Category — Miscellaneous

Why do nursing-home administrators request 100-percent peppy music from performers?  Some residents want to hear contemplative tunes.

Why do eyeglass-frame adjusters have so much power over us?  Did they all get PhDs?  From where?  I.U.?

How come newspaper columnists don’t write about pet peeves anymore?  That’s annoying.

My wife took the electric toothbrush to Columbus, Ohio, on a business trip. The electric toothbrush — and the seltzer machine and Bose radio — are permanent attachments to the dwelling, Alice.

Why does Zagara’s grocery in Cleveland Heights sell only 12-packs of shabbat candles and not the 72-candle jumbo box?  Zagara’s Jewish Lites.

What about those phone solicitors from yours kids’ colleges who ask for money.  What are you supposed to say?   “Here’s another $50.  No problem.”

Why do “highly sensitive” people insist on telling you what bothers them?  That’s irritating.

When your computer crashes, why do you feel like your right hand fell off?  Why can’t you feel like a mosquito bit your ankle.

Who is nostalgic for mimeo machines?  Somebody should be.

Why do “sophisticated” Clevelanders brag about not reading the Plain Dealer?  They say, “I’ve lived in Cleveland for 20 years and never subscribed to the PD.  I read the New York Times. ”  Go home.

People who grow vegetables always serve arugula.  Why don’t they grow dates or figs?

Why do concertgoers at the Cleveland Orchestra applaud maniacally after every single piece?  The listeners nap for 54 minutes (Mahler Symphony #1), then give the conductor three curtain calls.  Applaud this!

If you want to talk about cars, first ask: “Do you want to talk about cars with me?”  Same goes for sports, TV shows and politics.

Which is preferable:  a) “He passed away.” or b) “He passed.”  Answer: “He passed away.”  Best answer:  c) “He died.”

Who was the curmudgeon — Harvey Pekar or Andy Rooney?  Coin toss.

Don’t complain about lousy cell phone service and long lines at the post office.  That’s modern life.   You wouldn’t get upset by a house sign that said the smith’s, would you?

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Doctors like to complain how their pay isn’t what it used to be.  Another  gripe of docs is the increased paperwork.

But doctors do all right.  They are one of the few professions that still hire bands.

A side benefit for Yiddishe Cup is we sometimes get free medical advice at gigs.   At a Pittsburgh wedding, a doctor checked one of our guys for a hernia in the men’s room stall.

In Cleveland, a doctor asked me for an appointment.  He was a Washington heart specialist, considering a job at the Cleveland Clinic.  He played mandolin.  He wanted to know if Cleveland had a good quality of life.

I said yes.

He spent several years at the Cleveland Clinic giving me –- and others — the lowdown on HDL.  (The lowdown is there is no sure-fire way to raise your HDL.)

Yiddishe Cup occasionally gets gigs from immigrant doctors from South Africa.   One doc had a diploma on his office wall from the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa).  I thought “witch doctor” — like the doctor in the Mickey Katz parody “My Son the Knish Doctor.”  The Katz doc had studied at the Bwana Wana Yeshiva.

South African doctors are often Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews) and plugged into Yiddish culture — what’s left of it.

***

I met a doc at Klezkamp who was atrocious on soprano sax and would repeat,  “I’m a doctor!  I’m a doctor!”  That worked.  It made him feel better.

He had a point.  He saved lives.  So what if he couldn’t play “Khasidim Tantz”?

Yiddishe Cup had a medical student in the band.  Dave Jaffe, guitarist/singer and Case medical student.  He lasted a year.  Med school and the band were too much.

Doctors often form their own bands because of their busy schedules.  These bands play a couple benefits a year and often have names like No Evidence of Disease.

I wish I had studied harder in Inorganic and Organic Chemistry.  I wouldn’t mind being a brain surgeon with a side interest in klezmer.

Turns out I’m a klezmer musician with a side interest in brain surgery.  This scares people.

I accept most insurance plans.

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Gratz College in Philadelphia offers an online course called Comparative Genocide.

The teacher, Sean Martin, lives in Cleveland.

I said to Sean, “I think Don DeLillo wrote about Hitler Studies in a novel, but that was a novel.  Comparative Genocide, is it real?”

“Gratz named the course,” Sean said. “I didn’t.  It’s a real course.”

Sean also teaches classes on ethnicity and the Holocaust in Cleveland.  He speaks Yiddish and Polish, and has a PhD.

Sean, from Weirton, West Virginia, is of Italian and Appalachian descent. (There is also a Yiddish scholar from Japan.)

I said to Sean, “You’re interested in everything you’re not, is that it?”

“Exactly,” he said.

“In the Comparative Genocide class, does everybody try to top the Jews’ story? ” I said.  “The Jews are the gold standard?”

“There’s some of that going on,” Sean said.  “But that’s not the intent.  Let me repeat, I didn’t pick the name of the course.  Gratz has got to change that.”

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Here’s an original Klezmer Guy movie,  “Nine Days to Die.”   It’s funny.   My “bro” — Stuart — has followed me my whole life.  Or I’ve followed him.

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A Jew Grows in Brooklyn, Jake Ehrenrich’s one-man Broadway show, was unadulterated nostalgia.  Jake even flashed photos of his bar mitzvah on the big screen on stage.

The show came through Cleveland recently.  The audience, for the most part, loved the sentimentality and obviousness of the play.  Did you know Jake and other Brooklynites played stickball?  Did you know Irving Berlin was born Isadore Balin?  Did you know Jews wrote many popular Christmas and rock songs?

This just in: Jews like baseball.

What about bark mitzvahs?  (Bar mitzvahs for dogs.)  Aren’t those (fake) events outrageous and cute?  Jake projected dogs in yarmulkes and tallism (prayer shawls) onto the screen.

There are acceptable levels of schmaltz and shtick.  Jake exceeded those levels.

I know, Yiddishe Cup is not exactly schmaltz-free.  And Yiddishe Cup gets negative reviews too.  We’re schmaltzy. We play “Romania” at the end of most of our shows.  That is the imprimatur of a klez shtick band.  But we also play original comedy tunes and regularly rip off the great Mickey Katz.

We would gladly add more high-brow material to our shows if we could play our instruments better.  But we wouldn’t add too much high-brow.

Some high-brow bands are monotonous, repetitive and monotonous.  No names here; I don’t want to alienate any of my musician friends.  OK, I’ll name one group . . .

Los Muñequitos de Matanzas.

These drum-crazed Cuban dudes play rhythm patterns on four drums for 45 minutes.  And that’s just the first set. Very little melodic or harmonic variation.  No chording instruments.  No talking between songs.

Yiddishe Cup talks.  We explain our tunes and ad lib asides. I might say, “Ladies and gentlemen, on keyboards, Winston Churchill.”  That’s class.

Jake Ehrenrich, in his show, lifted many old Jewish jokes. That was the best part of his show — his Catskills routine.  (And he’s a good singer and musician.)

Jake’s best joke:

Two Jewish men are walking by a church sign:

Abe says, “I’m thinking of doing it — converting.”

Murray says, “What? Are you crazy?”

Abe goes into the church and comes out ten minutes later.

“So?” Murray asks. “Did you get the $500?”

Abe says, “Is that all you people think about!”

Hurray for Oy Vey.  There’s a market.  And I want the T-shirt concession in the lobby.

—

For “inside baseball” blog talk, please check out the post below.

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Been doing this blog for two years.

Special thanks to our major donors (commenters).  We could have done it without you, but it wouldn’t have been as much fun.

In no particular order, thanks to Marc, Jessica Schreiber, Gerald Ross, Seth Marks, Teddy, Adrianne Greenbaum, Bill Jones, Mark Schilling, Harvey Kugelman, Terri Zupancic, Ellen, Susan Greene . . .

David, Margie,  Irwin Weinberger, John Urbancich, Jane Lassar, Zach Kurtz, Ben Cohen, Alice, Alan Douglass, Diddle, Steve, Dan, Jack, Don Friedman, Kenny G,  and Steven Greenman.

Get your name on this list next year by contributing at least $2,500 or writing many comments.

"Substandard paragraphs! Ten cents!"

Also, a special thanks to Ralph Solonitz, the blog’s illustrator.  He adds a lot.  When I write substandard paragraphs, I encourage Ralph to throw in as many pics as possible.  Works out well.

I first met Ralph about 20 years ago when he designed Yiddishe Cup’s logo.

Several people have recently asked when they’re going to get in the blog.  They want in!

On the other hand, many more people say, “Don’t put me in your blog, whatever you do.”

Google Analytics — a spy op — says there are “Klezmer Guy” readers in every state except South Dakota, plus many foreign countries.  (The five most popular countries are Canada, Israel, Germany, the United Kingdom and France.)

Google Analytics, for your information, zeroes in on readers by their hometowns, not their names.  For instance, somebody in Chico, California, reads this blog.

Thanks for hanging in with this blog.  Without you — the reader — I’d be writing for the drawer, which I’ve done and it’s no fun.

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You aren’t going to read this entire blog.  I know that.  You have other things to do. Like working out . . .

Mr. Mentsh benches the Sunday NY Times

Here’s a good idea.  Check out this “best of” list:

1. The three best blog posts are . . .

SEARCHING FOR GALICIA, about the Alter Heym (Old Country); has a photo of my mother;

FECES HAPPENS, about a building manager cleaning up excrement;

and YID LIDS, about a yarmulke collection.

This  site — Klezmer Guy — is primarily an amusing word pile, accompanied by Ralph Solonitz‘s illustrations, original Klezmer Guy videos and Yiddishe Cup music.   And no recipes.

2. The best video is about a beat-boxing drummer (guy in yellow shirt with tie):

3. The best Yiddishe Cup recording is Meshugeneh Mambo — a klezmer comedy album. You can buy and/or listen to it at CDBaby, Amazon, or iTunes. (Yiddishe Cup’s Web site is www.yiddishecup.com. We play all over the country. We also do a duo act.)
Here’s our best song:

Meshugeneh Mambo (Crazy Mambo) by Yiddishe Cup

4. The blog’s illustrator, to repeat, is Ralph Solonitz. His best work is Yiddishe Cup’s logo at the very top of this page.

5. Please sign the mailing list at the lower left of the screen. You’ll get a fresh post delivered to your door every Wednesday morning by herring boat. You will receive one — just one — email a week. (We don’t sell your email address to others.) Or you can “like” us on Facedeath and get a weekly blog post there.

Once again, welcome. Please read the posts below and come back here on Wednesday mornings. Nobody — and that includes the New York Times — covers the klezmer/
landlord scene like we do.

Lox on,

Bert Stratton

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My basement — where Yiddishe Cup rehearses — smelled like a skunk.

The skunk was under the stoop by my front door, next to the basement.

I could hardly breathe in the basement.  How was I supposed to play clarinet?

Skunks are bad people.  The city won’t deal with them.  So I hired a private company, Critter Control.

The Critter Control  “technician” liked my collection of Jewish-star necklaces — Purim bling — in my basement.  He said he was Jewish. (I run into Jewish handymen more often than most people, I think.)  He said, “I don’t know much about the ritual and all that, but my mother was Jewish.”

“If you say you’re Jewish, that’s good enough for me,” I said.  And get rid of the skunk, please. He set a trap under the stoop.

And he sold me a can of Odor Assassin for $15.  Just three squirts of the spray got rid of the skunk smell in the basement.

When the Yiddishe Cup musicians came over for rehearsal that night, the basement smelled tangy and lemon-lime fresh, courtesy of the Odor Assassin.

But the skunk decided to spray, counterattacking during rehearsal. I thought Yiddishe Cup would disband.  I said, “Let me get out my Odor Assassin.  It’ll only take five years off our lives, at most.”

The guys agreed to the chemical battle.

Odor Assassin saved Yiddishe Cup’s rehearsal.  (No small thing. Some Yiddishe Cup musicians drive up to 35 minutes to rehearsal.)

Yiddishe Cup rarely endorses products.  To date: Golden Herring and all sardines.  Add Odor Assassin.

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Walt Mahovlich, the leader of the Gypsy-style band Harmonia, had hundreds of cassette tapes in his living room. He had custom-made bookshelves lined with tapes. There were Yugoslavian field recording from the 1970s and commercial ethnic tapes from the 1980s and 1990s.  And he had dubbed some LPs to tape.

Walt’s wall o’ tapes was organized by nationality: Albanian, Croatian, Hungarian, Jewish, Macedonian, Romanian, Rusyn, Serbian, Slovak and Turkish.

A tape — a brand-new chrome tape with Dolby — often sounded as good as the original LP.  But few dubbers bought chrome.  Even the commercial tapes released in the 1980s weren’t always chrome.

One big downside to tape: the tape player would occasionally eat the skinny tape, and you’d have to splice it back to health.

The cassettes, with their cases, were compact.  Give them that.

I bought a Sony Walkman cassette player in 1981, just prior to my first son’s birth.   My wife, Alice, went through three 24-hour shifts of obstetricians before she delivered.  I had the cassette tapes (dubbed jazz LPs) and two corned beef sandwiches from Irv’s Deli.  I was set.  My wife had complications.

The doctors wanted to check it out. Not the complications. The Walkman. They had never seen one.

Three years ago I bought a Chinese Walkman knock-off for $40 at Radio Shack.  I thought the Walkman might disappear.

Sony recently announced the end of Walkman cassette player production.

Two words:  Stock up.

Teddy Stratton, 1 month

***

Walt Mahovlich’s wall o’ tapes still exists in the same West Side living room.

Last week Walt said, “I should transfer my tapes to digital.  Who knows how long they’ll last — the tapes.  But what I really need to do is record a 78 — something that will really last!”

“You want to record a 78 RPM?”

“Yes.  Alan [Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player] has a 78-making machine.  I saw it years ago.  I want to record a tune, then prematurely age the disc — the 78 — and place it in strategic places for people to find.”

“Like at Goodwill stores?”

“Maybe.  It’ll be a hoax, like Piltdown Man.”

“An original tune?”

“No, a clarinet piece I learned years ago.  I’ll call it ‘Der Freylekher Bulgar’ for the Jewish market and ‘Lerinsko Narodno Oro” for the Macedonians. It’ll be the same tune, two markets.  Like Tarras.” *

“Do you have a Walkman?”

“No, I’ve never had one.”

“You should get one.”

“I have a tape deck. I’m set.”

Walt, on accordion, had an aura. 1983

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* Dave Tarras, klezmer clarinetist, sometimes “re-gifted” his Jewish tunes to fit the Greek market, and vice versa.

“Der Freylekher Bulgar” is Yiddish for “The Happy Dance.”  “Lerinsko Narodno Oro” is Macedonian for “Lerin Region Folk Dance.”

Thanks to Lori Cahan-Simon, musician and Yiddishist, for the  correct spelling on “Der Freylekher Bulgar.”

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Nowhere Boy, the movie about John Lennon as a teenager, wasn’t that great.  But the setting was.

The movie was very soap opera–ish. Lennon and his mother seemed to be having an affair on screen.

My wife, Alice, wanted to see Nowhere Boy.  Or any movie.  We had a friend visiting from out of town.  The friend chose Nowhere Boy too.  Alice said the movie had 81 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Eighty-one percent is horrible!  But I went, to be a sport.

Nowhere Boy is a drama set in 1950s Liverpool: double-decker buses, Morgans and Teddy Boys.   Yes!

Oh, to be in England . . .

[Please click video to continue:]

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Bert Stratton is a pianist and singer on the Caribbean Princess cruise ship.

A man phoned and said, “Bert, this is Joe.  I’m upstairs.”

I was in the basement.  Joe was upstairs.  Creepy.

Joe was upstairs at the other Bert Stratton’s house.

A friend of mine saw Bert perform.  Bert knew me — knew of me — he told my friend.

I know Bert, sort of.  The imposter always tops me on Google.

I wouldn’t mind playing a cruise ship like Bert Stratton.  I know a retired rabbi — Bernard Ducoff, the father of Yiddishe Cup’s dance leader Daniel Ducoff — who does cruise ship gigs.  He’s the boat rabbi for a week or so.  Yiddishe Cup could do a Caribbean klezmer cruise.  There already is a Caribbean cantors cruise on Kosherica lines.  (Not fiction.)

I could not see doing a klezmer bus tour.  No thanks to blowing clarinet on a moving vehicle.  Bad for the teeth.  I was asked to play on Lolly the Trolley and said no.

I could play klezmer on an elevator.  I did.  Yiddishe Cup played elevator music at the opening of Stone Garden Center for Adult Living.  We have played at Stone Garden many times since, but not in the elevator.  We call our Stone Garden gigs “playing the Garden,” as in Madison Square Garden.

Has Bert Stratton ever played the Garden?
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2 of 2 posts for 8/25/10

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Magic Markers must say “Sharpie Retractable Fine Point.”  The “Retractable” means there is no cap — nothing to unscrew and then laboriously screw onto the other end of the pen.

I ordered 24 red Sharpie retractables online because I couldn’t find a lone red Sharpie at Staples or Office Max.  Those places think you’re representing the entire Cuyahoga County juvenile court system when you walk in.

Pay close attention to the words “fine point” on the retractable Sharpie.  The “ultra fine point” model is nothing more than a pen.

I bought 7 pounds of 7-inch “Big Red” rubber bands from Netherland Rubber in Cincinnati.  The company wouldn’t sell less than 7 pounds.  That supply — my 7 pounds/1,260 rubber bands — lasted eight years.  If you purchase similar big rubber bands at Discount Drug Mart or Staples, you’ll pay $2 for 12 rubber bands — 17 cents per rubber band.  Mine, in bulk, were 3 cents.  The rubber bands are good for organizing manila-folder tax return files.  They’re also useful for organizing clothes in a duffel or backpack.

Pentel RSVP pens . . . You need a balanced pen like that. Use the RSVP fine point for detail work like bookkeeping, and the medium point for regular tasks.  The medium point moves quicker across the page than the fine point. Use Gel pens for the dramatic, inky, John Hancock-style, five-year lease signing.

For Post-its, pay extra and go Super Sticky.  Make sure you don’t accidentally buy the accordion-style, pop-up Post-its. That is a death sentence.

I wrote to a real estate newsletter: “The Post-it has simplified my life more than my computer!”  This was pre-Internet.  Now I’d take my computer over Post-its to a desert island.

Get a couple clip-on pens. Don’t buy them. Find somebody from the Cleveland Clinic to give you a couple. You need a clip-on pen (no cap) for quick accessibility. Sometimes a bandleader has to quickly write the name of a tune on an index card.  Nobody can hear anything on stage.

My father used 8-column green accounting pads for record keeping.  I still occasionally refer to his records, particularly the marginalia, like “Light the incinerator from the top floor down, so the refuse burns down.”

Incinerators were banned more than 40 years ago.

“In September have boilers bled and check safety valves.”

Check.

For checks, try J&R Computer Supply in Mankato, Minnesota . . .
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2 of 2 posts for 8/18/10

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We interrupt this blog to tell you this blog is a year old.

Special thanks to our major donors (commenters).  We could have done it without you, but it wouldn’t have been as interesting.

In no particular order, thanks to Marc, Jessica Schreiber, Gerald Ross, Robert K S, Shawn Fink, Teddy, Adrianne Greenbaum, Bill Jones, Mark Schilling, Harvey Kugelman, Wolf Krawkowski, Terri Zupancic, Ellen . . .

David, Irwin Weinberger, John M. Urbancich, Jane Lassar, Zach, Gary Gould, Robin, Ben Cohen, David Budin, Alice, Alan Douglass, Diddle, Don Friedman, Kenny G, Richard Grayson and Steven Greenman.

Get your name on this list next year by contributing at least $2,500, or writing in a lot.

Google Analytics — a spy op — has uncovered Klezmer Guy readers in every state except the axis of evil: South Dakota, Nebraska and Arkansas.  Google also hears Klezmer Guy “chatter” from many foreign countries.  The most active Klezmer Guy cells are in Canada, Israel, England, France and Germany.  And there is a lone-wolf reader in Libya. ( Salaam, bro, don’t shoot.)

Google doesn’t divulge readers’ names, by the way,  just cities and countries.

Expect some Klezmer Guy video this coming year.  These video clips should appeal to a broader readership: non-readers.  Some nudity in the clips. (Facial and hand.)

***

Quiz-time

Several Klezmer Guy readers  report: “I’ve read every word of your blog!”   Kathy, one of these extreme readers, has asked for a quiz.  She thinks she will win.

[The quiz is now in the “comments” section of this post. 5/21/10]

See you at the next Yiddishe Cup concert or “Driving Mr. Klezmer” duo gig.  Or if not there, here.

The bell rings.  Round two.

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2 of 2 posts for 5/12/10

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1. WHAT YOU CALL HIM

When I wrote to John Demjanjuk’s daughter, she sent me a packet stating her father, the Ukrainian SS man, had been framed by an editor at a small pro-Soviet, anti-Ukrainian, New York newspaper in 1975.

I was interested in seeing Demjanjuk.  I had thought and dreamed about Nazis, but had never been in the same room with one.  (I usually dreamed about being in the same room.)

At the 1981 Demjanjuk trial, lawyers argued over forensics, among other things, at the federal courthouse in Cleveland. I looked on as the prosecution presented a handwriting expert who had studied over 4,000 signatures.  He said Demjanjuk’s signature on the prison guard ID card was the real thing, not a Soviet forgery.

The judge agreed on that and a few other things — after months of testimony — and revoked Demjanjuk’s citizenship.

Demjanjuk then spent some time in various American prisons for technical violations, such as missing his first deportation hearing.

In 1986 Demjanjuk was sent to Israel for a second trial.

A cop at the Sixth District police station watched a small TV hidden under his desk that day.  The TV was always on.  (I was covering the police news.)  The cop said, “Hey, there’s that guy — What You Call Him — getting off the plane in Israel.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t take a pill,” I said.

“For what?  He didn’t do it.”

“There are five witnesses,” I said.

“So what. It’s the past.  Let it die.  But the fucking Jews keep bringing it up.  He didn’t do it.  He was told to, or else.”

A lieutenant interrupted, “What would you do if somebody put a gun to your head and said, ‘Do it or else’?”

“He didn’t have to do it,” I shrugged.  I was down for the count with F-ing Jews.

Israel convicted Demjanjuk, and he was in an Israeli prison for years. Then Israel’s high court overturned its verdict on various technicalities and sent him back to America.

When Demjanjuk returned to the States, he went on trial again in Cleveland and was ordered deported.  Nobody wanted him until last year, when Germany said yes.

Demjanjuk turns 90 this Saturday in a German prison hospital.

Dem john’s luck.

Dem john yuck.

Damn john’s junket . . . Kiev Oblast, Flossenberg, Trawniki, Treblinka, Sobibor, Seven Hills/Cleveland, Jerusalem, Munich.

***

2. VOLKSDEUTSCHE

The building across from St. Edward High has two hair salons — one specializing in fades and buzzes, and the other for elderly women, all about perms and tints.

The tint shop is Martha’s.  In 1977 she bought the business from Hildegard, a fellow German. Martha is Volksdeutsche, an ethnic German from Poland.

Sometimes Martha sits in her shop all day and doesn’t get a single customer.  Her clientele is dwindling.  Whenever I come in, she hugs me and cries. This happens every single time.

She always talks about Jews.  Poles, too, occasionally.  She is not, as a rule, fond of Poles. “Every group has its devils, but the Poles had more than most,” she says.  She mentions several East Side Jews who hired her when she came over in the 1950s.  “Wonderful, wonderful people.”

I don’t know these East Side Jews.  Some West Side gentiles think all East Side Jews know each other.

I wonder how much of Martha’s war saga is true.

Martha is often late with her rent. That’s a pain but not a major one.  She’s good for it.

I hope her war stories are all true, but I don’t really want to know if they aren’t.

Martha says her mother rescued a Jewish girl in Kutno, Poland, during the war.  Martha’s mother — along with her Uncle Wilhelm and Cousin Hedwig — saw the little girl at a train station, exchanged furtive glances with the girl’s mom, took the girl home, and raised her.  The girl wound up marrying an Englishman after the war, Martha says.

Martha had Jewish ancestors who converted to Lutheranism in the 1800s, she says.

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When my wife’s computer started whirring and stinking up the house, I told her not to worry.  It would correct itself.

It crashed.  No biggie.   She got a new computer.

Then my violinist’s computer crashed.   It was a laptop he carried on every trip.  It was like a Strad to him.  A Stradivarius.  Three days after the crash, he was back online.  No big deal.

My computer crashed.

Big deal. I went nuts.

My real estate data disappeared.  I lost five years of checkbook data.

My computer repairman was dead; he was killed in a freak bicycle accident.  And my back-up computer guy was in medical school — in Hungary.  I couldn’t even write a check, and I didn’t know my bank balance.

I called Quickbooks and got a technician from the Pacific time zone.  Pacific Coast people, they seem smart on the phone. The tech person found the problem — after three hours of phone jabber — and fixed it for $172.  I would have paid triple that.

From yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:  “Triggers for broken-heart syndrome seem as varied as the number of people affected . . . Being overwhelmed by new software at work, seeing a poultry barn burn down, or losing money at a casino all have brought the condition on, doctors say.” The article’s headline was “Hearts Can Actually Break.”

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2 of 2 posts for 2/10/10

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Clarinet players are sometimes a bit behind the times. If you subscribe to The Clarinet magazine, you’ll see.  There are a lot of photos.

Toodles in ’12. Benny Goodman for President.

Many clarinetists, myself included, mimic Goodman.  He’s the latest thing.  We stand ram-rod straight, wear suits, and have facial muscles twisted tighter than model airplane propellers.

U.S. military band clarinetists are a subspecies of clarinet antediluvians.  They are all sergeants for some reason.  These soldiers aren’t shimmying under any barbed wire fences for you.  They’re busy practicing, trying to get into The Clarinet magazine.

Clarinetists gather annually at Clarinetfest, Clarinetopia and Clarabell.  (The last one is made up.)  At these conventions, the workshop leaders are called clinicians.  They come from SMU, KSU and OSU.  Has to have an S in it.  The clinicians teach college students how to become clinicians.

When I was a clinician at the Ohio Music Educators Association conference, I was a bit light in the bio department. No “B.M. from SMU,” no “soloed with the Wyoming Symphony,” no “studied with Hans WorseThan Most.”

I wrote I was the clarinetist and leader of Yiddishe Cup.

***

Not every clarinet player looks like an insurance agent.  There’s Don Byron, the black guy with dreadlocks, and Paquito D’Rivera, the Cubano humano. Plus there are at least a dozen curly-haired Jewish clarinetists who look like Larry Fine from the Three Stooges.  The principal clarinetist of the Cleveland Orchestra, Franklin Cohen, is a Larry Fine impersonator.  Me too.

A black acquaintance, who ran into me in a restaurant, said, “Hi, Frank.”  I corrected him, and the black man blushed, sort of.

I played two surprise birthday parties for Frank Cohen.  Those were scary affairs because at least eight clarinet players were at each gig.  Some of the clarinetists played “Happy Birthday” in a clarinet choir, which is similar to a vocal chorus, except it’s all clarinets: big, medium and little clarinets.

I, too, own a small clarinet — a C clarinet.  The C is more piercing than the standard Bb horn, which is my main axe. (Bb is what everybody is familiar with.) There are also Eb clarinets, which are smaller than Cs.  And even more obscure key clarinets.

The thing I never understood about music: Why all the different keys?  Just get rid of some of them. Pare down.

Sid Beckerman, the legendary klez clarinetist, said, “To you, D minor is a key.  To me, it’s a living.”  D minor is the key of choice for klezmer clarinetists.

And what’s with transposing? If a clarinetist plays with a pianist or guitarist, the clarinet player has to play different notes than the ones written on the page.

I’m pretty good at it.  When I see a written “C,” I can play “D” on the clarinet.  It took me a while.  It’s like a Swede learning Danish.

Here’s what is impossible: transposing quickly on the alto sax.  When you see “C,” you play “A,” the relative minor.  If the tune is incredibly slow, like a waltz, it’s doable.

Transposition keeps the riff-raff and dabblers off the bandstand.  Just like in Judaism, where the prayer book goes backwards and the rabbi skips chunks of prayers and jumps around in the book without telling you.  Just to make it hard.

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 Most artists prefer to practice and wait for the phone to ring.

When I started out in klez, a Cleveland Irish musician, Dermot Somerville, told me: “You need to remind people you’re alive at least every six months.”

I do — X 26. As you know.

Yiddishe Cup is one of the most popular klezmer bands, because:

(1.) We’re good.

(2.) We promote ourselves.

I learned item #2 , and the chutzpah to say item #1, from my dad, who was not a WASP-modest George “Poppy” Bush kind of guy. My father said if you don’t toot your own horn, nobody will.  When my father was at the hospital dying of leukemia, he told the doctor, “I own this place.”  My dad owned a Cleveland Clinic municipal bond.

I used to be shy.  So was my father.  He took a Dale Carnegie course on public speaking.   In my twenties, I was still shy; I heard a West Side hardware store owner say “jew down,” and it took me 20 minutes to sputter, “Bob, you know I’m Jewish.”  (My family spent about $500 a month in that store. I figured Bob would be open to my viewpoint.)

Bob didn’t know “jew down” had anything to do with real Jews.  He apologized.  He was a decent guy.
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2 of 2 posts for 12/23/09

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My real estate job is pretty easy physically. I just boss custodians and repairmen around  and do paperwork: pay taxes, pay cockroach killers, and argue about security deposit refunds.  The only physical part is climbing the stairs and going on roofs.  None of my buildings has elevators.

Playing the clarinet . . . that can injure you.  You know where?  The right thumb.  The right thumb holds a disproportionate weight when you’re standing.

I had a pain in my right thumb that lasted 18 months.  The pain took a long leisurely trip through my body. Went from my thumb to my shoulders to my neck.

Physical therapists love musicians, particularly violinists, flutists, pianists and clarinetists.

I drove to Cincinnati to see a specialist for clarinet pain.  Then I did Alexander Technique, and every other technique short of amputation.

Some clarinet players use a neck strap. I do.  At KlezKamp, the music conference, I met a clarinetist who wore a neck strap.  He said, “The pain eventually goes away.”  That was my mantra for more than a year.

The clarinet is the agony stick.  Musicians call it that.  Not simply because the clarinet can be painful to play, but because it’s difficult.  The fingerings are harder than the sax, and a clarinet has the “break,” the awkward leap from A to B in the middle register.  The clarinet squeaks.  And the clarinet’s register key raises the note a twelfth, not an octave.  This is extremely odd physics.  The clarinet’s sound doesn’t typically come out the bell, like on a sax.

You mic a sax by clipping a mic on the bell, but on a clarinet you surround the clarinet with mics like on Wagon Train.  I had a mic rig for my clarinet that was so complex and heavy — and cost more than my axe — I  gave up on it.  Plus, it was hurting my thumb.

I asked a sax player in a big band if he played clarinet.  He said, “I have a clarinet.”
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1 of 2 posts for 9/30/09.  Please see the post below too.
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A version of this post will appear in the upcoming (Dec. 2009) issue of The Clarinet, the magazine of the International Clarinet Association, www.clarinet.org.
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Apparently some people don’t know there is a comments section to this blog.  Click on the “comments” link  below the “Tell A Friend” link. If there are few, or no, comments, go to the end of the “Sanctuary” post — two down from here. There are a lot of comments there.

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Wedding clients never forget you. You’re in their video.

When I run into an old wedding client, he says, “Abigail and Isaac, this is Mr. Stratton.  He played Mommy and Daddy’s wedding.”

I say to the kids, “You weren’t there.”   (I’m not good with kid chat.)

Some of these weddings were 15-20 years ago.

In real estate, that kind of long-term psychic pay-off  is minimal.  Last decade I got a letter from a recovering alcoholic who said I saved her life when I kicked her out of her apartment for being drunk and not paying her rent.

I’ve rented to a lot of drunks.  The “not paying her rent” part had been the problem.

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I’m an official “old guy” now. An arts agency made a documentary about roots music in Ohio, and a bunch of  baby-boomers, including me, was the subject.  We were the old fogies on the porch picking away at authentic instruments.  Meanwhile, my “old guys” — Muddy Waters, Dave Tarras, Mickey Katz — are dead.

I saw a 92-year-old piano player recently.  He wasn’t dead.

I still get nervous when I play.  Good, I’m not dead.

I played at Nighttown, a local club, for the “old guy” DVD-release party.  Something like my 1,028th Yiddishe Cup gig.  I played “Nelika” in 7/16 and stopped halfway through it.  I didn’t take the repeat.  Man, I was playing it in 9/16 or 10/16.  I was so ahead of the game.  I was freaked out by my fellow musicians in the room.

Always good to be nervous. Me and nervous go way back.  My first couple recitals at Victory Park elementary school were debacles.  I had memorized the tunes and then forgot where I was.  Let’s take it from the top again, shall we? Those grade-school gigs are hot-stamped on my brain.  Worse, a violinist prodigy always followed me.  Philip Setzer.  He wound up in the Emerson String Quartet.

[For goys only: “A.K.” in this post’s title stands for alter kocker (old cocker).  An A.K. is anybody 10 years older than you.]
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Tomorrow:
No more of  these “tomorrow” teasers.

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Not too many sidemen care about the contract.  They just want to know their cut.  And that’s the way it should be.  The sidemen aren’t dealing with the kvetching bar mitzvah moms and uptight brides.  And they aren’t having meetings at their houses discussing whether the bride is going to circle the groom or not.  (The bride often circles the groom seven times at a Jewish wedding.)  Or is the dad going to do the welcome toast before or after the challah blessing?

I always try to get paid at the gig — take the client over to a corner table and have him sign the check. I get at least a double portion for being the bandleader. Why?  Because Yiddishe Cup is not just a club-date band. (Club date means private party band.)   Yiddishe Cup is a concert-playing band that rehearses and has ongoing expenses — like advertising and travel expenses.  And I want to recoup that.

In Cleveland if a top-flight musician gets $200 per night, he’s happy.  That’s $50 an hour.  I pay my guys more.
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Tomorrow:
AT THE A.K. LODGE . . . Where the old guys hang out.

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