You've Got a Friend...James Taylor or Not

If you went to summer camp, likely you sang "You've Got a Friend," arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, tears eventually rolling down your cheeks.

I haven't heard it in a long time or thought of it, but along comes this nice cover by Nigel Hall  and friends from last week's JamCruise.  This talented musician is friends with my friend The Coach.  Actually I think I will call him Big Josh from now on, since that is how he referred to himself in another recent online post.  Ok, Big Josh?

Jump to start around 2:00

Remember the Neville Brothers?  At least one of these musicians, Ivan Neville, is related.




My friend Lisa and I did a cover of this song during our teen tour at a make-your-own-cassette-tape kiosk on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and called ourselves, tongue-in-cheek, The Japettes.  Lisa is a good friend to this day and very much *not* that derogatory cultural stereotype.

Here we are, me wearing my Vuarnets, those very 80s preppy sunglasses I referred to in this recent post. when I mentioned the song "Prep School Hippie."

Seedlings Turn Overnight to Sunflowers, Blossoming Even As We Gaze

No, that's not Zeppelin.

Perhaps the above-mentioned quotation doesn't ring as quick a bell as the title of the song in which it appears:  "Sunrise, Sunset."  Seedlings and sunflowers don't right out there scream "Jewish."  And yet, a simple utterance of the two words sunrise and sunset together in one sentence will get most American Jews (and even many non Jews) above a certain age swooning and swaying all at the same time.  Yuck.





We must admit, Fiddler on the Roof was never a big draw for us.  We had little desire to pay attention during a screening in a social studies class at Spanish River High School while visiting a teen tour boyfriend in Boca, instead dreaming up what crazy stuff his fellow Louis Vuitton wallet-carrying-buddies would do at their poker game and BBYO scavenger hunt later that night.  We missed its 2nd and 3rd Broadway revivals, in 1981 and 1990 respectively.  We have seen clips of the film, but never the whole thing.  We figured that gazing down from the balcony on high holidays at the film's lead actor, Chaim Topol, who attended our family's synagogue in the '80s, was enough.

Honestly, the music never really grabbed us (yes, we know it received some Academy Awards.  With music by John Williams.  Yes, we know he's big.  Still, no grab).

Until today.


Driving home from the pharmacy this afternoon, we were listening to our children's Jewish 'till You're Satisfied  CD by the Funkey Monkeys. The CD has a lot of classics you may have heard at camp, Hebrew school, or youth groups, but these versions are updated, funked up, and totally raging.

So, check out this two-year-old soul version (complete with a horns section) of the classic song your grandparents cried to at the silver screen in 1971.  And feel free to tell your Grandma Beverly about it in West Palm.  It will get her rockin'.  Maybe she'll even share it with her Mah Jongg group.

Here's the Zeppelin you were thought you might get.  And it is from just 2 years after Fiddler, no less!

Jewish Geography and Kevin Bacon

If you haven't yet heard about the famous game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where you link an actor to Kevin Bacon through no more than six connections, then, as in the words of Martin Short as the flamboyant wedding coordinator in the remake of "Father of the Bride, "Welcome to the 90's, Mr. Bank."  The game is a take on the idea of six degress of separation, but when you're Jewish, that number seems sometimes to dwindle down to three or even two.

You might know it better as Jewish Geography.

C'mon, we all know you've engaged in a fun game of it in your lifetime.  Maybe you shy away from it now.  But, even if you're from Bozeman, Montana, you most likely have played.  Whether you're from Boca, Skokie, or Roslyn, whether you went to camp anywhere near Honesdale or Lake Winnipesaukee (Adam Sandler is from nearby), you've done youth groups like  Young Judaea, USY, BBYO, B'nai Akiva, or NCSY, we know you've done it.  Whether you were in a Jewish fraternity or sorority anywhere, but particularly at Wisconsin (Madison only, puh-lease!), Michigan (Ann Arbor, of course), or Indiana (are there even any other campuses where out of state Jews would seek out?), you've played.  What about any affiliation with Penn, the SUNYs (particularly Binghamton or Albany), Maryland, Brandeis or B.U.?

Still no?

If you've been part of any of the teen tour circuit, including American Trails West, Rein, or West Coast Connection, you know the game.

Jewish geography is like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon amplified and on steroids, because you can be visiting your cousins in LA and run into a friend's aunt or uncle that you met a few years ago at his sister's bat mitzvah in the valley while strolling along Third Street Promenade.

The Whole Phamily is constantly learning about connections to friends of cousins of sisters of husbands' next door neighbors at their parents place in Bal Harbor.  The network can seem endless.

Wanna play?