I went to see Roger Waters, late of Pink Floyd, play a Brooklyn arena last night. It was September 11, a fact that seemed irrelevant when I bought the tickets. Once you get over the embarrassment of watching a 70-year-old man get worked up over lyrics he wrote when he was thirty (what if they…
The year was 2006: a starry-eyed young rapper named Kanye West burst onto the scene with “Gold Digger,” the American public experienced the dawning realization the Iraq War had been a Bad Idea after all, and half-Jewish ‘70s art rockers Steely Dan launched an intervention of their own to revitalize the creativity of indie film…
By Dan Epstein Swimming lessons at the “Y” were the worst. For reasons I can no longer recall — but which probably had at least something to do with my stubborn resistance to taking any sort of extra-curricular instruction in anything that I wasn’t already deeply interested in — I got a late start on…
The alternative rock band The National is backed by Jewish twin brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner
The 20th-century Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich might be best known for his conflicted but patriotic symphonies, his daring operas, including two takes on Nikolai Leskov’s novella “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District,” or the extent to which, decades after his death on this day in 1975, no one can say authoritatively whether his music was…
Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on Jewishbaseballmuseum.com Josh Kantor has performed everywhere from synagogues to orchestra pits, from seedy nightclubs to outdoor festival stages. But his favorite venue for playing music is Fenway Park, where he serves as the organist for the Boston Red Sox. A pianist since the age of five, Kantor (now…
Tears for Fears are touring the world again — playing Tel Aviv on July 5 — and are promising fans a new album. You already know “Shout” or “Mad World” or any one of those songs that made them one of the most fascinating bands of the ‘80s. You may also know that the songs…
Fifty years ago this spring, a then unknown British rock group called Procol Harum released its very first single, “A Whiter Shade Of Pale.” The distinctive recording went to No. 1 in the United Kingdom and hit the top 10 in the United States, casting the mold somewhat for “progressive rock” on its way to…
Leonard Cohen’s getting a gigantic tribute in Montreal. But at least one prominent local thinks the late cultural icon would have cringed at his 28,000-square-foot, 20-story likeness plastered on a downtown building. Writing for the Montreal Gazette, writer Bill Brownstein called the massive mural an “ill-fitting tribute… that feels so wrong.” “The fact of the…
“Last Christmas,” the 1980s hit by pop duo Wham! could just as easily have been called “Last Pesach.” John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” is a Vietnam War protest, not a Christian song. And, while “White Hanukkah” is not quite as catchy as Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” there is nothing overtly…
Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan’s music has enduring power; this past weekend, Patti Smith moved the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony audience to tears while singing his classic “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” The song has also moved hearts and minds in Hebrew. In 2000, Israeli bard Aviv Geffen, seen as the protest musician of his generation,…
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