Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.

BUBBLY BROS

by Bert Stratton

The Kleveland Klezmorim would not play “Hava Nagila.” The group wanted to rock out exclusively with klez fusion.

Yiddishe Cup, on the other hand, would play “Hava Nagila.” We would play the “Chicken Dance” too. We would not play “Electric Slide.” We drew the line in the charoses there. But we would pop in a CD of “Electric Slide.” (Charoses is an apples and nuts Passover dish. Jews, patience. Three goys in Germany are reading this right now.)

The Kleveland Klezmorim, led by Greg “Seltzer” Selker, disbanded in 1990. During the 1990s, a lot of people called me “Selker.”

We were both klezmer guys and had similar sounding names.

Nobody ever called me Seltzer. Nobody called Selker “Seltzer” either. Two missed opportunities.
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2 of 2 posts for 8/12/09.

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