KLEZBOOK

I don’t need no stinkin’ Facebook.

A suburban councilman—who had been in my high school physics class — introduced my band at a summer gazebo concert.   I hadn’t seen him in years.  He had talked a lot in Physics.  I told the audience that.

At a gig in Rockford, Ill., a kid who used to do odd things in my bathroom (junior high), showed up.  He was a banker.

In Dallas, the star of my junior high’s football team stopped by.  He didn’t know much about klezmer.  He was the oldest of eight children of a Polish milkman.   Sealtest.  I used to tutor my friend in math for the fun of it.  I concocted tests and flunked him. Years later he wound up getting into medical school.  Showed me.

When Yiddishe Cup played in New York, my other high school buddies — the ones who used to sing “We’re Outta Here (Midwest)” — showed up at the gig.  Back in eleventh grade these guys had worn buttons from a Greenwich Village shop: I’m a Plainclothes Hippie and Unbutton. Go East, young men.  They did — about a minute after graduation.

At a Cleveland luncheon, a waitress, who had been in my fourth-grade class, reminded me we had the same exact birthday, different hospitals.

I sometimes put these folks to work  at Yiddishe Cup gigs.  Particularly if  I’ve gotten them comp tickets to a concert.  They sell CDs for me.

One gig — down in Florida — I had a Palm Beach lawyer and a bee expert hustling CDs.  The bee professor had played in a jug band in high school.  Washboard or jug?  Something stupid.  The Palm Beach lawyer had played in the jug band too.

I wasn’t invited into that jug band.  I was relegated to playing dippy Al Hirt “Java” duets with the trumpet player across the street.

Now these jug band guys were selling CDs for me.  And they were good at it.
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1 of 2 posts for 8/5/09.  Please see the post below too.
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Yiddishe Cup concert 6 p.m. tonight, Wade Oval, University Circle, Cleveland, Ohio.

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