, Philip Roth
, and the films of Woody Allen
and even Roman Polanski, artists who, it seemed, were drawn to depicting Jews unable to escape pyschic torture as they made way through life in the post-World War II era (read Saul Bellow's The Victim
for a great example of this mentality).This artists largely represented the generation born just before the Holocaust. They were not "baby boomers." Their offspring-- the children of "The Greatest Generation"-- may have shared this guilt and anxiety of having survived the attempted annihilation of the Jewish people. Some, like my parents decided to get an education, make a good living, then drowned their sorrows in BMWs and Mercedes cars. Others turned to music.
New York City, the epicenter of modern Jewish culture, became the locus for an aggressive creative outpouring in the '60's and 70's that came to be known as "punk." Punk, embodied in sound and style by The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, The Patti Smith Band, The New York Dolls, Blondie, The Dictators, and others, added a more raw, louder, harsher contribution to the music of the time and immediately made an impact on rock and roll. Everyone knows this. What you may not know is that many of the key musicians, writers, label heads, club owners, and managers, were Jews.
Heebie-Jeebies at CBGS's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk
, by Steven Lee Beeber, takes the premise that a crew of angry, hyper-intelligent, intensely creative Jewish kids transformed their post-Holocaust guilt and synthesized it into the sonic equivalent of a revolution. Beeber starts with Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, the consummate lunatic, who was influenced by the profane humor of Lenny Bruce; working its way through Danny Fields, a Harvard educated manager and label executive who discovered The Stooges, the MC5, and The Ramones; and then covering the creative minds behind the aforementioned New York punk bands -- many of whom conceived acts like Blondie and Patti Smith Band. A few gentiles are even interviewed to give their take on the zeitgeist of New York City in the '70's, like Debbie Harry of Blondie, Patti Smith, Jon Holmstrom who founded the eponymous Punk Magazine. |
| The Ramones: the consummate lovable losers |
Details are illustrated to support this concept with stories of electroshock therapy administered at the behest of Lou Reed's parents; Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone's penchant for Nazi paraphernalia (they were the two gentile founding members of The Ramones), Jonathan Richman of the Modern Lovers' trips to Israel, The Dictator's utter rejection of the concept of weak, emasculated Jewish musicians, and Hilly Kristel's education in labor zionism before he founded the great New York rock venue CBGB's. At least as far as New York's native music scene is concerned, the author illustrates that this time period in America saw the death of the "nice Jewish boys" stereotype.
The book's finest moments are not necessarily in recounting famous musical episodes, but in showing how these characters came -- through the Jewish struggle -- to gain acceptance in America, as well come to terms with post-WWII assimilation and prosperity. The finest example of this in the book, surprisingly, is Tommy Ramone's story of the formation of The Ramones. The Queens quartet, which lasted almost 30 years, were a half-Jewish band who attempted to mash-up comic book culture with the look and feel of a Puerto Rican street gang. They represent a perfect example of the book's notion of a cultural dialectic playing out through bandmates' relationships, lyrical content, and individual members' personal histories.
Tommy, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, joined Joey, the gigantic beanstalk of a man for whom nothing in life came easy, and two outright psychos in the form of Dee Dee and Johnny, to meld Brill Building pop (a sound Jews had spearheaded two decades earlier) with corporate marketing muscle (in the form of Seymour Stein of Sire Records, Danny Fields as their manager; and Hilly Kristel as the farmer-cum-bartender who gave them a regular stage on which to hone their craft). Through this Jewish energy of the Lower East Side in the '70's the band became icons. Ultimately, however, Tommy left the band due to acrimony with Dee Dee and Johnny.
Beebers' interactions with Tommy are telling in themselves; Tommy asks of Beeber, "are you trying out Jews with this book?" as if the very concept of a book on Jewish punk rockers is dangerous. This begs a valid question: why was this book written? Beeber astutely wonders if his quest to shed light on famous, legendary Jews is an attempt to place him amidst greatness by the proxy of having a shared religious heritage. Perhaps the idea is to retroactively vanilla-coat these obnoxious, crude rock and rollers into the guise of "nice Jewish boys."
Whatever the case may be, Heebie Jeebies is an interesting look at '60's and '70's New York middle class immigrant culture, and a biting analysis of the creative conflagration that erupts when you arm inquisitive, intense, sometimes tortured 20-somethings with guitars and surround them with media attention for the next 40 years.
