<\/p>\n
1. GOT A CARD?\u00a0 NO!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I was a guest at a wedding where the band’s sign was bigger than LeBron James. The banner was eight-foot, like something you might see on a telephone pole announcing “125 years of excellence in education.”<\/p>\n The wedding reception was elegant, but the band’s sign was totally Bedford Auto Mile.\u00a0 The sign read “More Acts, Better Music, Higher Standards.”<\/p>\n Higher Standards?\u00a0 The bandleader was Italian.\u00a0 I knew him. \u00a0Roman<\/em> standard bearers? \u00a0The bandleader said to me, “It’s better to be a guest than to work, huh?”<\/p>\n What?\u00a0 I always prefer playing over schmoozing.<\/p>\n When Yiddishe Cup does <\/strong><\/span>weddings, I hand out business cards. \u00a0Nothing gaudy.\u00a0 And I don’t shovel them out.\u00a0\u00a0 These cards are almost collectors’ items.\u00a0 I’m not going to pass them out willy-nilly.<\/p>\n Everybody already knows Yiddishe Cup.\u00a0 If you say “klezmer band” in Ohio, it’s us.\u00a0 Now, if we’re in Buffalo, N.Y., for example, I might go heavier on cards.\u00a0 But I don’t put out a tray.\u00a0 That’s too dental office.<\/p>\n Granted, we feature Yiddishe Cup’s logo on our bass drum.\u00a0 Our logo is cool, whimsical and tasteful, and it gets us some gigs.\u00a0 (Ralph Solonitz designed the logo.)<\/p>\n At the “Higher Standards” wedding, I met a businessman who did music production as a sideline. \u00a0I asked for his card.\u00a0 He didn’t have one.\u00a0 And he had 100 employees, he said.<\/p>\n He had achieved placid-plus status: no card.<\/p>\n My goal is to be him.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n 2. BALLISTIC \/ LOADING \/ CAVS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n A Yiddishe Cup musician went ballistic when he saw a college football game, or so he thought, off in the distance.\u00a0 He said, “I’m so through <\/em>with this country’s obsessions with sports!”<\/p>\n Yiddishe Cup was loading-in at a student union by a college stadium.<\/p>\n The Yiddishe Cup musician had fouled.\u00a0 Here’s why: (1.) The college kids were playing lacrosse, not football.\u00a0 (2.) It was a Division III game.\u00a0 The stadium was small, with no crowd to speak of.\u00a0 (3.) The kids were getting some exercise; this was not a big money, faux-pro game.<\/p>\n Yiddishe Cup musicians, <\/strong><\/span>for the most part, are not up on today’s sports scene.\u00a0 For instance, I just learned a basketball shot “from downtown” means a three-pointer.\u00a0 And I’m wondering what “the post” is. \u00a0I watched several basketball games lately.<\/p>\n I have an agreement with my cousin George, a serious sports fan, to go to the Cavs victory parade. I want to be there.\u00a0 Depends on my Depends though, because I’ll be very old.\u00a0 Also, depends if it’s raining.\u00a0 I’m fair weather.<\/p>\n Last Sunday Yiddishe Cup had a gig, a pre-Shavuot Torah dedication\/celebration, which was almost postponed to accommodate LeBron James’ reading of the Book of Kells.\u00a0 The Cavs were scheduled to play the Celtics then.\u00a0 (Cleveland lost prior, on Thursday, so the playoff series ended, and everything worked out fine for the Torah dedication.)<\/p>\n About championships . . . My father, Toby, promised to take me to the World Series, but the Tribe never made it when I was growing up.\u00a0 My dad, instead, took me to Ohio State homecoming games.<\/p>\n I took my kids<\/strong><\/span> to the 1992 OSU homecoming game.\u00a0 The Ohio Stadium scoreboard lit up: This Sat. at the <\/em>Wexner<\/em> <\/em>Center<\/em>, Don Byron Salutes Mickey Katz.<\/em><\/p>\n What next, Bucks?\u00a0 “Fight the Team Across the Field” in Yiddish?<\/p>\n Don Byron played OSU, I think, because Columbus resident Les Wexner, the billionaire owner of The Limited, paid Byron’s band to entertain Wexner’s elderly mother, who probably requested the Mickey Katz show because she didn’t want to fly to New York.\u00a0 That’s the only logical explanation.\u00a0 Don Byron never played any other Mickey Katz–tribute shows in Ohio.<\/p>\n Go Mickey.<\/p>\n Go Katz.<\/p>\n Go ‘Cats.<\/p>\n Go Cavs.<\/p>\n If you’re a Cubs fan, or whatever, be quiet about your sports-induced suffering.\u00a0 You don’t know anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. GOT A CARD?\u00a0 NO! I was a guest at a wedding where the band’s sign was bigger than LeBron James. The banner was eight-foot, like something you might see on a telephone pole announcing “125 years of excellence in education.” The wedding reception was elegant, but the band’s sign was totally Bedford Auto Mile.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,18,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer","category-sports-pages","category-toby-stratton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8756,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions\/8756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}