The Heebie-jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk

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Chicago Review Press, 2006 - Music - 259 pages
"Focusing on punk rocks beginnings in New York, this book is certain to change how we view not only punk music and culture, but the nature of Jewish identity since the Holocaust. It draws on new interviews with more than 125 people - among them Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein (Blondie), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), and Hilly Kristal (CBGB's owner) - to show that punk was the most Jewish of rock movements." "This mixture of biography, cultural studies, and musical analysis begins with Lenny Bruce, "the patron saint of punk," follows the story through pre-punk progenitors such as Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman, Alan Vega (Suicide), and Handsome Dick Manitoba (the Dictators), delves into the lives of Jewish punks Richard Hell and Joey Ramone, and ends with post-punk pioneers such as John Zorn and Marc Ribot." "Originally known as New York Rock, punk began in that city because it could begin nowhere else - it was all about outsiders in the shtetl-like East Village, wiseasses with sharp minds and wounded psyches; it reflected the irony, the romanticism, and, above all, the humor of the Jewish experience. And via New York-dwelling Jewish Brit Malcolm McLaren, punk eventually made its way to England and then the world." "Ultimately a tale of changing Jewish identity in America, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's reveals the conscious and unconscious forces that drove New York Jewish rockers to remake both themselves and popular music as we know it."--BOOK JACKET.
 

Contents

The Patron Saint of Jewish New York
1
The Godfather of Jewish Punk
9
3 A Nice Jewish Boy Danny Fields Begets the Shaman the Misfit and the Punk
27
4 Suicide Is Painful Martin Rev and Alan Vega Bring the Jewish Streets Indoors
39
Cool Nerd
49
6 The Ten Nuggets Lenny Kaye and the Compilation of the Ten Punk Commandments
63
7 The Fiddler on the Bowery Hilly Kristal Sets Up a DIYCBGB OMFUG
77
8 Juidos n Decaf Italians Irony Blasphemy and Jewish Shtick
87
12 The Shiksa Goddess Chris Stein Creates the First Punk Princess
149
13 HotsyTotsy Nazi Shatzes Nazi Imagery and the Final Solution to the Final Solution
163
14 The New JAPS Jewish American Punks Jewish American Women and the Birth of Female Punk
179
15 Write Yiddish Cast British How England Stole Jewish Punk
193
16 A PostPunk History of a PreCool Jew World How the Radical Jewish Culture Movement Took NY Punk Further Downtown
211
Epilogue One of Us
225
Afterword Seeing God
231
Source Notes
233

9 A Jewish American Band The Hebraic Foundations of the Ramones
103
10 Der Übermensch Comic Books Golems and SuperJews Christen PUNK
123
11 A Jewish Hell Richard Meyers Creates a Jewish Mothers Worst Nightmare
133

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About the author (2006)

Steven Lee Beeber has written for many publications, including Bridge, Conduit, Fiction, Heeb, Maxim, MOJO, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Playboy.com, Rain Taxi, and Spin. He is the editor of Awake: A Reader for the Sleepless, an anthology featuring work by writers including Margaret Atwood, Aimee Bender, Joyce Carol Oates, and Davy Rothbart. He lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

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