Hot Tuna - Part 2 - In Which Eytan and Jack Speak

My cousin Danny, a Young Judaean who made aliyah during his college years, is a guitar player. He supports his family by working as a respected and respectable professor of plant biosciences at Tel Aviv University. I haven't a clue what it is he does. All I know is that, after getting a tour of his lab, I kept thinking of the The Thing (James Arness as a giant plant monster from outer space who takes vengeance on a bunch of plant scientists at the North Pole for experimenting on his earth-bound relations).

Danny brought his son Eytan and one of Eytan's band mates to the Hot Tuna concert, because as a guitar playing, tenured professor, he could not allow this great educational opportunity to be missed. You might remember Eytan, the back of his head is on the right in the photograph above, from the stage dive video I sent around last year. In between high school and the army, he's doing a year of service leading teen programs for the Toronto Jewish community. Eytan is a wonderful young man who tolerates us old people very well, particularly when his Father is picking up a hefty ticket price.

We stood as close to center stage as we could get. Standing with us were several of Danny's guitar playing buddies and fellow academics. Before the band began to play, Danny and the other guitar players were talking to the two young musicians about what to watch and listen for. The guitars Jorma would use, his seemingly effortless bends and his style of picking, among other things. My contribution was to tell Eytan to watch Jack's eyebrows. By way of authenticating my credentials to engage in such high level analysis, Danny helpfully added that I had been at Woodstock and still had my tickets. I just love it when we can fulfill the mitzvah of teaching the children.

Early in the set, during a pause between songs, some members of the audience began to sing "HaYom Yom Huledet." This is the Israeli version of Happy Birthday with a melody and lyrics very different from the American song. Jack stepped to the edge of the stage and, with a look and a bit of body English, asked what the audience was singing. Eytan yelled, in English, "They're singing Happy Birthday." Jack looked right at my cousin, nodded his thanks and stepped back to begin the next song. Danny could not have been a prouder parent. It was that sort of night.

The concert audience spanned an age range of many decades. There were people as old as the musicians and some of us who clearly dated back to the Airplane days. The crowd included aging hippies who had clearly become baalei teshuvah, making aliyah from yurts in rural America to some of the older neighborhoods in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, with tsitsit hanging out from flannel shirts and women wearing modest length, home spun style dresses and scarves. I remember thinking how one of this group looked like a cross between Jerry Garcia and Mr. Natural, just as that familiar, sweet smell of smoke went wafting by. As for the rest of the alleged grownups in the crowd, remember your stoned roommates who disappeared into the high tech bubble? Some of them may be alive and well in Tel Aviv.

But what really struck me was the large number of Isrealis who had clearly not been born when Hot Tuna got started. Israel has come a very long way from the country that prohibited a Beatles concert because rock music would subvert the morality of the nation's youth. The country has grown up and become musically hip. As cousin Danny said in mid-concert, "Isn't this a great country." I agreed. Reading3 is a 5 minute sherut ride from my apartment. This is why I come here every winter.

I would be remiss is I ended this blog without mentioning Barry Mitterhoff, Hot Tuna's mandolin player. In addition to his huge musical talent, Mr. Mitterhoff is surely the most versatile mandolin player on the planet. Danny and I had never heard anyone play serious rock music on a mandolin. How many mandolin players have you heard who can trade licks with Jorma Kaukonen? Far out, man.

When not playing with Hot Tuna, Mr. Mitterhoff plays a combination of blue grass, klezmer and swing jazz as one of The Boys in Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys. Some of my readers were fortunate enough to hear Margot and The Boys play at my eldest daughter's wedding. Unfortunately, Mr. Mitterhoff was on tour with Hot Tuna at the time but was very ably replaced by one of his students.

I have two unmarried daughters. They know that I know that I have no say whatsoever as to whether or when either of them gets married. But they do know that I have some very strong feelings about the musicians who will play at their weddings. The way I look at it, I'm not at risk of losing daughters, I've got two more chances to hire Barry Mitterhoff to play for my guests. How cool would that be?

Photograph by Danny Chamovitz. Used with his permission. Read more!

Hot Tuna Rocks TLV

Last Wednesday, December 22, on the day before Jorma Kaukonen's 70th birthday, Hot Tuna played at Reading 3, a club at the north end of the Tel Aviv Port. Standing in front of the stage, I was very happy to know that Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady still rock and we are still not worthy.

I'm from the 60's and one of the greatest bands of that era was the Jefferson Airplane. Of all the guitar heroes ever to play The Music, you can count on one hand the ones who can play with Jorma (and that's without additional fingers from drug-induced retention of vision). The man hardly moves while his fingers create cascades of complex riffs, teasing dozens of notes out of a single position on the guitar neck with those luxurious bends.

Jorma's life long friend and bassist, Jack Casady, is a show unto himself. I learned over 40 years ago that you have to get up close to the stage at an Airplane or Hot Tuna concert so you can watch Jack's bouncing eyebrows and facial expressions, accompanied by his talking or singing, Just when you think he's lost in his trance, Jack strides to the edge of the stage, making eye contact with the audience and letting us all in on the cosmic joke.

The magic underlying The Duke Ellington Orchestra was that he kept the same players together for 25 or 30 years at a time. Musicians who play together for long stretches just know, without looking or speaking, what their band mates are going to improvise in the next instant. Improvised riffs played by masters who still really love what they're playing sound spontaneous and fresh even though you may have heard pieces of them before. (Hey, even Beethoven would recycle themes and phrases.) Whether Ellington wanted to experiment with his avant-garde sacred music or just play Take the A Train, the orchestra was right there with him.

Jorma and Jack were in a high school band together 52 years ago. After their years in the Airplane, they formed Hot Tuna to throttle back a bit and play the music they really like - a mix of blues, folk and rock. Which is also music I really like. They still clearly love what they're doing. And I still clearly love to watch them do it. At a few points in the set they'd just look at each other, play something that sometimes sounded like an old Airplane riff, and smile. There is nothing so satisfying as watching people do the only thing they ever wanted to do and doing it as well as it can be done.

Photo Credits: All photographs are by Danny Chamovitz and used with permission. Read more!

So Near And Yet So Far

The good news recently has been the condemnations of the recent Rabbinical edicts forbidding Jews from allowing Arabs, Africans and other Gentiles to move into Jewish towns or neighborhoods. It is, as one commentator put it, mortifying to live in a country where Rabbis would say such a thing. So I'm pleased to note the condemnations of the Rabbis' racist rants and the defense of Israel as a democracy that have been coming from all directions (even from a few prominent Haredi Rabbis, though they seem to be saying that the anti-Gentile edicts should not stand because they prove to be bad for the Jews -- don't ask.) Add to this the schadenfreude of watching black hats in Bnei Brak, who have recreated Brooklyn without any of "Them" around, discover, to their horror, that the schvartzes are moving in and the good guys seem to be winning this one. Well, almost.

In Bat Yam, a Rosh Yeshiva-led demonstration protested the influx of Arabs into the town. The Rabbi and his warped minions were particularly upset by what they claim is the proclivity of Arab men to seduce Jewish women. Ah, miscegenation libel, haven't heard that one in many a decade. The anti-Arab demonstrators were met by a larger, counter demonstration of local residents who support maintaining good relations among neighbors, whatever their backgrounds. This was followed quickly by a strong statement from Bat Yam's Mayor saying that the Rabbi's group does not represent or speak for Bat Yam.

It's good to be reminded that there are plenty of people, Jews and Gentiles, in Israel who know the difference between right and wrong and are willing to say so publicly. I'm just not so sure that one sign held up by the Bat Yam counter demonstrators was entirely consistent with the intent of the pro-human rights crowd. The sign read: "If your sister is as ugly as you are, who would want to hit on her?" So near and yet so far.
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"my next car is going to be an electric car"

Or so reads the bumper sticker from "Better Place" the exhibition center for Shai Agassi's grand scheme to bring all-electric cars onto the world market, starting, over the next few years with Israel and Denmark (plus taxi fleets in Tokyo and San Francisco). But what's striking about Agassi's business model is not the purchase of the car itself (think mid-sized sedan run on a battery instead of gasoline) but your ongoing relationship with the company. Better Place plugs you into a network that provides you with services to recharge or change your battery, maintain or repair your vehicle and all the digital entertainment, information and communication you'd expect in the car of tomorrow.

How? Through the smart card that starts your car's systems and let's you plug in to the recharging or battery changing stations. The car's computer and GPS keep you in constant contact with the Better Place network and can, for example, guide you to the nearest charging or battery changing station with the shortest line. Unlike existing car companies who sell you a car and then leave you on your own to get gasoline or digital communication services, Better Place sells you a car with an all-inclusive monthly service plan. Your bank account gets debited monthly. In other words, your relationship with your vehicle will be pretty much the same as with your cell phone.

Agassi figures, and I think he's right, that Israelis will love this. The market consists of several million tech savvy, upwardly mobile people who are perpetually plugged into their digital devices, pay over $6 a gallon for gasoline and would love to breath cleaner air while simultaneously f*****g the Arabs. Agassi's pitch is clear and to the point: Want to live better and stop funding terrorists? Get yourself an electric car. And, just in case you slept through the slick multi-media presentation, the symbolism of building the exhibition hall and test track on the ruins of the Pi Glilot complex, just north of Tel Aviv, is not lost on any of the locals. Pi Glilot? Oh yeah, that's where all the oil and chemical tanks used to be.

The New York World's Fair of 1964-65 featured such futuristic wonders as fiber optic cable from DuPont and video phones from AT&T. It took a few decades but that future really has arrived. What neither the World's Fair nor Better Place mentioned is what happens if the system crashes. I got a personal lesson in how the digital age can also taketh away when we first arrived for this winter's sojourn in Israel. On the day we arrived in Israel, our cell phones would not work. Cellcom, the largest cellular communications company in Israel, suffered a total network crash for reasons that have yet to be made public (probably to spare them the embarrassment of admitting to having been hacked by a couple of 16-year-olds who got tired of playing beer pong).

But, on the giveth side, Liz and I have installed webcams on our laptops and use both Skype and Gmail video chat to see and speak with the children. Shades of the World's Fair. It being Chanukah, I moved my computer to put the candles between the webcam and the parents, enabling us to light candles and sing songs with children in Chicago and in Hoboken, NJ. We could see the smiles on everyone's faces. Just like the families in the GE House of Tomorrow. Read more!

In Memory of Captain Beefheart

Don Van Vliet, known as Captain Beefheart, has passed away. Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band played music that ran the gamut from brilliantly innovative to almost unlistenable, usually on the same side of the same album. In a day when jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman and John Coltrance were breaking free of old conventions like keys, chord changes and time signatures, Captain Beefheart was succeeding in such efforts but with a rock band.

Beefheart's group was, as I recall, the first band to be produced by Frank Zappa on his Pumpkin Records label. Zappa was pushing the envelope of music and liberating himself and other musicians with "no commercial potential" from the tyranny of the music companies. Back in the days before digital recording and the internet this was a lot easier said than done.

I am privileged to have seen Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band play at the Warehouse in Ithaca, New York, in the winter of 1971. To borrow from a later day, they rocked and we were not worthy. The opening act was a guy named Ry Cooder, playing electric slide blues and swing jazz, awesome musicians in awesome times.

Don Van Vliet, may his memory be for a blessing and may his art live on forever. Read more!