Posts from — January 2015

My French connection is Samy Hochmic, a Parisian Jew who mostly wears a French beret or English cap, but the last time I saw him he had on an American baseball cap.  All his berets were dirty, he said.  Besides, he wanted to display his fondness for America:

(“Rock Your World,” Rock Hall.)

Samy Hochmic, 2014, Paris
(Photo by Eric Schreiber)

He wore the “Rock Your World” cap to my daughter’s wedding (2013).  Major fashion faux pas — that hat.  When Samy left the wedding, he said, “Drop me a line.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.  Did he want a postcard?  (Samy doesn’t do email.)

Samy and I go back to 1974, when he got my name off the ride board at Case Western Reserve, and we drove to New York.  Samy had interviewed Bellow in Chicago for his Sorbonne thesis.  Samy spoke an idiosyncratic English: “I don’t have a red cent” . . . “Shall we go?”  Samy liked the Midwest for its standard American accent.

Samy’s parents had been Polish Jewish immigrants, rounded up by the Nazis at the Paris Velodrome.  Samy was raised by farmers for money during the war.  He was a foster child after the war.  A distant cousin in Canada offered to adopt him, but Samy’s French foster parents wouldn’t let him go.  Samy trained as a tailor, then an English teacher. He made aliyah to Israel in 1975 and stayed five years.  The Israelis didn’t take to a Frenchman teaching English, he said.  Also, Samy didn’t like the brusqueness of the Israelis; he railed against the “Levantine mentality” — Israelis not lining up at bus stops and pushing too much.

If you visit Paris and want to meet Samy, let me know.  Your treat, s’il vous plait, but if he wears the “Rock Your World” cap, make him pay!

Last year in Paris, Samy was trapped in a synagogue for several hours while anti-Semites rampaged outside.

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The Bert & Irwin Show: Irwin Weinberger and I play
7-9 p.m. Tuesday (Feb. 3)  at Gigi’s on Fairmount, Cleveland Heights.   We’ll play mostly American standards and some klezmer.  (Guitar/vocals + clarinet.)

Billy the welder and I were at the same table at a friend’s daughter’s wedding.  We both wanted to eat; that’s what we had in common.  He smoked a lot.  Every time I turned around, he was out smoking.  Billy asked me about my job.  He himself repaired forklifts.  I said my dad started a landlord biz, and I also mentioned my band.

“So you inherited your father’s business?”

“I like to say I wasn’t born on third base.  I was born at shortstop.”

Billy, holding a beer and looking somewhat glassy-eyed, said, “My dad was a drug addict and felon.  He left me when I was six. He went to Florida.”

Another wedding guest — a truck driver — chimed in, “My dad paid the bills but wasn’t there for me.”

A woman walked by.  She said, “You guys having a man talk?”

“No,” I said, “we’re talking about our fathers. I’ve never had a conversation like this before.”

Billy said, “Let’s see your hands.” I held out my hands. “You ever work with your hands?”

“I play clarinet!”

“I cook,” he said. “I’ll have you over and we’ll cook.”

“Sounds good.”

“Don’t put me on! I’m serious.”

“I’m not putting you on.”

He put his arm around my shoulder.  It was either that or punching me.  He didn’t like me.

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SIDE B

KLEZ CLOTHES

A lot of bands wear all black. Yiddishe Cup doesn’t do that. It’s too East Coast trendy.

In Toronto I once saw the Flying Bulgars in what looked like clown suits.

Yiddishe Cup dresses somewhere between the Flying Bulgars and black.

We have five looks:

Steve Ostrow
Cleveland Heights, 2001

1. The tux with colorful hand-sewn lapels. The downside to this look is everybody knows when we’re shnorring at the hors d’oeuvres table at weddings because we don’t blend in.  All-black tuxes would make us invisible.

2. Blue undertaker suit. Keeps the focus off us and on the bar mitzvah boy.

3. Solid-colored shirt with colorful tie.  This is our middle-school art teacher look.

4. Hawaiian-style shirt. A costume designer made these shirts. A real show-biz shirt. When we played 13 gigs in six days in Florida, the quick-dry feature came in handy.

Irwin Weinberger (L), Bert Stratton and Don Friedman
Boca Raton, 2011

Yes, Florida in January . . . I wish Yiddishe Cup would land another run like that. But the mega-condo booker in Florida won’t re-book us.

Was it our lyrics?

You judge.  Yiddishe Cup’s “Tumbalalaika”:

What can grow, grow without rain?
“This,” says our singer, grabbing his crotch.

What can burn, burn for many years?
“Hemorrhoids,” our singer says.

A comedian, Stu, was our last booker in Florida. I should have known he was bad news because his email address was Suntanstu@, and his website had photos of him with Engelbert Humperdinck.  Stu’s idea of a joke was not paying for our sound (speakers, mics) and backline (instrumental rental) after I bought airplane tickets to his showcase in Florida.

One final Yiddishe Cup look:

Alan Douglass
Middletown, Ohio 2008

5. T-shirt with the Yiddishe Cup logo.  We wear these when we play summer park gigs.

Our singer, Irwin Weinberger, wears the Yiddishe Cup T-shirt around town too. The rest of us don’t wear our shirts much off stage. Do you see LeBron in a Cavs jersey at the grocery store?

The cool thing is to wear shirts from festivals you played. At KlezKamp I saw a Klezmer Conservatory Band musician in a Montreal Jazz Festival T-shirt.  I wear T-shirts from the Concert of Colors (Detroit) and CityFolk (Dayton, Ohio).

I saw Sklamberg, the Klezmactic’s singer, in a Klezmatics T-shirt at KlezKamp.

On second thought, maybe Irwin Weinberger is cool.

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“Klez Clothes” is a rerun (from 1/13/10). There were no photos in the original post.

The boiler died at a building I own.  I called the repair company, D.B. Johnsen Co., who said try somebody else.  Stack Heating & Cooling came out. Stack was no bargain. Stack was like going to 10 dentists.

Then I had a second boiler go bad, down the street.  Stack’s proposal on boiler #2 was $5950 for two sections of new boiler, to replace a corner that had corroded. I was thinking zero for that corner, Stack.  The boiler had worked perfectly well a few minutes ago.  Now it was cracked.  I had budgeted zero for #2.  I had put everything into boiler #1.  I called a couple guys for quotes.  They were all busy.  Stack himself was very busy.  It was cold out.  He said, “I’m getting too old for this shit.” So was I.  (Stack and I are the same age).

Madison Plumbing did the job and screwed up. It cost me a few grand extra.

Then a third boiler went down.  This was a couple months later.  Stack said, “I want to prepare you. Eleven burners are shot. That boiler is older than me. ” Again with the age, Stack?  This boiler was carboning up and sooty.  “I’ll try to save it.”

“Do that,” I said. “Thanks.”

Stack called again: “I have bad news.” 

I asked him to knock $500 off the price if I didn’t get a second quote.  Agreed.  I wrote the tenants they could buy a space heater at Home Depot and take $50 off their rent until the heat went on.  I recommended a Polonis convection oil-filled space heater. About a third of the tenants opted for the free space heater. One tenant even added $37 for a comforter.

My bill: $38,350 (boiler #3).  Stacked against me.

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CYA footnote: Stack is expensive but he’s very, very good.