Lemons Are Yellow: “Jewish Like KISS”

(Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow vet Paul Kaufman hails rock-‘n’-roll Yiddishkeit.)
Young Chaim WitzDavid Klowden already perfectly summarized some pastrami- and tongue-in-cheek ethnic pride in a recent post: “I am putting together a seminar & book tour for my method: ‘Dave The Jew Shows You how to Make Beautiful Women Think You’re Cooler Than You Are in Ten Easy Lessons’ ™.”

In the spirit of David’s post (and our earlier “Hyphenates” thread), here’s “Jewish like KISS,” a musical number based on the irony of having one foot in the Ché Underground and the other in a cultural Old World. (Both had a healthy reverence for the historical.)

I thought it would be fun to have our own sort of self-referential “We’re an American Band”-type number, with all the required fake bravado. I threw in shout-outs to some of my favorite Jewish rockers, Joey Ramone (born Jeffry Ross Hyman) and KISS members Gene Simmons (Chaim Witz) and Paul Stanley (Stanley Eisen). Like most Lemons Are Yellow numbers, it displays a fine case of musical ADD, and was concocted in the fabulous home studio of David Fleminger ca. 2004/5764.

Lyrics:
When we look in the mirror, nothing you want to miss
You think we’re the Beatles,
But we’re Jewish, like KISS
Lemons Are Yellow,
Coming to your town,
Turning White Castle upside down!
Sitting shiva* for Joey,
And I started to cry
You were huffing some Bondo,
Dee-Dee said we could fly.
Lemons Are Yellow,
Coming to your town,
Turning Sheldon’s upside down!

* (shiva= Jewish period of ritual mourning. Joey Ramone died of cancer at the age of 50 in 2001.)

Listen to it now!

— Paul Kaufman

More Lemons Are Yellow MP3s:

Lemons Are Yellow play “Thousand Island”: Listen now!
Lemons Are Yellow play “America’s Finest City”: Listen now!

36 thoughts on “Lemons Are Yellow: “Jewish Like KISS”

  1. Love the song, Paul. There’s a recent book, The Heebie Jeebies at CBGBs: A Secret History of Jewish Punk by Steven Lee Beeber,
    and I’ll name a few prominent Rock and Onion Rollers discussed in that book and a few more that weren’t:
    Mick Jones (The Clash)
    Bob Dylan
    Richard Hell
    Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate)
    Stan Lee (The DIckies)
    Jonathan Richman
    Marc Bolan
    All of the Beastie Boys
    Perry Farrell
    Chris Stein (Blondie)
    Chris Frantz (Talking Heads)
    Handsome DIck Manitoba (The Dictators)
    Lou Reed (parents changed name from Rabinowitz)
    Sylvain Sylvain (Steven Mizrahi -- NY Dolls)
    Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group)
    Cliff Roman (the Weirdos)
    David Lee Roth
    Greg Hetson (Redd Kross, Circle Jerks, Bad Religion)
    Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Black Flag)
    Fat Mike & Eric Melvin (NOFX)

    There’s a lot more. There’s even a website about it (of course):
    jewsrock.org

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  2. David: OK, so picking up on my observation in the Studio 517 thread about the vaudevillian DNA in rock-‘n’-roll … I think a lot of the absurdist humor of our favorite bands owes a historical debt to Yiddish theater akin to the legacy the music inherited from the blues.

    All those crusty old racists were right: It really was an Afro-Jewish conspiracy to regroove American culture! 🙂

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  3. Thanks for the tip, Dave. The website is awesome, except for the fact that I’m now embarrassed to have something in common with Michael Bolton.

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  4. BTW, Joey Ramone wasn’t alone: Tommy Ramone (Tamás Erdélyi) was born in Hungary to Holocaust survivors.

    And it’s not a minyan without Jonathan Richman!

    Oh! And Pat Smear may be a distant relative of mine — his birth name’s Georg Ruthenberg.

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  5. Somewhere here there has to be some play with the term “DIY”. 😉 Just throwing that out there.

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  6. Here’s a list of Jewish punks: http://jennylens.com/jewish-punks

    Early LA punk photographer Jenny Lens says: “Jews are the original punks. Scrappy outcasts, relying on our inner lives, imaginations, music, art and intellect to survive slavery and various attempts at eliminating us (the Final Solution aka the Holocaust). Most of us were not traditionally religious — many were raised on the fringes of Judaism, which can be as restrictive as Catholicism, but our heritage influenced us to take risks. When people have tried to kill you for thousands of years, what have we got to lose?

    My research indicates a larger percentage of Jews were involved in the early days of punk, especially in LA and New York. This should not be surprising, given the involvement of Jews in music and art since modern American musical entertainment began. Jews began arriving in large numbers at the end of the 19th century (most escaping the Russian and Central European purges — “Fiddler on the Roof” anyone?). By the beginning of the 20th Century, Jews transformed and interpreted traditional European and Yiddish theatre with music from African-Americans to reflect and inform modern American life. We literally created “Tin Pan Alley,” musical theatre and Broadway. A few immediate names are the Gershwin brothers, Berlin, Hammerstein, Kern, Fields and countless other popular and enduring songwriters (and producers). Obvious performers like Al Jolson, the Frank Sinatra/Elvis of his day, to others not obviously Jewish because so many changed their names to be accepted outside the Jewish community. Hollywood itself owes its beginnings to penniless European Jewish refugees.”

    And when it comes to magic, wasn’t Houdini Jewish?

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  7. Punk rock tendencies may well be an atavistic trait. Well before the Ramones I was jumping in rain puddles like a madman, soaking people indiscriminately (this particular inclination directly led to bashing out guitar chords, destroying equipment, and falling off stages). I’m inclined to believe it was because I wasn’t beat up enough as a young child, which led to an “asking for it” assholian attitude.

    I still can’t resist puddle stomping…

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  8. so, this explains a lot, mr puddle jumper. and i always thought this sort of thing was maybe the red head problem comming to visit ? all along was just you being kalie. and all i ha to do was reach up and give you a nice gebn a pasch.

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  9. I posted a YouTube of “Hard Day’s Night” in Yiddish on the forum … What I find most brilliant about it is that the lyrics could easily be an old Yiddish-theater standard: I work like a dog to buy you things, but when I’m home, everything seems to be right.

    There are hundreds of Yiddish-language songs from the early 20th century that say exactly the same thing.

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  10. PS: Besides “Hard Day’s Night,” the other likeliest candidate for Yiddish translation from the Beatles canon was Lennon’s notorious version of “Baby You’re a Rich Man” tailored to Brian Epstein: “Baby, you’re a rich fag Jew.” (I think it’d be something like: “Boychik, du bist a Yiddische g’vir fagele.”)

    The English term “fag” does have roots in this considerably gentler Yiddish euphemism, which means “little bird.” And some of those old Yiddish tunes were pretty salty … My folks have a record from the ’20s (?) where the guy is singing about the boys and girls going out into the park together and enjoying “hot dogs und knishes” — knishes (potato or buckwheat pastry pockets) being a popular Jewish finger food but also a euphemism for the female anatomy. (Kind of the “What’s Inside a Girl?” of the era!)

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  11. Here are some additional pieces of Bealtleania for the Jewry among us:

    First, Peter Sellers sings “A Hard Day’s Night” as Laurence Olivier playing Richard III. Pure genius:

    This rivals the Rutles as one of the best Beatles parodies ever. It’s connection to this thread will make sense at the end:

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  12. Love the vid, Ray- I hadn’t seen that before. Best version of that old chestnut I’ve ever heard, especially with those backing vocals.

    To renew that concept for today, I propose a Ramones-based cover band for such occasions. The chant could be “Gimel Gimel Hay”.

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  13. Thanks Paul. If you haven’t seen the book, there are many other cool photos. For instance, Tommy Ramone as a child, Lou Reed at a seder and Johnny Thunders dressed as a Hassidic Jew. Hope you enjoy! JP

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  14. Here’s an embarrassing decision I hadn’t known about!:

    “The official permission required to withdraw precious foreign currency to pay the band was denied because a ministerial committee feared the corrupting influence of four long-haired Englishmen singing about pleasure.

    As the committee report put it, “The Beatles have an insufficient artistic level and cannot add to the spiritual and cultural life of the youth in Israel.””

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/world/middleeast/28beatles.html

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  15. Listening to “Pretty Woman,” I just coined the stage name Oy Rorbison!

    Paul: I’d missed your post on Israel catching up with the Beatles:

    “Since then, especially in recent years, Israel has expressed embarrassment about the episode and tried to make amends. Last January, it sent a letter from its London embassy to the remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, asking forgiveness for the “missed opportunity” to have the band that “shaped the minds of a generation, to come to Israel and perform before the young generation in Israel who admired you and continues to admire you.” The artists were asked to consider again coming to perform.”

    The Israeli government is also considering inviting the Ramones and Jimi Hendrix Experience to open the show …

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  16. Hi all, Pat Smear of the Germs is Black and German, NOT Jewish. He personally wrote me to set the record straight. “Rothenberg” doesn’t always mean Jewish. (I took some of the earliest and most published shots of the Germs, so Pat and I go way back, shared a lot of memories, parties, shows, etc.)

    Also, I wish people wouldn’t list large paragraphs of postings. Just a few lines and a link back. Google penalizes for duplicate content. I don’t want my Jews in Punk page or my site to be downgraded because someone posted MY ORIGINAL TEXT I wrote BEFORE Steven Lee Beeber wrote his book. He contacted me while writing it, saying in his two years of research, NO ONE else ever documented what he was working on. Now it’s quite trendy.

    AND Steven stupidly used Lisa Law’s name instead of mine about a story involving X and me (which he discusses TWICE in his book). “Los Angeles” is in no small part about me (and some of my other friends, like Alice Bag, one of the “Mexicans” she hated or liked to poke fun at).

    He told me it’s corrected in the paperback version, but I don’t have the money to buy it. I turned him onto some good info and resources. And then left out of it . . .

    So please peeps, let’s play by Google’s rules. This nice Jewish girl is beyond broke and needs good page rank to keep my Jenny Lens Punk Photo Archive alive and share this fab info. And please set the record straight about Pat Smear — he is not a member of our tribe!

    Gabba gabba chey! Oy vey!

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  17. hey jenny, is alice still married to bill the photographer? i have been looking for him for about ten years. i found some photographs of me that he took and wanted to see how he is! pass it on that i’m here if you have contact with him/them. thanks!

    also, if lenny kaye was jewish, did patti convert for him? j/k

    actually, patti apparently went through a period of wanting to be a jew. i found an interview with her where she talks about it, here:http://www.oceanstar.com/patti/intervus/960624fa.htm

    scroll about a quarter of the way down.

    (growing up in sd i would walk to the college ave synagogue on saturdays to observe. my family was strict baptist, but i never felt like i was. so i relate to what pattie says in that q&a.)

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  18. Punk pioneers in the Jew York Times:

    Punk, and Jewish: Rockers Explore Identity

    Who knew?

    Punk is Jewish.

    Or, anyway, these fellows are: Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein, Lenny Kaye and Handsome Dick Manitoba, four New York godfathers of punk who packed an auditorium Thursday night at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research to excavate the unlikely roots of the rebellious and stripped-down 1970s rock genre, replete with fascist trappings.

    “People don’t associate punk rock and Jews,” acknowledged Mr. Ramone, born Tamás Erdélyi in Budapest. He is the sole survivor of the Ramones, whose other members — Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee — he joined in taking the same stage name.

    Yet connection there indisputably is, Steven Lee Beeber argued in his 2006 book “Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s,” subtitled “A Secret History of Jewish Punk.”

    “The shpilkes, the nervous energy of punk, is Jewish,” Mr. Beeber wrote. “Punk reflects the whole Jewish history of oppression and uncertainty, flight and wandering, belonging and not belonging, always being divided, being in and out, good and bad, part and apart.”

    Read more

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  19. Full disclosure: I have no foreskin.

    (whew…glad to get that out in the open)

    Oh yeah…my mother’s a Jew. Kinda odd since we’re all Irish, but hey, it’s Kalifornia and we have the Son of a Nazi for a Goobernor so hu’s to say what’s Orthodox and Who’s not?

    Back in the day, after shooting pictures of Boyd Rice and all his nazi boytoy pals I left for lunch with the Lubavitchers of SF where my dear mother’s newfound heart and soul decided to roost.

    There she found a shul, found a political struggle wrapped inside a spiritual struggle, and found a regular schedule for community meals.

    Friday, around sundown…or with her friends EXACTLY at sundown.

    Once upon a time she called me…

    “Patrick…we’re having an election at the shul, and I need a little muscle. Come on Wednesday night, don’t shave, wear your leather and please drive your motorcycle. You won’t have to do much…best if you just sit and stare at people. We’ll feed you.”

    I thought she was insane. Then I got to the shul. There were 3 big Israeli guys for the “other side” there. This was silly. This was serious. This was my mom’s new life. So I stayed and I stared.

    While I was there I met Avram. He’d been an Irish American Hippy, was at Altamont, became a mailman, found G-d and a black hat and now he’d become part of the same silly scene…I liked him. He was a rocker. Played guitar and bass…so I set him up with my mom.

    Since they were so freak*n orthodox they couldn’t be alone or even hold hands, I chaperoned their dates until they got married.

    Jerry came. It was like the 3 stooges meet the Stooges meet Bal Shem Tov in San Francisco. It was good.

    So Avram is now part of a Hasidic Rock’ n ‘ Roll band called “The Ferris Wheels” named after Rabbi Ferris of Berkeley of course.

    I wear their TShirts proudly.

    “Hasidic Rock’ n ‘ Roll for all occaisons” on one side.

    “Channukah Tour 2007/5768” on the other.

    Check ’em at http://www.theferriswheels.com

    Patrick Works
    Not a Jew but I’ll play one live if you feed me.

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  20. For reasons unknown to me, I receive a word-of-the-day e-mail fron Merriam-Webster, which I always toss. But today, the word was “copacetic,” which I was actually curious about. It seems it’s another fun Afro-Hebrew hybrid:

    Theories about the origin of “copacetic” abound. The tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson believed he had coined the word as a boy in Richmond, Virginia. When patrons of his shoeshine stand would ask, “How’s everything this morning?” he would reply, “Oh jes’ copacetic, boss; jes’ copacetic.” But the word was current in Southern Black English perhaps as early as 1880, so it seems unlikely that Robinson (born in 1878) could have invented the term. Another explanation is that the word is from the Hebrew phrase “kol be sedher,” meaning “everything is in order.” Possibly it was coined by Harlem blacks working in Jewish businesses. The word’s popularity among Southern blacks, however, points to its originating in one of the Southern cities in which Jewish communities thrived, such as Atlanta.

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