I’ve been thinking about context a lot in how we experience art, music, culture in general. There was moment there where Daniel, a Jew who transplanted himself to Germany, was singing about parasites in Yiddish in Berlin to a big crowd, and I felt the swoosh of history playing out in my experience. So if you happen to be in Kracow, check them out on June 30, grab their new album Partisans and Parasites, or maybe even worth a little trip to Berlin. As I’m sure you’ve heard, there is a lot of this city to explore.

I’d like to offer you a special Thursday night outing recommendation. The performance/sibling collective Lewis Forever is in residence for three more weeks at The New Museum, and doing work in progress showings in the theater. The 4-sibling family is full of halfsies - half-Jew, half-Dominican, half-NYC, half-Berlin, but is flawless in their interactions as a whole. Last week was their first evening, and I walked out of the theater with a huge grin, full belly, and a lot to continue to chew on. They slyly played with the audience’s expectations about their family and the collective notion of family, fed us starving artist in berlin specialties, and got the entire audience dancing and throwing our arms in the air to blasting Animal Collective. They’ve got pitch-perfect style, hair and musical sensibilities, and somehow make you feel part of this insanely intelligent and slightly perplexing family. Go see them, and let me know what they are up to this week.

I know we usually focus on the more pop end of the music spectrum here on the JDub blog, but I wonder if any of you classically trained musicians have been as fascinated as I am by this week’s twin articles about Palestinian classical music Scrooge ipod in the New York Times. I’m not a weeper (Color Purple excepted) but I’ve been incredibly moved by the descriptions of the way the Palestinian kids have connected to a moment of beauty through learning an instrument. The articles by Dan Wakin

• Escaflowne hd Dreamcatcher movie
  Resurrecting the Champ move

, who often writes about music from more of an experiential rather than critical perspective, have been sensitive to the complexities of the region, politically and religiously, while reminding us of the exhileration of learning music.

Viewing music as a form of hope, of “resisting the occupation”, a demonstration of being alive within a difficult situation - those are the kind of ways I want to see art functioning in our world. I’d like to say that it was the bright sunlight at the breakfast table, or the previous late night, but reading the articles I got a little teary. I was suddently transported to that little girl shlepping the big, heavy cello up the school stairs, and remembering the glory of the music I could barely create. Read the articles, and have a hopeful moment about the story over there in the Middle East.

Beowulf release

Living Death movies

Urban Justice release

Clear and Present Danger movies

Are you feeling too busy to pray lately? Don’t despair, because Information Age Prayer will take care of that for you, for a very modest monthly subscription fee. When I first went to the website, I couldn’t quite figure out if it was an artist creation or serious, particularly when the Jewish section explains, “All Jewish prayers are voiced in English, with the computer speakers facing Jerusalem.” They offer the Kaddish, Shema (morning and night), and the unknown to me Prayer for Economic Stability( for a discounted rate.) But it wasn’t until I hit on the FAQs that I started cackling in front of my little davening computer, and realized it was totally serious. Read my favorite:

Knockaround Guys movies

• How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog ipod

Are the prayers meaningless, will subscribing really make a difference?
As with all prayer, the final results are up to God as everything follows His will. We make no claims regarding the efficacy of the service, however it is our opinion that the omniscient God hears the prayers when they are voiced, as He hears everything on this Earth. The omniscient God knows exactly who has subscribed and who each prayer is from when their name is displayed on screen and their prayer voiced.

The Fall video

Any rabbis/hachamim/learned jews want to weigh in and give a more Jewy answer to that one?

• Elvis Took a Bullet film

I’ve been reading a lot of Holocaust memoirs recently. I know, it isn’t exactly perfect Spring reading, but I’m headed to Berlin in a few weeks, and I decided that this project would be my self-appointed preparation, I affectionately call it “the most depressing reading list ever.” I recently finished one book that completely and totally suprised me, The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman. Diane Ackerman is a renowned naturalist, and she tells us the story of Antonina and Jan Zabinski, the caretakers of the animals and facilities at the Warsaw Zoo. Very quickly, most of the animals are killed, and their destruction is poetic and moving (and comprehensible) in a way that allows us to enter into the realization of the human destruction that is unfolding in Warsaw. In the next part of the story, the Zabinski’s go on to harbor and rescue hundreds of Jews, sometimes hiding them in the animal cages. The power of the book is the interplay between the animal and human worlds, and the deception and violence that define their boundaries. Something about how the Zabinski’s nicknamed the hidden Jews with animal names has stuck in my mind, humanizing through their empathy with the natural world. So I’m offering a recommendation here - put it on your own reading list, but maybe it belongs on the one that renews your hope in humanity (and animals).

The Hills Have Eyes release

Great Expectations dvd

So May is Bike Month Space Chimps download in NYC, but you hopefully know that. I’ve been recently falling back in love with this city perched on my bicycle seat. I’m kind of catholic about bike riding, I have a stable of steeds that I love nearly equally. There are times you want to throw a picnic on the back and leisurely ride in a sundress to the park, and other times when nothing feels better than spewing profanities at a car that cuts you off as you race around traffic. But I do feel strongly about the joy of moving yourself around the boroughs on two wheels, and I love big groups of riders taking over the streets. It feels majestic and noble to me in a way that I think other people feel about sports. But anyway, Friday is National Bike to Work Day. So please, pump your tires, put on your helmets, and take a ride. The amazing thing about the geography of our city is that it usually takes the same amount of time to ride as take the subway. Okay, there’s the challenge; if your ride and it really takes you much longer, a beer is on me. But no lying, okay? Also, there are some free breakfasts around for those who ride. So it’s like you save on subway fare and get free nosh. And if you want a little Jewish with your Bike Month, Hazon is running a conversation about biking on Shabbat on May 19.

Road Trip

What if Judah Maccabee was a young, gay boy thrilled by sexy Greeks wrestling in the gymnasiums of Jerusalem?

If you missed it the first go round, luckily for you, Six Points Fellow Dan Fishback’s You Will Experience Silence Mr. & Mrs. Smith on dvd , is back for an encore! Check out the critical acclaim and press coverage here

. This witty and often neurotic play cleverly recasts the Chanukkah story with Judah Maccabee as a gay teenager, and interweaves it with a modern-day activist’s struggle. The insightful and humorous piece is a meditation on citizenship, imperialism, and sexual ethics.

SPECIAL ENCORE PERFORMANCE

• Naqoyqatsi: Life as War divx

May 4th, 8pm
Dixon Place
161 Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey)
For more information, click here

Last Sunday i was lucky enough to catch the last showing of Dan Safer and the Witnesses Relocation’s dance/theatre epic HAGGADAH at the historic and beautiful La MaMa Theatre on E. 4th Street in Manhattan. Safer is one of eight Six Points Fellows and Haggadah is an amazing interpretation and production of the interminable family seder. Safer weaves music, dance, poetry, history and a true punk rock aesthetic into a truly beautiful and powerful work of art displayed as a speedy whirlwind of a performance.

The young crew of performers aren’t necessarily re-telling the Passover story as much as they are giving slices of history; the journey of the Israelites and the Egyptians, battles between slave owners and slaves & conversations with g-d and moses, mixed with modern day emotions and pop culture references through the lense of a young generation of performers and artists. The best Jewish theatre I’ve seen in a while.

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