Bubbemeises.

The music for the title track “Bubbemeises” comes from a little classical piece that I had been playing for the past twenty-nine years; since I was 20! It was a piece that had been arranged in the 1930s by my teacher’s teacher, the great clarinetist Simeon Bellison. Hearing this arrangement of Jewish melodies was one of the earliest seeds for me to start playing klezmer music. Socalled listened to it and he loved it and we did this whole piece around it.

In Jewish tradition, bubbemeises are little things, like “old wive’s tales” or folklore, that grandmothers tend to tell. Jews know what bubbemeises is. Just say the word, and they all chuckle and roll their eyes. It’s the way a grandmother will exaggerate.

For example, my mother remembers when she was pregnant that her mother–in-law—my great grandmother--offered her some food, like, “Here have a piece of candy,” and my mother turned it down. My great grandmother said, “A pregnant woman should never turn down food or it will bring mice into the house.” And my mother responded under her breath, “Yeah, bubbe mice.”

So they are not big lies. It’s all in good fun. There’s this aspect of wit to it.

But then there are the bigger lies that our parent-states have foisted upon us. We use the idea of bubbemeises to comment on how our leaders today are trying to placate us. They have their version of these little lies and they are not fun, like: “We’re in this war in Iraq because we’re fighting for freedom. That’s the sacrifice we have to make.” The rhetoric is ringing so empty these days. It’s just nonsense.

There is another layer to the song brought in by the samples you hear right at the beginning: “the battle for identity” and “remember who you are.” This is the voice of Herschel Bernardi, the great character actor and comedian. The samples come from an old LP of Bernardi’s called Chocolate Covered Matzos from the ’50s or ’60s. Socalled and I were talking about Jewish comedy and Lenny Bruce during one of our brainstorm sessions. As we looked through Socalled’s vinyl collections of thousands of records, we dug up this Bernardi album. There was a bit about assimilation and Jewish identity that really resonated with us. Then suddenly it hit me that so many worlds intersected in a very personal way for me by putting these samples of Herschel Bernardi together with the little classical piece that provided the germ materials for “Bubbemeises.”

For one, by coincidence, Bernardi had appeared as a teenager in the 1937 classic Yiddish film Green Fields. This movie was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, who is one of my favorite directors ever. Ulmer was a true original, one of the “King of the B’s” who had started out assisting F.W. Murnau in Germany, later coming to the U.S. to make many a low budget masterpiece including the magnificent Detour (1946). Also, another coincidence is that the clarinetist playing (and credited) in the soundtrack of Green Fields is none other than Simeon Bellison! So it all comes together: the piece arranged by my teacher’s teacher Bellison, Ulmer, an incredible inspiration who dealt with so many ambiguities and questions in American culture, and through it all the struggle to understand the Jewish (American) identity.

Moskovitz And Loops Of It

This basically came together when we were doing the Live in Krakow record. I wanted to get the band to this place inspired by this early ’80s go-go band called Trouble Funk. They had this self-titled record produced by Henry Rollins that was like 45 minutes, all the same tempo, and it was one amazing groove. They start chanting “Drop the Bomb” over and over, not like calling for a war, but making the groove fat. It’s so damn funky that it’s unbelievable. I just love that band. So I am thinking how can we get Klezmer Madness to get into this completely funky trance thing? Socalled showed up with this beat he made. He took a “pick up” to this old klezmer tune, just three notes—this arpeggio—that he sped up to kick off the rhythm. This riff of “doodle-duh-dup!” over and over. Then he sampled Romanian panpipes plus these weird funky bass and drum sounds. So that became this beat.

So when we were in Krakow, we had the beat. Socalled was thinking this beat would go well with this traditional tune that came from the repertoire of the famous klezmer, cimbalom-player Joseph Moskowitz. Moskowitz had this restaurant called Moskowitz and Lupowitz. on Rivington Street which then moved to Second Avenue. Michael Gold’s book Jews Without Money has this whole citation about going into Moskowitz and Lupowitz and it is this incredible scene. You go down to this cellar restaurant where there are people playing cards and drinking wine. And there was Moskowitz playing his cimbalom; on one side of him is a flag of Palestine and on the other side an American flag. Behind Moskowitz is a mural of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. It was such a blend of the Jewish homeland, Romania and America.  It’s decorated with plaster grapes, and murals of shepherds, Romanian hills, and the musicians playing their panpipes. So the song title is a pun on the restaurant name.

So we took the traditional tune and initially tried to play it over the beat, but it didn’t work so well. But this beat was too good to just waste. One day when I was on tour, I took the tune and I shredded up elements of it. I started hearing riffs in my head. It became freer. I made call and response riffs out of them. Each one refers to parts of the original tune. So I basically wrote a whole tune on top of his beat.

B Flat a la Socalled

This was also a beat that Socalled just showed up with. The first time we played that tune, it was live. I was just dropping in on a show he was doing and he said, “I’ve got this little thing in B flat, why don’t you play something on top of it.” So we played it and that very first version ended up getting recorded and put on this compilation I did for John Zorn. It’s basically my personal tribute to James Brown; him up there in front of a funky beat testifying and screaming.

Turntable Pounding

There is this documentary filmmaker who has been following me for a while named Antonio Ferrera. He works with Albert Maysles, this documentary icon. Antonio’s been dropping in on our brainstorm sessions. He is a very astute listener and he contributes, bringing up different things that have helped us out. One day Antonio was hanging out with us when Socalled comes to my place with this beat. It’s got the Hasidim singing “ay doy duh-dai doy duh-daiii.” He’ll take these obscure records of Hasidim singing a nigun (worldess chant) and he cuts it up and make his own nigun out of it. The beginning of the song sounds like a woman, but it is actually a cantor that Socalled has sped up. It’s got this crazy crunching sound that I asked Socalled about and he said, “I sampled my friend on cross country skis.” It’s the sound of the whooshing cross country skies making a beat. And it has these other sounds, along with the guys singing.

So he plays the beat. And I just start playing with it. Socalled says “What’s a traditional tune that would go with it?” Antonio’s with us and in his Italian American laconic accent he says, “What about that tune you wrote back then, ‘Table Pounding?’” I had written a tune that was on my album Twelve Tribes. It was based on an experience of sitting around with people and singing these wordless Hasidic chants. I had this former student who grew up in the Orthodox world and he knew these tunes and so we’re sitting there singing along with him. There is a Hasidic tradition where you hit the table to get into this state of ecstasy. And it turns into thirty people pounding on the table. All the silverware is flying. And at one point I had the sensation that the table was levitating, and we were smacking it down to keep it from flying in the air.

So I had written this tune based on this experience. All these people together; it was a real tribal thing. I recorded it with the band and it was OK, but it didn’t really take off the way I wanted. Antonio had also seen me work on this tune with a big band, and they were not quite on board. So at his suggestion we started to play it with this beat. And then Socalled comes up with the name ‘Turntable Pounding.’

Long...Short, Long (Les Colocs)

This title comes from the Romanian hora form. The beat is long short long. Socalled sampled me teaching the hora. Saying things like “You gotta get the feel of it.” That was something he did way back for the concert we did at Merkin Hall.

Bus Number 9999

The narrative is from this friend of mine who goes by the name 99 Hooker. He does these crazy stream of consciousness rants. We basically took one of his rants where he gets on a bus and snaps. We sampled bits of that, deconstructed his rant and made a little song out of it. I wrote the music.

The Electric Sher

We don’t play this live anymore with a beat because the beat got lost in computer hell. It had its life and we got it on record so that is cool. That was one of our earlier attempts of combining the beats with our live sound. People who came to that gig said something different is happening here. So it is a marking point. A Sher is a scissors dance; kind of like a square dance with couples. You go around in a circle. It’s a Jewish square dance.

Rumania, Rumania

I got this idea in my head to do this really dark version of Rumania Rumania. Normally this song is about the good life in Romania. It talks about eating pastrami, and drinking Romanian wine. It paints this picture of paradise, saying everything is good in Romania. But then you think about the reality of Romania. You think of Ceausescu and everything Romania went through.

We recorded this right after the Bush election. Everyone was in a horrible mood. So we do Rumania Rumania not all up tempo and happy, but really slow and dark with samples of gunshots and screams and fire. There is a serious side of the album. I have been calling Rumania Rumania an anthem to vigilance. If things keep going the way they are in the U.S., the whole systems of checks and balances will be out the window.

Rue Mania (Bonus Track)

At the end of Rumania Rumania we were jamming. We edited it out and faded it. But it was such a cool jam we kept the rest that we snipped away. It’s just a jam on Rumania Rumania. But we give it this name Rue Mania which means Crazy Street in French.

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