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.

WHAT SIDEMEN?

by Bert Stratton

A sideman — a guy who just shows up for the gig and toots — has it easy, because if the gig is a flop, the onus is entirely on the bandleader. Sidemen are invisible.

One party planner said to me, “Your musicians are eating all the hors d’oeuvres. Why aren’t they playing [the cocktail hour].” (They each had two hors d’oeuvres, and they were playing.)

That’s the sort of kvetching I get from the party planner. I told her we needed to get fed a lot earlier. We anticipated eating at 10 p.m., so we needed a couple hors d’oeuvres. (We eat dinner at 6 p.m. in Ohio. Used to be 5:30 p.m. in Jack Paar’s day.)

My guys were very keen on the phyllo dough spinach triangles and egg rolls. So was I. Kind of hard to play the clarinet with a mouthful of phyllo dough and spinach. Doable though. It’s just the first few notes that don’t come out. You need at least a couple hors d’oeuvres to make it through the night.

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TOMORROW:

HORA-PAIN INSURANCE . . . We’ve seen a couple hora-induced broken ankles.

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