Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

I’M OUT OF THE MUSIC BUSINESS

by Bert Stratton

I used to play a lot of gigs and nobody listened. I once did a gig where pillows were strewn on the floor, and the audience literally nodded out. They went in and out of consciousness. One guy, awakening after an hour, yelled, “You suck!” That was it.

nodding out pillows

Now I play for myself. I write a lot of lyrics. The downside to lyric-writing is the English language is so limited — all that moon/spoon/June kind of shit. Another problem: everybody thinks they can write, so everybody is so quick to judge.

I’m amazed how many musicians are still gigging — what, with nobody listening. I used to play weddings. I was in a klezmer wedding band for years. I was embattled, mostly with myself. I made latkes with that band, but “Hava Nagila” every weekend nearly killed me. Throw my instruments on the curb, where tourists can play them — if tourists are around here. Throw my axes out the window. Throw my suitcase out there too. 

Are you listening? 

No, I didn’t think so.

—
This is a fake profile. Yiddishe Cup is around — in its 28th year! (Nineteen percent of this post is stolen from a Clark Coolidge interview from the Poetry Project Newsletter, Feb/March 2013.) 

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5 comments

1 Janie Marr Werum { 11.11.15 at 10:04 am }

I’m listening! I hope you haven’t thrown it/everything out on the curb! I listen to your cds in the car all the time. Keep going but maybe not do hava…?

2 Dave Rowe { 11.11.15 at 11:26 am }

Guess the guy isn’t gonna play on Maggie’s Farm anymore.

3 Ken Goldberg { 11.11.15 at 11:34 am }

Now you can re-write this 30 years from now; you won’t have to think of what to write.
In 10th grade I was in an Israeli dancing group at our JCC (“JY”) and my mother was in a Jewish singing group. One evening both performed at the Jewish Home at the same event. When the singing group was performing, in one song one of the guys hit a note, that made one of the elderly residents shout out “Feh!” The conductor had to go on, as well as the singers…. It became a family joke thereafter.

4 Seth B. Marks { 11.12.15 at 1:34 pm }

What do you think your shrink would say about this fake profile? Even your fake shrink…

5 Bert Stratton { 11.14.15 at 8:51 am }

To Seth B. Marks:

You are my fake shrink.

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