PISTACHIOS
I had a store tenant who sold gravestones and pistachios. His main window sign read Porter Monuments and a smaller sign was Pistachios.
Not a good sign. He went under.
I had a tenant, the India Food Emporium . . . Indian spices, Indian bread, Indian music. Then came the Marlboros and malt liquor. Went under.
You want a samosa with that 40?
I got a call from a prospective tenant for a headlight removal business. Not a bad concept; headlights are tricky to remove. The caller repeated, “Head lice.” I was still OK with it.
Yiddishe Cup/Kiddush Cup/Klezmer Cup/Some Kind of Cup. Nobody knows our band’s name. All klezmer bands really have the same name: A Klezmer Band.
Sometimes clients hire us after they’ve attended a fun out-of-town wedding with a klezmer band. I ask, “What band?” They say, “A klezmer band.”
There is only one klez band with a name: the Klezmatics.
Yiddishe Cup probably stole a gig from the Klezmatics. An East Coast college promoter booked us because she thought she had heard us on the radio. What radio show was she talking about? She couldn’t remember. We’ve been on Cleveland and Cincinnati public radio. My guess is she heard the Klezmatics on NPR, googled klezmer, and somehow came up with Yiddishe Cup. So she hired us: A Klezmer Band.
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2 of 2 posts for 10/7/09
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I am quite sure my band — with a name Klezical Tradition — has also gotten gigs because the client thought they were getting the Klezmatics.
Many calls come in “Did I reach the Klezmatics?”
No, I say, but you’ll still love us. Maybe even more. We charge less….
This storefront signage reminds me of two other rather incongruous combos. You’ve probably seen them.
One was the blah brick building on S. Taylor, between the chicken place and the tools place that used to be Sherwin-Williams. One was a sign something like “Meals to Go,” next to one for an exterminator.
The other set probably is still on an expanded former house on Euclid in East Cleveland: advertised are Bibles and fishing bait.
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