{"id":33716,"date":"2025-11-12T08:55:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T13:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=33716"},"modified":"2025-12-04T17:34:43","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T22:34:43","slug":"a-swing-and-a-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/12\/a-swing-and-a-miss\/","title":{"rendered":"A SWING AND A MISS"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nLast month I ran into a tenant carrying an electric bass in a case. Or so I thought. Turns out he had a Stratocaster guitar. \u201cI\u2019m storing it for a guy,” he said.<\/p>\n

“What do you play?” I said.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m the vocalist.\u201d<\/p>\n

“What\u2019s the band?”<\/p>\n

\u201cHome and Garden.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Later googled: Home and Garden is an avant-garde, post-punk band featuring some former Pere Ubu players. And by the way, the singer pays his rent on time.]<\/p>\n

\u201cMy son is in a well-known band — Vulfpeck,” I said.<\/p>\n

“What?”<\/p>\n

“Vulf . . . Peck.”<\/p>\n

\u201cNever heard of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I guess they\u2019re not that<\/em> well-known.\u201d<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

I had been trick-or-treating with my grandkids in Chicago several days prior. I played clarinet while making the candy rounds. Two young dads requested a jazz tune, so I played “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I can get away with Dixieland because I’m old. The\u00a0dads seemed OK with it. I asked if they played music. Yes, drums and bass. I didn’t ask them if they had heard of Vulfpeck. The trick-or-treating and my grandkids — the main attraction — threw me off my kvell game.<\/p>\n

I bet they knew Vulfpeck!<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Strattons in Ann Arbor, 2010. Random old photo.<\/p><\/div>\n

—<\/p>\n

This reminds me of a Cleveland Jewish News<\/em> article <\/a>(3\/31\/2000) about the father of Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen:<\/p>\n

“Would you, by chance, be a Steely Dan fan?” Beachwood resident Joseph ‘Jerry’ Fagen inquires wryly. It’s an unlikely question coming from an 80-year-old, but Fagen’s favorite conversation starter affords the opening he needs to do what any parent would do in his shoes: kvell a little.<\/p>\n

“Reaching for his wallet, the spry sneaker-clad Fagen produces a computerized list in tiny type of the 13 albums released by his son, Donald Fagen, co-founder of the jazz-rock-pop recording group Steely Dan. His latest entry? Two Against Nature<\/em>, the group’s newest release, which debuted last month at #6 on the Billboard charts.”<\/p>\n

Full CJN article by Susan Rzepka here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Last month I ran into a tenant carrying an electric bass in a case. Or so I thought. Turns out he had a Stratocaster guitar. \u201cI\u2019m storing it for a guy,” he said. “What do you play?” I said. “I\u2019m the vocalist.\u201d “What\u2019s the band?” \u201cHome and Garden.\u201d [Later googled: Home and Garden is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kinder-the"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33716"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33832,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33716\/revisions\/33832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}