Boys For Pele

These things happen, and you move on; you continue being sixteen and you eventually get better in bed. I learned early that you must continue trying if you’re ever going to get anywhere and that, in between attempts, it’s totally acceptable to have yourself a good cry now and then–and newly-deflowered me had plenty.  I had imagined sex as the third Temple. I wanted to “make love” to a girl, then get married and settle down.  I would have a meaningful career and we would share plenty of laughter and happiness forever and ever.  I believed all of this because my teenage wasteland was littered with unreasonable thoughts and ideas. I had stupidly built up my first time as the most important day of my entire life.

I was a complete fraud without a clue and had no business attempting the action.  My technique was Inspector Clouseau on a bad day; all bumbling and fucking up left and right while we listened to two Shellac songs–as Chicagoland teenagers in the ’90s did while having sex—until it was over.  Nothing really magical happened.  I laid on my stomach realizing that the seal had been broken, that my innocence had slunk off ashamed.  She was on her back thinking only God knows what, but since she broke up with me within the week, it had to be something pretty negative.

After she dumped me I went from being an overly sensitive 16-year-old kid to an overly sensitive 16-year-old kid who just had his V-card punched with a big fat F. I quickly withdrew from my friends and sat around listening to a box of random mixtapes and CDs that contained everything from Boston hardcore to Wire and The Cars.  I searched my collection for something to help me heal, and it finally came when I hit the dregs, and fished out Boys for Pele, a CD I’d stolen from the local Tower Records to impress a girl I liked.

I marginally liked Amos, but upon hearing the first notes of “Beauty Queen/Horses,” I was converted.  I became obsessed and suddenly Tori Amos was more than just some voice coming out of my headphones; she was my new best friend. I found myself seeking out live recordings, buying books on Tori, and spending time in the Tori Amos AOL chatroom. I was still punk, but I loved Tori Amos.  Even though most of the time I had no clue what the fuck she was singing about, I still felt a deep personal connection to every lyric in every song.  Some thrust themselves into their work to get over heartbreak; I jumped into Tori Amos.

Tori looked at me and moaned, “I shaved every place where you’ve been boy,” over some spooky, gothic harpsichord, which made everything seem totally okay.  She sang songs about friends who were probably figments of her imagination; there was the cathartic buildup of “Hey Jupiter” that seemed to sum up my tiny world.  The cover of Tori seated in a rocking chair, with one mud-drenched leg kicked over the handle, and a shotgun in her lap is an image that says, “Fuck or get fucked.  Just don’t fuck with me.”  It’s an incredibly striking picture, and a big jump stylistically from the images on her first two records.

The core fanbase of Tori Amos in the late 90s was a mass of religiously devoted followers.  Like The Beatles, Michael Jackson, or Justin Bieber, Tori’s devotees wept at her very appearance, and to this day, the only time I’ve ever witnessed another musician being showered with flowers was Morrissey.  Unlike Bieber and The Beatles, Amos played diety while sitting behind a piano.  She didn’t shimmy or shake her crotch across a stage; instead, she banged on some keys and wailed her little heart out.

From 1996 to 1999 I was one of her more obsessive followers, and in those days, it was more acceptable to be a fan of Tori Amos than it is today.  Jawbox covered “Cornflake Girl” on their self-titled 1996 album, and seeing her name listed among the fiercest vegan straight edge bands in the Favorite Music section on The Makeout Club (for you youngsters, that’s the hip pre-social network dating site) was common.

There is a picture of me with green hair, wearing a Descendants t-shirt, giving a thumbs up as I enter the Rosemont Theatre with my friend Sarah.  All around us are people that now look like relics of Generation X: platform boots, respectable dreadlocks, baggy jeans, and a shared daze that asks “Where the fuck is this all going?”

We were walking into the first of the two-night “Dew Drop Inn” tour, a concert that Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune described as one “[e]xhorted by the kind of adulatory shouts, screams and unself-concious pronouncements of affection associated with 16-year-old heartthrobs like New Kids on the Block or Tiffany, the 32-year-old Amos went about her business as an unlikely icon in an atmosphere bordering on hysteria.”

I was one of those hysterical screamers.  For a few hours I stopped thinking about how punk I was and realized I had to do a lot more than just learn to fuck to be a good person.  Tori pushed me toward ascending that mountain of psychological manhood, and with her in my ears, I did so without reservation.

It’s easy to feel disconnected from our heroes now that we can monitor them from the privacy of our laptops.  It was never like that with Tori in the mid to late 90s.  She was the last celebrity I felt a kinship with.  Her songs were strange but bright, even during a time when bands like Pearl Jam made millions writing lyrics that were pure gibberish.  She genuinely seemed to love her fans as much as they loved her.  Tori Amos seemed real and totally batshit crazy at the same time; and to a kid reeling from his first bad sexual experience, listening to “Blood Roses” was a perfect initiation into truthful, gorgeous intimacy.

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When Jay Reatard was alive, he got called anything from “possessed” to “total dick.”

Looking back on his recorded legacy with the ease awarded by hindsight, I see that he was consumed by his own aesthetic: a wild man with a vision. I can’t tell if he was taken over by an evil spirit — a rock and roll demon child that drank from the same Tennessee waters as one of his obvious forefathers, Jerry Lee Lewis — or if he had genuine nihilistic tendencies, seeing music as the only path to his redemption, which might explain his rapid fire output and early demise.

Maybe he thought his duty on this planet was to crank out record after record with a reckless abandon that eventually claimed his life at the age of 29 in January 2010.

In a short documentary made about Reatard (born James Lee Lindsay Jr.), he’s quoted saying, “if I wouldn’t have found music, I’m sure I would have been a petty criminal.”  With that in mind, I recall seeing him live and realize that there was a pretty good chance that for this guy, there wasn’t much else in his life besides the stage and the recording studio.

It all started with his first band, the Reatards, which he started at 15.  The bedroom project churned out a handful of singles, a few records (both live and studio recorded), and cult status with people who preferred noisy, raw bands like The Gories, Guitar Wolf, and Reatard’s foremost inspiration, fellow Memphis group the Oblivians.

The Reatards were short-lived, but Jay Reatard’s renown grew.  He spent the next ten years spitting out music fast and without abandon.  Under names like The Final Solutions, Bad Times, and Destruction Unit, Reatard spent the decade producing one of the largest recorded libraries of any artist in the American underground, save for maybe Will Oldham.  And though Oldham’s cryptic Americana shares very few sonic similarities to Reatard’s work, the volume of recordings and penchant for various monikers (for every new band Reatard was in, Oldham has his birth name, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Palace Music, Palace Brothers, etc.) does link their craft.

The reality is that Reatard really had very few contemporaries.  His exploits could be traced in fanzines like “Horizontal Action,” and his meteoric rise aligned itself with a renewed recognition of American garage, or what Eric Davidson called the “gunk punk” scene.  His eventual death, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, came when his popularity had reached its highest peak – which seems to be the best way to go in rock and roll.  But his earliest recordings with the Reatards remain his greatest achievement: before success, before European tours, before Matador Records, the Reatards’ Teenage Hate was overwhelming.  It was a loud and raw album with no pretense.  It was undiluted garage rock created mostly by an angry teenage kid from the South who seemed to have lived his life by the old punk adage of “no future.”

Goner Records, the Memphis record label and store operated by former Oblivians member Eric Friedl, has reissued the Reatards first album, adding nearly 20 tracks from cassette recordings that predated Teenage Hate, a self-titled offering, as well as the brilliantly titled “Fuck Elvis, Here’s the Reatards Cassette.”

If you are only familiar with Reatard’s later work, released on In the Red and Matador, it might be tough adjust to his early sound.  While his work was never polished, the later recordings go down easier.  If your record collection isn’t littered with The Spits, The Mummies, or Reatard’s work besides his cryptically titled final LP, 2009’s Watch Me Fall, the reissue of Teenage Hate may not be your cup of tea; however, if you like your music on the messy side, this is a masterpiece.

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Jesse Hlebo, who runs the small record label/indie publisher Swill Children fills me with a bit more hope than most folks. The best word I can use to describe the work ethic of the 21-year-old Brooklyn resident is “sick,” and the projects he chooses to involve himself in are always impressive.

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The Rumpus: When somebody asks you how to explain you to explain Swill Children, what do you tell them?

Jesse Hlebo: Swill Children is a small pressing record label project that facilitates a number of Internet projects under it. I like to refer to it as an umbrella, I try and have all of the projects have a certain flow between them and I’d say they all sort of integrate notions of authenticity while being mass disseminated. I’m really curious as to the idea of unique digital object’s and something still maintaining uniqueness though it’s residing in the digital form. That’s why I have certain things that are completely for free whereas others are very small run and hand made.

Rumpus: I hear the word project and I think there’s some sort of end result you want to accomplish. What is the that for you?

Hlebo: I guess in the end I’m trying to create a sense of community, both through the people involved in — whether it’s purchasing something and as a result becoming a part of this community — or the people who are creating these things, I try to approach those sort of areas from a non-hierarchical standpoint

Rumpus: When I say “dead format” what comes to mind?

Hlebo: I guess like a floppy disc or something. I guess television is sort of dead in my mind. I don’t really see the use or practicality of television. I think there are forms that set up to do so much better in a way that’s far more contemporary, from a sociological standpoint, with everything happening instantaneously there is this mass democratization of things, I think television isn’t a democratic way of media.

Rumpus: Now you choose to release music and literature via zines, seven inch records and cassette tapes.  I think people would consider those dead formats.

Hlebo: That usually depends on who you’re talking to. In my mind it makes it that much more special, not so much in the nostalgic way but in a tangible way. If the mass way to consume something is purely digitally, having something you can physically hold isn’t so much in my mind sentimental, it just furthers the experience, and that’s not to say I don’t have digital equivalents of all these things I give away for free, once the physical thing is gone then everything is free on the website.

Rumpus: Not saying that you want to run Swill Children like an evil, capitalist enterprise, but do  you think that what your doing could serve as a good business model?

Hlebo: I think at least in my mind that…

Rumpus: I’m not assuming that you want to make this the DIY of Wal-Mart, I’m saying there are people always looking for new ways to do things, and underground culture has been a reliable place to pluck ideas from…

Hlebo: I’m just trying to approach it the way that I consume things, which is if it’s something that I genuinely have a love for, then I’m going to want to have it or experience it in its ideal form, whether it’s experiencing music live rather than just recorded, or owning a physical rather than a PDF of it, but at the same time I download a lot of music, and for that matter I find lots of essays online, I guess logistically, in the end it’s all about getting these things out there, I think it’s sort of variable as to which way they are consumed.

Rumpus: You’ve also released some of your own work. Do you find that self- releasing/self publishing frees you to do what you want as oppose to conforming to somebody else’s notion of what they want from your writing

Hlebo: It’s nice to be able to be working with people on projects where they have a lot of ideas about things and I have ideas about their things too, and we’re both working on it together, ultimately it’s their thing, though I’m working with them on it and I’m giving them my input. But it’s nice to be able to completely control what it is that I’m putting out there.

Rumpus: You are friends with all the people you work with, you have a relationship with them. Is each release a collaboration, is there a period where you offer criticism and it goes back and forth?

Hlebo: I’m very involved with the whole process and I’m very much concerned about maintaining the integrity of what it is I’m trying to do with Swill Children, because in the end the way that I see it is that it’s just one big art project so I don’t want to just release something because I know it will sell, it all has to conceptually tie in with everything that happened before it. And I hope in a way that’s not repeating but adding elements to the dialogue I’m attempting to engage in.

Rumpus: What I find interesting is you use the word projects, when you hear the word product as oppose to project what are you thoughts?

Hlebo: I guess product feels more final to me, whereas project conveys a sense of fluidity and motion and may not have an end, whereas product I feel like it’s finished, there’s that idea of a finished product that doesn’t exist with project.

Rumpus: While these are projects, there is a price to them. To put out something tangible in this day and age, it seems to always have to have a price. Do you ever see what you’re doing becoming a product?

Hlebo: Sure, it is a consumable object, and it’s a commodity that people are paying for. I guess my hope is that there’s just a little more love in it than something you’d get from a Barnes and Noble.

Rumpus: You’re 21 and you just graduated from Parsons.  You have a pretty successful small DIY project, what are you future plans now? You’ve done one gallery show…

Hlebo: I did three solo shows. In August and September I’m going to be curating four Showpaper shows, it’s going be a part of this exhibition that’s taking place at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, it’s in Chelsea I could be wrong but I think it’s 39^th between 8^th and 9^th, or somewhere around there. I kind of have this residency thing right now that I’m calling the Aagoosidency, because it’s through my friends record label called Aagoo. He actually helped me start Swill Children and he’s helping me out financially so that I can be focusing on Swill Children and making art and helping him with his label too. And then I do freelance stuff to cover the rest. I’m trying to think if I have any other projects coming up…

Rumpus: You live in Brooklyn, the economy sucks, we’re at war with, etc.  If you could step outside yourself and go 20 years into the future, would you say you were living in an interesting time?

Hlebo: For sure. I try and find as much positivity as I can in any situation that I’m in. New York is a place that has a lot of history and things that I have a lot of respect for and it’s exciting to be participating in that and though it’s sort of morbid I’ve been kind of happy about the recession because it trims off the fat a little bit and it allows for things to happen that require less money and less overhead. A lot of times I feel like more interesting things happening in those places, as opposed to somewhere like Six Flags.

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If you need proof that 2009 was a better-than-average year for DIY publishing, look no further than Aaron Cometbus, who published two issues of the influential zine that bares his punk rock surname this year. “The Spirit of St. Louis,” which came out earlier in the earlier half, was a welcomed shift back to the personal narrative he became known for in the 80′s and 90′s, while issue #53, a collaboration with contributor Maddalena Polletta, is also mostly storytelling, but contains one of the more fascinating accounts of the life and times of Punk Magazine I’ve read since every other publication concerned with punk rock beat the subject to death.

One writer who has possibly taken a few cues from Mr. Cometbus is Aaron Lake Smith.  His “Unemployment” was recently published on Microcosm, and is laid out to look something like a Chick tract, but reads like Holden Caulfield under the influence of Jack Black’s (the writer, not the actor) You Can’t Win, or the CrimethInc. book of anarchist essays, Days of War, Nights of Love.  While those associations might conjure up images of bomb throwing radicals or wandering derelicts, reading through “Unemployment” leads me to believe that the writer is a gifted observer with a talent for understanding the absurdities of everyday life, and whatever political ties he may or may not have are completely irrelevant.

What sets Lake Smith apart from what Tobias Carroll referred to as a “post-Cometbus generation of punk rock memoirists” is his ability to balance the silly with the serious.  He goes through bouts of guilt that would make any Catholic jealous, and is constantly haunted by the dark shadow of capitalism.  Whether or not Aaron Lake Smith is happy watching what he refers to as “the crumpled and fading empire of America” is of no matter to me, but the fact that he documents it so well is what matters.

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Of course, I find that there have been valiant attempts to get the old gears of Jewish thought turning again. From what I can gather, John Zorn coined the phrase with his marvelous Tzadik label, and no matter your opinion of Heeb, it’s my belief that these projects came about with nothing but the best of intentions.

And while I flirt with the idea that I’m a sappy realist (and my name is also on the masthead of the same magazine Gawker claims is slowly dying), I admit that I could just be making all of this up, but in all honesty, I don’t think that to be the case.

Beyond the pictures of Roseanne dressed like Hitler, and the ads showing a tefillin-wrapped arm with a needle plunging into the vein–which even as a non-observant Jew made me pretty uncomfortable–my time with Heeb has brought one incredibly positive change into my life: it’s helped me become comfortable with my place in the “Jewish world.”

Okay, so let me straighten that out a little: I’ve always been more than proud to be a Jew. I’ve never been one to hide my background, and while I have been critical of some of Heeb’s content in the past, my association with the magazine has helped start conversations with people who I assumed would rather not talk about their Jewish backgrounds. These conversations helped me realize that my own criticism of organized religion, and my discomfort with taking part in many of the rituals associated with Judaism, is totally OK. It also made me realize that I’m not as much of an outsider amongst a people that have traditionally been outsiders. No matter what happens with Heeb, I’ll always be thankful for that.

With all that said, something started to change when I read the N+1 essay, “The People of the Magazine“. This came a few months after working for a Jewish non-profit, and after my brief flirtation with “getting religious”. While I didn’t demand change from Heeb, having hit it’s groove covering what it chose to cover, I realized what I truly missed was the struggle to have your Jewish voice heard. As mentioned in the N+1 article, Jewish magazines (including Heeb), alongside other arts organizations, have been dependent on Jewish interest groups to help fund their “vision”. And no matter how far you try and “push things” in an attempt to “stick out”, it would seem that bread tastes better with butter, and butter costs money.

Specifically, I missed Jewish magazines, and in some cases, blogs, that helped me realize that while the history and traditions of my people were special, those traditions weren’t what made me special, no matter what any Chabad rabbi wants to say. Jewish hipsters, Jewish coolness, or Jewish superiority are all terms that seem miles away from what I began searching for when I picked up the first issue of Heeb. Maybe I’m still in the wilderness, but at least I’m still searching, and using the same approach I took back when I first began trying to figure out “my place.”

I don’t know if Heeb magazine is dying. Josh Neuman, a friend and the publisher of Heeb, denies it, and until the time comes for the next issue to hit stands, I’m not going to bother playing the guessing game, nor will I join in the chorus of people putting in their two cents about what led to the “death watch.”

In terms of the Gawker piece, I will say that one comment in particular rubbed me the wrong way, from commenter The-Littlest-Hobo, saying “…Heeb always seemed like a pale imitation of the excellent zine Plotz.” Hobo is talking about the zine written by Barbara Rushkoff, which if memory serves me, lasted until right around the early days of Heeb. I read Plotz a few times, and it had a profound impact on me (also, her hubby Douglas has done the same a few times), but to say Heeb was a “pale imitation” seems wrong. Sure, Plotz might be the first zine that was unabashed about it’s Jewishness, but I remember around the same time I saw Plotz for the first time, I also heard of future Heeb founder Jennifer Bleyer’s zine, “Mazel Tov Cocktail.” While I can’t recall much of the content of Bleyer’s one-off project, I do remember the involvement of Bloodlink Records founder (and guy who seems to be up to a bunch of other things now), as well as something about 80’s hardcore stalwarts Murphy’s Law. My memory usually doesn’t betray me, and I remember a year or so ago, looking at a copy of the zine that a friend had held onto, and thinking “this is the obvious blueprint for Heeb.”

Post-Plotz, Mazel Tov Cocktail, and Heeb, there have been others of note. Around the time Bleyer handed control of Heeb over to Neuman (an essay Ms. Bleyer wrote as to why she did this can be found here), “T/F” emerged. While this magazine didn’t fly any Jewish flags per se, it did have two incredibly interesting articles with heavy Jewish slants. The first one written by Brian Lipson about a rabbi affiliated with the anti-Israeli hasidic group, Neturei Karta, and another interview with a rabbi titled, “Punk Rock and the French New Right”. Whatever happened to this zine past the first issue, I’m not sure, but the one I own, I cherish. (Also of note in issue #1, is the artwork by Jeffrey Lewis).

Other dispatches? I earlier made mention of Barbara’s husband Douglas. His book Nothing Sacred was a source of inspiration for me at a critical time in my “Jewish self-discovery”; and for a period, the blog Jewschool.com was an extremely useful tool (although I admit I haven’t read it since founder Daniel “Mobius” Sieradski left), and then there is the always-dependable Aaron Cometbus. While not usually thought of as one of the “great Jewish writers” of the last 50 or so years (CRIME!), to paraphrase something he once said, “Jews and punk rockers are both extremely nostalgic”, and it’s my background in both of those things that make me yearn for the days of DIY Judaism.

***

Originally published at Vol. 1 Brooklyn, re-posted with permission.

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Charles Manson is a bad man. I’ve never kidded myself to that fact, and I don’t glamorize his crimes or the crimes of his “family” one bit. He is an evil man, and his followers murdered people in cold blood. Even when I try to sugarcoat a conversation about Manson’s contribution to pop music in the form of a Beach Boys re-working of one of his songs (1969′s “Never Learn not to Love” off the album 20/20, released months before the murders), people are still put off when I mention my predilection for music created by members of The Family.

But let’s face it, I listen to a lot of music made by murders and monsters. Should I stop listening to The Ronettes or The Ramones because convicted murder Phil Spector produced some of their albums? I would be denying myself one of my greatest pleasures if I was unable to listen to “River Deep, Mountain High” by Ike and Tina Turner just because Spector is a lunatic. Is it really any different istening to the music of Manson Family associate Bobby BeauSoleil, who composed the soundtrack to Kenneth Anger’s 1972 film Lucifer Rising while in prison for the very murders that are, along with the tragedy at the Altamont Speedway Music Festival, considered the event that ended the wide-eyed optimism of the peace and love decade? And what about the haunting “Family Jams” album, with songs written by Manson and recorded by Family members after his imprisonment?

While I realize that the idea of of an elderly man who produced girl group hits in the 1960′s might not be as menacing as that of a group of drug-crazed hippies on a killing spree, I find odd and fascinating our fears of what we perceive as “cults”–specifically because of the actions of lunatics like Manson, and later Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple–and how the atrocities by these men and their followers might cast some serious doubt into the legitimacy of the music they produced. But I have an even harder time understanding doubts of the work of a man named Father Yod and his followers known as The Source Family/Brotherhood or Ya Ho Wah 13 (some of the names they were known by), whose peaceful existence revolved around an organic vegetarian restaurant with star clientele including John Lennon, Marlon Brando, and Tony Curtis. In direct contrast to the saga of the Manson Family save for one detail, they too were a communal group who created and recorded music and whose original albums fetch astronomical figures among collectors. Both groups continue to gain a following even today.  As Beausoleil and the Source Family are now getting the re-issue treatment from two of today’s most well-known indie labels: Drag City is doing The Source Family’s Ya Ho Wah 13 and Magnificence in the Memory, and Mexican Summer Records is putting out Adventures In Experimental Electric Orchestra From The San Francisco Psychedelic Underground, an album of Beausoleil’s Orkustra work prior to his incarceration.

On April 18th, 1970, Bobby Beausoleil, then 22 years of age, was sentenced to death (alongside fellow Family members Susan Atkins, and Mary Brunner) for the murder of Gary Hinman. When California ruled the death penalty unconstitutional two years later, Beausoleil was sentenced to life imprisonment, giving him more than enough time to compose and record the soundtrack to avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s exploration of mystical and occult imagery in the short film Lucifer Rising. Behind bars, Beausoleil would create an album’s worth of music that many could consider an ancestor to the doom and drone metal played and practiced by more current groups like Sunn O))) and Electric Wizard, and the influence even rears it’s head in the work of more indie (but admitted metal fans) Mogwai. Meanwhile, the film would not be released until 1980, and an official release of Beausoleil’s composition would not be released until 2004. By that time the album’s underground legend grew, now a minor, albeit little-known classic. While an album such as the soundtrack in question could never conceivably gain an audience beyond the relatively small market of record collectors, curiosity-seekers, and genuine fans of sludgy, apocalyptic prog-rock, the great irony is that Mr. Beausoleil, who in an interview in Oui Magazine in 1981 claimed from his jail cell in California where he still sits today, that he was “not then, nor am I now a member of the Manson Family,” has developed a cult following of his own. What is showcased on this double LP is an exercise in San Francisco psych-rock far more “out there,” textured, and expansive than anything you may have heard (save for early live recordings of The Grateful Dead), and should serve as evidence that Beausoleil’s work deserves heaps of recognition regardless of his crimes.

Where the crime of murder will forever be upon the head of Beausoleil and his connection to the Manson family established, the members of The Source Family were a peaceful people whose daily regimen of waking up at 3 a.m. to meditate, and operating the organic vegetarian restaurant would seem as far removed from what might be perceived less as cultish, more in the realm of “new age.” But in reality, the charismatic (and bearded, of course) leader of Father Yod, the communal living, and the time period (when what have been dubbed by sociologists as “new religious movements” were looked at with both total fear due to the Manson murders and also with curiosity possibly due to such disenfranchised and disconnected feelings towards “normal” society), place The Source Family directly under the category of “cult.” But unlike the Manson’s a few years prior, the Source Family do not find themselves in the history books, primarily due to the fact that unlike the Manson Family (and the People’s Temple in the late 60s-early 70′s, or the Branch Davidian and Heavens Gate cults in the early 1990′s), they were not responsible for taking the lives of their members, law enforcement or otherwise innocent people. Like members of Manson’s group and their associate Beausoleil, however, The Source recorded a series of albums of psychedelic rock that today can fetch nearly a thousand dollars each. Their sound–completely unrehearsed and improvised, with lyrics conjured during Father Yod’s early morning meditations–seems to have some connection to the ideas of free jazz, but is unmistakable and wholly their own.  The recently uncovered tapes that make up Magnificence in the Memory work (dated sometime around 1972) as good a primer as any to understand the sound and power of what this group accomplished. Working from points that come off as stoned-funk (opener “Camp of the Gypsies”) to some songs that seem could have been created in a Berlin loft by groups Guru Guru, or Amon Duul 2. Ya Ho Wah 13 were totaly in-step with the underground of their times, and also anticpated future prog punk like This Heat, the post-rock of Tortoise, and neo-psych of Brightblack Morning Light.

By the estimation of some people, myself included, I too have been involved in what could be considered a “cult,” which, like the Manson and Source families, was and is to this day led by a charismatic (and bearded, why are they always bearded?) man whose followers became convinced he was the Messiah. While this description could of course be used to explain the religion with our planet’s largest following, Christianity, I am actually talking about the Chabad Lubavitcher sect of Jewish Hasidim and the guys who dress like Jewish gangsters, asking passers by if they are Jewish and if they would like to “make a Mitzvah” (do a good deed). Parts of my family belong to this group which, I admit, I once turned to in a period of desperation. The Lubavitcher philosophy, introduced by the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (or “The Rebbe”), was to expand and be visible all around the world in an effort to attract Jews with little to no religious background, or to bring back the ones that had “strayed from the flock” to the table of Orthodox Judaism. When my own personal issues subsided and I realized that I had little to no interest in being affiliated with any religious organization, I quit cold turkey and stopped placing what I believed to be restrictions on my life that the religion I was born into set thousands of years ago.

It was around this time, while working as an intern (slave) at a music media and marketing company that one of the publicists jokingly handed me a cd with what looked to me like a Chabnik (term for a follower of Chabad Lubavitch) with a microphone in his hand. I gazed at the name on the cover, which read Matisyahu, a Jewish name I was familiar with, and in no time the publicist told me “this guy is a Rabbi, and he’s our newest client. I thought you would like it.” And while the man born Matthew Miller was not in fact a Rabbi, he did play the sort of music I thoroughly detest: jammy, reggae-toned, white-guy hip-hop; the sort of stuff I personally dislike, but that countless young people all across the world love. Upon first listen and inspection of the lyrics, I realized quickly that this music seemed like nothing but a talk given by a Lubavitcher rabbi: the same Jewish self-empowerment ideology that, while it isn’t necessarily evil or containing of any malice, reminds me of the schtick I have heard a million times by members of Chabad trying to bring non-observant Jews into the fold. As the cd ended a shiver went up my spine, and I realized that yet another group had now begun to utilize rock n’ roll as a tool to preach their sermons and reach would-be followers.

While sociologists have determined that the definition of a ‘cult’ is based on factors such as membership characteristics, the size of the group and types of beliefs, I don’t see it as black and white as that. An individual person having the ability to persuade others to follow them is a story as old as humanity itself. Even in the most recent American election, many noted the “cult-like” way Obama’s supporters followed him by placing the candidate upon a near holy, messianic platform, and while not directly mentioned (as far as I can tell) in his lyrics, the Lubavitcher message (and cornerstone of all Orthodox Jewish belief) that Matisyahu has tried to get across is the hope that the Moshiach (the Hebrew word for Messiah) will come in our lifetime. Putting aside your own personal beliefs, how very different is it to believe in a Hebrew Messiah, a Christian one, Father Yod or Charles Manson as being your personal savior? It’s not as much as you would think, but in the case of the last two–keeping in step with the cultural pulse of their time–the music is a whole lot better.

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Original illustration of Father Yod by Jon Adams!

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