Jews Who Rock, a no-jive turkey & shelter from the storm: my weird day in metro Milwaukee

Before I get to the Jews Who Rock exhibit, I have to mention a few odd phenomena that crossed my path yesterday in metropolitan Milwaukee.  While hunting for the new ReThreads (a clothing swap-store) on East Capitol Drive in tony Shorewood, I spotted a wild turkey behaving in a fairly civilized manner outside the Wells Fargo bank on Oakland Avenue.  I swear that I did not hallucinate or otherwise imagine any of this surreal tale.

The preening cock stood over three-and-a-half feet tall & he was all business.  He let passersby know, by economical body language alone (rarely making so much as a peep), that he was not a bird to be messed with.  Some teen girls out on lunch break from Shorewood High School gave that no-jive turkey a wide berth as they scuttled past, shrieking and giggling.  I didn’t spot a single cop or animal-control officer anywhere.  

In New Orleans or Key West such a sight wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.  But this was Shorewood, residential base to mostly wealthy whitefolk & the hometown of ultra-square US Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.  It’s the kind of inner-suburb where yoga-panted 30-something MILFs perambulate their pampered progeny past Russian-Jewish immigrants' shops to the nearest fancy cafe in high-performance strollers.  So I smiled, silently applauding that rogue fowl’s territorial attitude.  The turkey’s apparent contempt (shades of Neko Case’s animal-rights anthem “People Got a Lotta Nerve”) as he observed the passing parade of vehicles & boutique shoppers certainly suited my mood. 

My laptop wasn’t charging, so I drove to the Apple store at nearby Bayshore Mall in Glendale at around noon.  A pretty blonde greeter referred me to Asher, a wispy ginger-bearded sub-manager.  This tall, skinny dude informed me that the next available appointment with one of their “geniuses” was at 4:30.  Well, I didn’t need a genius to tell me that Apple Inc. and its arrogant minions didn’t give a shit about my eBay-bought iBook and its short-circuiting adapter cord.  So I split, arriving at a Colectivo cafe in the old water-system pump-house near the McKinley Marina for a salad and some people-watching in the downpour.

Afterwards, I stopped by the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee (est. 2008) to check out a new exhibit I’d just read about in the Shepherd Express, latest publisher of my freelance journalism.  On display through August 10th, Jews Who Rock is a single-room exhibit about Jews who helped make pop music & rock ‘n’ roll cool over the past six decades.  Go ahead:  try to imagine how vacuous contemporary music might’ve become if Jews hadn’t written such songs as “Jailhouse Rock” (by Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller) or “It’s Too Late” (by Carole King).  

The cast of characters ranges from Fifties deejay & payola mastermind Alan Freed to the multi-talented Barbra Streisand, who sang in her Brooklyn high-school choir with Barry Manilow.  There are nods to characters like the intermittently insane Warren Zevon, whose Pa was reputedly a Jewish gangster in LA, his Ma a Mormon (so under Jewish law, I reckon he’s no Jew at all).  Then there’s the entrepreneurial Jann Wenner, founding publisher of Rolling Stone (est. 1967) & benefactor to the gentile - but rarely genteel - Hunter S. Thompson, a gonzo journalist & self-mythologizer with rock ‘n’ roll attitude to burn.  

I cannot recommend the Jews Who Rock exhibit, if only because the museum charges adults $6 & it just ain’t worth the price of admission.  Besides, it consists mainly of predictable texts on bowling-league-sized plaques, plus some safe photographs & a few souvenir records.  Unsurprisingly, it was organized by a generic entity called “National Exhibitions & Archives, LLC.”  

Instead of paying, I emulated Al Kooper, a non-observant Jew whose display of chutzpah in May 1965 at the Columbia Records studio in New York City when Bob Dylan recorded “Like a Rolling Stone” is deservedly legendary.  Kooper finagled his way into the musicians’ room & managed to come up with an organ part that Dylan dug & made the key riff of that breakthrough song.  Yet Kooper had rarely even played keyboards before.  Less impressively, I talked my way into the Jewish Museum by offering to blog about this exhibit in lieu of paying admission.  It worked, folks, and I don’t feel a shred of guilt about the deal.

I did, however, learn something new.  Namely, that Madison-based jazz-piano master Ben Sidran (formerly of the Steve Miller Band) was, like me, raised in Racine.  Ben was born in Chicago, whereas I was born in Heidelberg (Germany), exactly twelve years after Jackson Browne met the world in that lovely town - since 1945 the HQ of the US Army in Europe.  My favorite photo in the Jews Who Rock exhibit shows Bob Dylan (born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth) circa 1964, holding an acoustic guitar at a table, seated across from Allen Ginsberg & (a guy who appears to be goy novelist) Ken Kesey with a blonde boy on his lap.  

There’s a box of puffed-rice cereal at Ginsberg’s elbow, a nice mundane touch.  Dylan looks bemused & beatific, a Beat trickster’s apprentice, a persona he frequently adopted in public before the pressures of fame drove him underground in ‘66.  The museum’s permanent exhibit is fine, if you’re fascinated by the history of Jews in Milwaukee (Golda Meir et al.).  Just know in advance that it goes on & on, like a garrulous Jewish mother (or even mine) urging you to eat the chicken soup, lest you catch a cold in this awful weather we’re having.  At least the Jews Who Rock display is presented in a well-lit room.  

Check out this ethnic niche museum if you need a break from the Summerfest crowds.  The Jewish Museum of Milwaukee, located at 1360 N. Prospect Avenue, is within walking distance of that (now all-too corporate) music festival’s beer-soaked grounds along Lake Michigan.  Bonus trivia question:  Which member of the J. Geils Band was not Jewish?  (Answer:  Mr. Geils himself!  Peter Wolf, the group’s gifted cantor - I mean, singer - hails from Boston.)

Finally, a few hours later, I was typing an e-mail at the Racine Public Library (RPL) when a young lady’s voice ordered everyone to take shelter in the basement.  A tornado warning had been issued for the Belle City & the renovated RPL has an entire wall of plate-glass facing the great lake.  As a result, a few dozen patrons - mostly women and children - hung out in the bowels of the RPL, awaiting either the all-clear or our moment of doom.  I kept humming "This Tornado Loves You" by Neko Case to amuse myself.  

It ended well, of course, and I left bearing two mint-condition albums of show-tunes by Noel Coward and Kurt Weill (another Jew), compliments of the generous Friends of the Library.  I survived the meteorological - as well as the zoological - weirdness of a thunderstorm-damaged afternoon in southeastern Wisconsin.  But I can’t help but wonder how that poor turkey’s doing.

Meanwhile, groovy Jews like Neil Diamond, Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Kinky Friedman (& his Texas Jewboys), Susanna Hoffs (the Bangles), Paul & Carly Simon just keep on rockin’ in the free world.  I remain eternally grateful to them as well as to their (presumably Jewish) agents & managers. 

Now picture Lou Reed entering a kosher version of Rock & Roll Heaven, where he gets to jam with fellow Jews such as Jeffrey Hyman, aka Joey Ramone (the Ramones), Buddhist convert & bassist/rapper Adam Yauch (the Beastie Boys) or Milwaukee’s own Howie Epstein, bassist with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers as well as a session player on many famous records.  Oy, play!

Unlikely Amigos: Joe Ely, the Beat Poet & a British Diplomat's Son

I was listening to eTown, a live music & consciousness-raising program from Boulder (CO), on public radio last Saturday night when I learned something new about my favorite rock group.  It's the story of an unlikely collaboration between some gritty Brits & an odd couple of Americans.  I'm pleased to share it with you, dear readers, if only via blogpost. 

The special guest musician on last week's eTown was Joe Ely (pronounced "EE-lee"), a roots-rocker raised in west Texas (born 1947).  A few years ago I saw Ely perform, along with his old folk-country pals Jimmie Dale Gilmore & Butch Hancock, at Luther's Blues in Madison (WI) during a Flatlanders reunion tour.  In the late '80s, I had the pleasure of watching Ely play guitar & sing with his own band on two occasions, at hip venues in New Orleans (Tipitina's - Happy Mardi Gras, y'all) & Boston (The Rathskeller, I think, near Kenmore Square).  

Serendipitously, in March 1990, I caught Ely playing a solo acoustic gig at a bar in downtown Seattle.  After the show I met the friendly Texan outside, got his autograph & suggested that he consider booking a lucrative tour of Japan (I was headed to Tokyo to teach conversational English that April).  Joe Ely always puts on an entrancing show, mixing a honky-tonk sensibility with the rockabilly attitude of Buddy Holly, the musical pioneer from Lubbock (Joe's hometown).  

Check out Ely's early live albums, Musta Notta Gotta Lotta (1981) & Live at Liberty Lunch (1990), for the sound of his stagecraft & samples of his songwriting prowess.  Dig if you will the opening lyric of Joe's "Honky Tonk Masquerade" (1977) , a boozy masterpiece:  "You sure look fine tonight / in the beer sign light."  Or try this poetic opener from "Letter to Laredo" (1995):  "As I was rolling across the Mississippi / I stopped there and I cried / No use for a man to keep a mighty river / All dammed up inside."  Joe's also a member of the Tex-Mex side-project Los Super Seven, along with David Hidalgo (Los Lobos) & Freddy Fender ("Wasted Days and Wasted Nights").

Anyway, eTown host Nick Forster was interviewing him when Ely mentioned that his Nashville-produced records of the late '70s sold much better in the UK than they did in the USA.  Joe was touring England in 1978 when three guys crashed through the club's backdoor after a show in London.  It turned out to be some local fans named Mick Jones, Paul Simonon & Joe Strummer (nom de punk of John Mellor, a diplomat's son), a/k/a The Clash - minus a drummer.  The musicians hit it off so well that Joe Ely & the Clash ended up touring Texas & Mexico together not long afterwards.

Now here's the cool thing I did not know:  Ely said that's him doing the background vocals in Spanish on "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" - the first hit single from the Clash's Combat Rock (1982).  On that same album, the last songwriting & recording collaboration between Jones & Strummer, you can also hear Allen Ginsberg's impressive baritone.  That's the legendary Beat poet interjecting verses (on Rimbaud, the Paris Commune, addicts of metropolis, death squad Salvador, etc.) alongside Strummer's plaintive choruses on "Ghetto Defendant."  

Over 30 years later, Joe Ely remains as lively as his slinky "Cool Rockin' Loretta" down in Austin, Texas.  Clash fanatics still miss Joe Strummer, who died of a freak heart attack in London at age 50 just before Christmas 2002, when he moonlighted by presenting a BBC Radio world-music program.  Sadly, Strummer passed not long after he'd made two groovy albums with his comeback band, the Mescaleros; and he had plans to record with Ely & his band.  As for the prophet-bearded, om-chanting Allen Ginsberg, cancer dragged his spirit into the mystical realm of the dead in 1997 at age 70.  

In their weird transatlantic collaboration, Ely & Ginsberg & the Clash rocked the Casbah of culture by cross-pollinating poetry, languages & music.