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.

THE AGONY STICK

by Bert Stratton

The clarinet can injure your right thumb, which holds a disproportionate amount of weight when you’re standing. I had a pain in my thumb that lasted one and a half years. I drove to Cincinnati to see a specialist. Then I did Alexander Technique and every other technique short of amputation. The clarinet is not only the licorice stick, it’s also the agony stick.

klez mask Here are another couple reasons the clarinet is the agony stick: The fingering patterns for clarinet are harder than sax, and the clarinet has the “break,” the awkward leap from A to B in the middle register. And the clarinet sounds horrible the first year or two you play it. I asked a sax guy in a big band if he played clarinet. He said, “I have a clarinet.”