Steven Lee Beeber
Based in part on recent interviews with more than 125 peopleâ€”among them Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein (Blondie), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Hilly Kristal (CBGBs owner), and John Zornâ€”this book focuses on punkâ€™s beginnings in New York City to show that punk was the most Jewish of rock movements, inÂ both makeup and attitude. As it originated in Manhattanâ€™s Lower East Side in the early 1970s, punk rock was the apotheosis of a Jewish cultural tradition that found its ultimate expression in the generation born after the Holocaust. Beginning with Lenny Bruce, â€œthe patron saint of punk,â€ and following pre-punk progenitors such as Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman, Suicide, and the Dictators, this fascinating mixture of biography, cultural studies, and musical analysis delves into the lives of these and other Jewish punksâ€”including Richard Hell and Joey Ramoneâ€”to create a fascinating historical overview of the scene. Reflecting the irony, romanticism, and, above all, the humor of the Jewish experience, this tale of changing Jewish identity in America, ,reveals the conscious and unconscious forces that drove New York Jewish rockers to reinvent themselvesâ€”and popular music.
Music,Nonfiction,History,Music,Punk,Literature,Jewish,Culture,Pop Culture
The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk