The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk

by Steven Lee Beeber

Based in part on recent interviews with more than 125 people—among them Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein (Blondie), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Hilly Kristal (CBGBs owner), and John Zorn—this book focuses on punk’s beginnings in New York City to show that punk was the most Jewish of rock movements, in both makeup and attitude. As it originated in Manhattan’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, “the patron saint of punk,” 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 punks—including Richard Hell and Joey Ramone—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 themselves—and popular music.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, Jewish, Punk, Judaism, Pop Culture

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2006

Reviews

[Lawrence A · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I saw the title of this book, I nearly plotzed. I became a punk/new wave fan in 1976-1977, during my freshman year at Brandeis, when my classmate Neil Kaplan (younger brother of Ira Kaplan, the soon-to-be-frontman of Yo La Tengo), played me the compilation record "Live From CBGB's" and Television's "Marquee Moon," the latter of which quickly became one of my 2 or 3 favorite records of all time (see, e.g., my profile picture on Goodreads, in which I'm wearing the cover art of that album on my t-shirt). I was hooked. While I was then, and still am, a big fan of classic rock, psychedelic rock, and jam bands, the immediacy, humor, and outrageousness of the punk ethos appealed to my sense of the absurd and my dislike of sacred cows. In addition, although I've always loved playing the parlor game "Jewish or not Jewish," and I had known for quite some time that several leading lights in the punk movement had Jewish backgrounds (Joey and Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein, Richard Hell), I hadn't thought to connect the issues of Jewish outsiderness, musicality, and the propensity for questioning and arguing about everything, with the sudden flowering of punk as a uniquely Jewish aesthetic. Beeber has done that brilliantly here, tracing the punk attitude back to my "landsman," the great comedian and social critic Lenny Bruce (we both grew up in the same suburban town---North Bellmore, on the south shore of Long Island's Nassau County) and rock icon and Velvet Underground founder, Lou Reed (who grew up in Freeport, only 2 stops away on the Long Island Rail Road), as well as the great Jewish Brill Building pop song craftsmen and women who sometimes informed the interests and influences of their wilder musical progeny. The writing is excellent, both analytically and descriptively, with lots of Jewish humor and more than a little poetry. Beeber not only has meticulously delved into source material and obtained excellent interviews with many of the movers and shakers of the punk era, he also gives a cogent aesthetic, social, and political explanation for the Jewish influence over, if not the conscious creation of, punk and DIY music. Moreover, Beeber has good explanations for the seeming incongruity of Nazi and fascist imagery in much of punk music, both American and British, despite punk's reputation as an inclusive, outsider artform. As he explains it, it was a semi-conscious, or sometimes blatantly self-conscious, attempt by the sons and daughters of the Holocaust generation to defeat fear with irony and humor, as if to say "the f***ing Nazis lost and we won" or "we're not little puking Yeshivah-buchers, we're badass" (see e.g., the great Jewish proto-punk band The Dictators or mostly Jewish hardrockers Blue Oyster Cult).

This book was a delight to read, and truly reveals the spirit of the mid-to-late 70s and early 80s, as well as where the various artistic and musical branches led thereafter. Highly recommended!

[catechism · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this at the same time I read Please Kill Me, and that’s actually something I think everyone should do. Or, if you are not someone who reads multiple books at once, you should read these close together. They complement one another extremely well. That one’s the oral history, the dirt and the gossip and who’s fucking whom in which bathroom while on what drugs; this one is the background, the influences, the history and the culture that made that other book possible. (While you're at it, read Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book around the time you read this, for a look at the Jewishness of an earlier NYC subculture that has a lot in common with punk.)

Beeber’s thesis, stated in the intro, is:

Punk is Jewish. Not Judaic. Jewish, the reflection of a culture that’s three millennia old now. It reeks of humor and irony and preoccupations with Nazism. It’s all about outsiders who are “one of us” in the shtetl of New York. It’s about nervous energy, the same nervous energy that has characterized jews from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through the Hasids to the plays of David Mamet. Punks, like Jews, self-consciously identify with the sick and twisted, what Hitler referred to as “the decadent.” Punk’s home is the home of the Jews — New York, especially downtown Lower East Side/East Village New York, the birthplace of this new music known for its populist vibe, its revolutionary attitudes, its promotion of do-it-yourself like some sort of anarchist mantra.

It’s not just that so many in the music, as well as so many in the audience, happen to be Jewish, among them Lou Reed, Joey and Tommy Ramone, the Dictators, Richard Hell, Malcolm McLaren, Lenny Kaye, Genya Ravan, Chris Stein, Jonathan Richman, and Helen Wheels. Punk reflects the whole Jewish history of oppression and uncertainty, flight and wandering, belonging and not belonging, always being divided, being both in and out, good and bad, part and apart. The shpilkes, the nervous energy, of punk is Jewish. That shpilkes, the “Heebie Jeebies” of Little Richard’s song, captures exactly what was happening in the Bowery as that first generation to come of age after the Holocaust made its mark on poplar music at a little Jewish-owned and -run club called CBGB.

Of course, people can — and do — go back and forth ad infinitum about where punk rock started: New York or London, New York or London. I don’t really care; that part of it isn’t particularly interesting to me, and it’s not like there’s ever going to be a definitive answer. But let’s just pretend that we’ve decided that the answer is New York, that American acts like the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the MC5 were the progenitors of punk, that the Clash and the Pistols came from us and not the other way around.

Given that, I find Beeber’s Punk-Is-Jewish argument completely persuasive. I mean, it’s not like he’s talking about a handful of people no one’s heard of; it’s a lot of big names, both in and out of the spotlight, and although Beeber focuses on the Jews, he doesn’t do so the exclusion of everyone else. You don’t come away thinking the early NYC punk scene was only Jews, which can be a risk with a book like this one. So you’ve got this book about the history of a movement, about many of the people who were pivotal to that movement, and about what they had in common. And it was quite a lot.

I really learned a lot from this book. I wasn’t surprised that there were Jewish punks, but I hadn’t realized (or even thought about) how many Jews were involved in the early days, or how pivotal they were, or what the stories were behind many of the stories. As far as I can tell, not many people did — the book has a lot of anecdotes about the author tracking people down who didn’t much want to talk to him, who would neither confirm nor deny their Jewishness, who had no idea there were so many others like them.

It’s a fairly academic text (my copy has a giant USED sticker on the back of the type you find on books at college bookstores), and there are a few places Beeber was trying too hard to be a ~writer~. At the beginning of one chapter, he takes several pages to try to enticingly set a scene, lovingly describing who’s on stage at CB’s, how the scene is doing, what Seymour Stein is up to, on and on and on, and meanwhile there is this dude on stage with his back to the audience. And it’s like, for fuck’s sake, WHO IS IT. JUST TELL ME. Months later, and I get frustrated thinking about it.

Still, despite the occasional misstep, I found the writing to be smooth and entertaining; it definitely wasn’t one of those books where I read three pages and then had to read comics for a week until my brain recovered. I mostly appreciated that it offered a different perspective on punk history. As you may have gathered, I’ve read a lot of books about punk rock, and it’s totally awesome whenever one brings something new to the table: a new perspective, a new way of telling the same stories, anything. Beeber does a good job of slotting the punks into the better-known pantheon of smartass Jewish entertainers — he starts with Lenny Bruce — and branching out into John Zorn’s dissonant art and then back around to the Beastie Boys, who, if you will recall, started as a shitty hardcore band. But these days, I don’t know, they’re just three emcees and they’re on the go; Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego.

Verdict: Essential reading for music nerds.

[review originally posted here. I'm moving those reviews to GR at a rate of one per day, if any regular GR friends are wondering why you're suddenly getting updates with really long reviews of books I read years ago.]

[Jon Y. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Starts out making a somewhat interesting argument about the influence of Jewish culture on Punk before devolving into all sorts of speculation and some fairly insulting, preposterous notions (Nazi-obsessed Ramones Johnny and Dee Dee are de facto Jews because they grew up in as minorities in a largely Jewish enclave...according to Beeber, being alienated or marginalized in any way is synonymous with being Jewish?). The turning point comes when Richard Hell (ne Myers) objects to being included (he was raised in Kentucky by his mother and secular Jewish father, who passed away when he was eight), feeling no affinity with Jewish culture, and Beeber still goes out of his way to analyze the ways that being Jewish has supposedly shaped Hell's outlook and music. On top of that, so much was left out- he mentions Rick Rubin and The Beastie Boys and their contribution to rap, but somehow neglects how both got their start in punk (and with all the talk of nazi imagery in "Jewish punk"- Reagan Youth? Hullo?)(hardcore is glossed over entirely, mentioned only in relation to the anti-semitism present in some elements of that scene). Some interesting stories abound, no doubt, but so much is rushed through, and the majority of the book is grasping for straws. Some day someone might very well expand on this concept and make some really excellent points, but overall, it's a slight read with a flawed premise and some rather glaring omissions.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century housed a large population of Jewish immigrants, most of them living in tenements. By the 1970s, the Lower East Side, due to low rents and high crime, became a haven for artists and musicians. The streets there were rough and the music that grew out of that atmosphere came to be known as punk rock. The center of this scene was a biker bar named CBGB, owned by a Jewish man named Hilly Kristal. Few historians or journalists have drawn a direct connection between the old Jewish slums and the first wave of punk so Steven Lee Beeber does just that in The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk.

From the beginning, Beeber, a Jewish writer himself, defines what he considers to be the essence of Jewishness and then proceeds to demonstrate how this cultural trait had a direct influence on the rise of punk and the form it took. He starts by naming comedian Lenny Bruce as the patron saint of Jewish punk. Bruce embodies this essence which Beeber describes as being coarse in mannerism, ironic, transgressive, socially progressive, culturally hybrid, and humorous with an eye towards sharp social observation and critique. Lenny Bruce was all about pushing the boundaries of convention in order to hold a mirror up to society regardless of how uncomfortable that could be. This got him into a lot of trouble. According to Beeber, this attitudinal stance is characteristic of Jewish Americans and he proceeds to examine the ways in which this essence manifested in the punk scene of the 1970s.

Before getting to the musicians, the author covers the influence of Jews behind the scenes in the likes of rock journalists, business owners, band managers, song writers, and record producers. Managing culture from the wings and in the background is another characteristic that Beeber brings up as a trait of American Jewishness. It is the kind of thing that idiot conspiracy theorists will cite as evidence that sinister Jews run the world and the author does not examine this at all. It is safe to say that the Jewish author of this book isn’t suggesting anything of the sort though.

The chapter on Lou Reed, lead member of the massively influential Velvet Underground, establishes another aspect of Jewish-American identity, that of the outsider, a trait that fueled the energies of punk in a potent way. Lou Reed himself was a chronic outsider, being unable to relate to his Jewish family as well as the larger American society. His struggles with being bisexual made his outsider status that much more prominent and painful too since his parents made him get shock therapy to cure him of his possible homosexual tendencies which were considered a mental illness in the 1960s. Reed was young at the time and actually not entirely sure if he really was gay, making it all that much worse. While in The Velvet Underground, he felt he had found some acceptance as a member of Andy Warhol’s Factory scene, but the other people there belittled him for being Jewish. It’s no surprise that Lou Reed earned a reputation for being prickly and stand-offish in the 1970s. And here a sub-theme to this book gets introduced since anti-Semistism and Jewishness ran along parallel lines as punk developed into a full-blown genre of rock.

Other early chapters bring the Jewish traits of punk out into the open as Beeber writes about synth-punk pioneers Suicide with their intimidating and confrontational musical stance, Boston’s Jonathan Richman who also brought a heavy element of anxiety into his outsider brand of rock, and Lenny Kaye who worked as a journalist and guitar player for Patti Smith. But the theme of the book really comes out in its full strength in the chapters on The Dictators and The Ramones.

The almost all-Jewish Dictators, fronted by Handsome Dick Manitoba, began as a joke band. The lyrics on their first album were full of self-effacing humor and macho posturing that was calculated to both celebrate and overcome the stereotype of Jewish men being nerdy intellectuals by embracing lowbrow culture and hyper-aggressive street gang toughness. They wanted to prove they were more like Meyer Lansky and less like Woody Allen without letting anyone forget that underneath it all, they were a bunch of Jewish comedians anyhow. Outside of the punk scene in New York though, no one seemed to get the joke.

The Ramones did something similar. Drummer Tommy Ramone, the son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants, formed a band with Johnny and Joey Ramone. The latter was the older brother of Johnny’s high school friend. Joey was Jewish himself, overly tall and skinny due to a congenital bone disease that made him both awkward and intimidating. He also suffered from mental illness, making him the ultimate example of punk in the Jewish sense as Beeber describes it. But there was a strange contradiction at the heart of The Ramones; while Tommy and Joey were both Jewish, Johnny and Dee Dee were political conservatives who collected Nazi memorabilia. The connection between punk’s Jewishness and its parallel tendency towards anti-Semitism and Nazi fetishism is taken up in a later chapter. Beeber comes up with some plausible, if underdeveloped, explanations for why Jewish punks and Nazi fetishists could ironically exist in the same space while holding the punk scene together. He sees The Ramones as emblematic of this condition even though he never examines it from the other side, making no commentary on why the punks who wore swastikas saw no problem in socializing in a music scene with such a heavy Jewish presence.

After that, this book begins to fall apart. The chapter on Richard Hell is weak. After Beeber contacted Hell and asked him for his input, Hell told him that even though he had a Jewish father, he didn’t identify as Jewish since he was raised in a secular family without any emphasis on his ethnic background. Beeber can’t accept this as he sets out to prove that there is some kind of Jewishness present in Hell’s music. It feels like Beeber wrote the whole chapter to berate Hell for not honoring his ancestry. Hell himself doesn’t deny being Jewish or even feeling ashamed of it; he just isn’t interested in it and can’t relate to it. Beeber can’t just let him be what he is and delves into Hell’s artistic archive in search of something Jewish to prove that Hell really does have a Jewish essence. At this point, Beeber’s concept of Jewishness becomes arbitrary and petty.

The chapters on Chris Stein of Blondie and Jewish women in punk are even worse. Chris Stein is an interesting case because he is Jewish but also collects Nazi memorabilia. Beeber mentions this briefly but spends most of the chapter writing about his wife Debbie Harry who he insists on calling a shiksa. Without any in-depth explanation as to why Stein’s marriage to a non-Jewish woman is of any importance to this narrative, the chapter doesn’t amount to much.

The chapter on women is spotty too. He writes about Genya Ravan whose band wasn’t connected to the punk scene. Her only real contribution to punk involved her producing the first Dead Boys album. When they showed up to the studio wearing swastikas, Ravan, a survivor of the Holocaust, lectured them about how offensive that was and those nasty boys obediently took them off before they started recording their album Young Loud and Snotty. He also writes about Helen Wheels who was a minor player in the CBGB scene. Then Beeber brings Madonna into the discussion even though she was neither punk nor Jewish, but he applauds her because she did become fascinated with the kabbalah in her later years. Then the Riot Grrl movement gets a few paragraphs , even though none of those musicians were Jewish. He says they were honorary Jews because of their punk attitude though. And this is a problem I have with political correctness. The author feels he is obligated to include a chapter on women just because that is expected of authors these days, but Jewish women didn’t play a prominent role in the early days of punk so we get a sloppy chapter that doesn’t mean much of anything as a result. It would have been better, and more honest, to just accept that early punk women weren’t Jews and leave the useless chapter out.

Then there is a passage about punk in England. The Jewish band manager Malcolm McLaren and influential fashion designer Vivienne Westwood get good write ups. Sid Vicious’s Jewish girlfriends Nancy Spungeon also gets her story told right up until the murder.

So is The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s a glass that is half empty or half full? I’d prefer to say it is both at the same time. Half of the chapters are well-written and half aren’t. I think Steven Lee Beeber made a mistake in his approach by trying to state a thesis and then following up by defending it. The result is an attempt to twist information to make it suit his argument which doesn’t always work. Things get pretty messy when he writes about Jewish punks that don’t quite fit into his theory. Also he doesn’t comprehend that non-Jews and members of other ethnic groups might share the same qualities of Jewishness that he outlines. I can accept that Jewish attitudes had a lot to do with the directions that punk went in, especially in regards to the outsider status, sense of humor, and social commentary. Beeber obviously wrote this out of a sense of pride in his heritage and he is entitled to that, but the result is some valuable insights alongside a lot of dreck. More importantly, it provides a new angle on understanding Jewish cultural history as much as it does a new angle on punk, particularly in the greater New York City area. I think the book works better as an homage to the oversize presence of Jews in rock and roll and American counter-cultures though.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been wanting to read this for almost 10 years, and it was only at the end of last year that I finally managed to get hold of a copy. Two copies, to be precise: a book I got via interlibrary loan and a new purchase. Imagine how excited I was.

And what can I say: it was well worth the wait. As expected, I wasn’t too happy with the chapter on English punk and how non-American contributions in general are downplayed or neglected. (I recently stumbled across the Peruvian proto-punk band The Saicos, for instance. Why only now?) But of course, a deeper investigation into that would have been beside the point.

Apart from that, the book is just brilliant. My brand new copy soon got stained with coffee and looks a bit rotten. First I was pissed off because of that, and then I thought: how very fitting.

[Alysia Abbott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steven Beeber has written the music book I've been waiting to read. From Lou Reed (ne Lou Rabinowitz) to Blondie's Chris Stein, Punk Rock's Jewish roots are vitally important but have been too long ignored. Beeber has the music scholarship and the writing chops to create a vital and compelling read. I couldn't put it down! The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's is a must have for every serious music lover.

[NYLon Carry On · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jewish punk! Who knew!? I'd never thought about it, or noticed it before... But, yeah, punk is a Jew thang!

Great interviews.

Very well written. Never boring. And, I LEARNED SO MUCH!!!

[Jennifer Giacalone · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written history of the growth of punk rock and the punk scene, looking specifically at its Jewish lineage from Lou Reed to the Ramones, it’s spiritual roots with Lenny Bruce and how Jewishness shaped the punk attitude. Recommended reading for music history nerds and punk enthusiasts.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main argument found in Steven Lee Beeber’s Heebie Jeebies is hinged on two main points: First, Jewish Americans played a pivotal role in the formation of not only the punk rock movement, but in American and Western music as a whole. Second, that this is an overlooked secret. To the first part I say: duh; and to the second I say… well I guess it’s not such a secret. I was unaware that not only scholars, but people in general were ignorant to the prominence of Jewish Americans in music history and popular culture.
Granted, Beeber effectively highlights some stories of Jewish punk rockers that might get swept under the proverbial rug, but he does so in a way that becomes quickly redundant; to the extent that he seems to stretch issues and points to make connection isn't really there. The strength of the work lies in the analysis surely, but honestly his most thought-provoking arguments seem to be derivative based on his source notes.
To say that I did not like the work as a whole is a fallacy, but it bothered me for several reasons: first the weakness of the thesis, the lack of musical theory to coincide with punk rock as a cultural movement, and finally Beeber manages to make a subject that is not boring, a tedious read. For a more comprehensive look at punk rock, that in my opinion doesn’t gloss over the prominence of Jews in punk, just stick with Please Kill Me (monograph that Beeber sights often). It’s is a larger volume, but leaves the tedium at the door.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is going to sound crazy, but I initially bought this book to do research for a Jewish punk non-player character in the Vampire the Masquerade chronicle I’m a part of, which is set in New York City in the mid 1980’s. Yes, I am that kind of nerd. This book was not only perfect in helping me develop him as a rich, multifaceted character, but it was so much more than I bargained for and I was completely enthralled. I had no idea just how much influence Jewish culture and experiences had on the genesis of punk music, and the ties that bind all the way back to proto-punks like Lou Reed and Lenny Bruce (whom I will admit, I had to google). There are fantastic interviews inside, as well as beautiful untold stories, deep cultural and personal reflections, and hilarious anecdotes. This book had me deep-diving into bands I’d never heard of, testing the limits of Spotify and YouTube offerings, seriously considering the purchase of a record player, picking up on influences that I never would have been privy to before, and even attending the local Jewish cultural festival so that I could learn more and connect with people whom I have lived side by side with but never knew much about. I loved this book, I have told anyone who will listen about it, and I now know who my beloved NPC is, better than I ever could have imagined.

[Esteban Stipnieks · Rating 4 out of 5]

How many times did my neighbor wonder what I was reading when I busted a gut laughing!!! I am the son of a DP and yeah a cousin died during WWII when my aunt was a Nazi forced laborer my dad was conceived to avoid repatriation. Am I the only person who appreciates the whack humor in the book. I remember vaguely the punk movement and even being in New York early 1980s in passing the mystique as a child......my dad grew up in Wilmington Delaware in in 1982 we went through New York to return my grandmother's ashes. I wonder how much of the inside humor I was actually getting perhaps the distance between Texas Hill jack and New Yorker is not as far as I pretend it to be factual insightful ..... and hilarious......in discussing woke Marvel I hit a classmate up with discussion in this book about the Parralells between the Jewish experience in America and superman. The book's humor gets it bite by being SO CLOSE TO THE TRUTH. Looking back this book put together much of my early childhood and described the story behind fragments of sound and images I was aware of in pop culture.

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know that feeling you have when, say, you know someone well, but then you meet their family and they make sense, have a context? I felt like this book did that for the New York (ans a bit of the British) punk scene. It showed how many of these people were already apart from mainstream society before they ever became musicians. Plus, I loved the quotes from these rockstars where they used Yiddish.

[Music Guy · Rating 5 out of 5]

FIVE STARS for this bold and surprising read. Through a combination of original interviews and archival research, Beeber uncovers the hidden-in-plain sight Jewish origins of American punk rock, wittily examining the lives and lyrics of artists such as Lou Reed, the Ramones, and Jonathan Richman (the Modern Lovers). Carefully researched and compulsively readable.

[Mercer Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This star rating is for the content of the book rather than the book itself. I learned a lot by reading and got much deeper insights into this culture. But, my god, is the author smug as get out. It was torturous to read in places because he was so full of himself.

[Ben]

Be you Jew, punk, or neither, a terribly entertaining and muscular read.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

my review at the hipster book club

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was kind of like a punk game of Jew-not-a-Jew. Loved it.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went through a Punk Rock phase a long time ago, never fully realized that it was largely a Jewish movement. Very well written and insightful.

[Antonije Mirović · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so interesting about immigrant jewish influences in foundation of american and newyorker new wave and punk rock movement.

[Keith Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read, some history to learn here for those unaware of a lot of it.

[Techrtr · Rating 1 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is the title - it's quite witty. Trying to convince readers that if it wasn't for Judaism, Lenny Bruce or Hitler, there wouldn't have been punk rock, or that if he hadn't been Jewish, Joey Ramone wouldn't have become the Godfather of punk is a real stretch. In fact, most of the book reads like a compendium of castoff lines from Seinfeld or Shecky Greene - "it's our musicality and punkishness that has sustained us as a people for 2000 years. . . " The Yiddish expressions throughout the book get really annoying after a while too. You almost need a Yiddish - English dictionary to figure out what Beeber is saying sometimes – in places it reads a bit like an inside joke that non-Jews are not privy to.

Anyhow, be sure to read a preview of this book before you buy it - I found it quite boring and difficult to wade through all of the specious attempts to demonstrate that punk rock would not have happened were it not for "punkish" Jewish kids or agitators like Malcolm McLaren. For a much more interesting read about the New York punk scene, read Micky Leigh's "I Slept with Joey Ramone."

[Sandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fantastic title and an interesting premise. Sadly, there just wasn't enough to back up the author's thesis. It was too contrived (you can't make someone an "honorary Jew" just to fit your opinion). Though, I did enjoy the yiddish throughout the book.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title kicks ass over the content. Hilly was the most interesting chapter in the book.

[Rishon Blumberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting!

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun and fascinating! Unique look at the origins of punk. Impressive access and research and a really interesting take on the Jewish and post-Holocaust influence on a very New York/American form of music. Highly recommended!

[Gerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

If this seems like it would be up your alley, you'll love. Similar to the classic "Please Kill Me" and well research.

[micaela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll start by saying I loved reading this. It taught me a ton I didn't know about Jews in punk (obviously) as well as punk in general, a genre I like and have listened to a fair amount of but is a subject in which I'm not really educated at all. (For example, I was sure that the Sex Pistols formed before the Ramones, but that was wrong.) More than just knowledge though, it also gave me a fresh appreciation for the genre.

At some point in my life I knew Joey Ramone was Jewish, since I recently re-found a post on my blog that says I knew it, but I'd forgotten - as I'd forgotten the line "it's not kosher" in "Rock the Casbah" - so there was an element of rediscovering in this book, but most of the book was new. As a way of learning about punk history, this was definitely an interesting angle. And it's fun! It's not particularly propulsive, but being able to point to moments in the text and go "oh I know that song" or make a playlist of the songs that got mentioned is just a good time.

All that said, the only thing I have written in my notes (where I keep things I want to make sure I mention) is, "some things are a stretch." And they most definitely are.

Being a permanent diaspora is tough. Our culture(s) has/have disappeared or been decimated by genocide or by time. My theory is that the phenomenon of people trying to ascribe Jewishness to things that have nothing to do with it (Beeber is far from the first to do this!) is a kind of desperate search for a distinct new culture, in the absence of our own. Beeber does this, however, in spades.

I certainly think that as an ethos, the punk attitude of living outside a mainstream or on the periphery, rejecting authority, etc. certainly has an element of Jewishness about it, but saying any more than that requires a really good case to back it up, which I don't think Beeber accomplished. He puts the label of Jewish-ish onto bands and individuals who have no relationship with Judaism besides people they associate with or, somehow, the Nazi symbols they wear (I really don't think I have enough words to get into this bit), and he tries to make a case that not only does punk as a culture have a touch of Jewishness, potentially because of New York in general, but that it's somehow intrinsically Jewish. (He makes some bold comparisons with jazz, which I bristled at; jazz is a much more intrinsically Black art form and it's not an equivalent at all.)

I thought he also missed an opportunity when talking about Richard Hell, who rejected Judaism and objected to being involved in the book. Beeber insists he is Jewish in religion and personality anyway, forcing something on him that he has not only grown apart from but wholly rejected. I think there was a chance here to talk about how punk essentially became a new belief system, rather than just making the unoriginal point that Jewish people who no longer identify as Jews are, well, somehow still Jews against their will. (This is obviously a complicated and thorny issue; I'm not really taking a side, just pointing out that if Beeber was already slapping Judaism onto a lot of things somewhat willy-nilly this was a chance to actually explore the part of punk that not only wasn't Jewish but rejected Jewishness.)

I have two other gripes, but I will keep them short:

Considering it is a book about Jewish punk, the Nazi participation in punk was so glossed over. Not only did Beeber seem reluctant to admit that nothing about Johnny Ramone should be considered Jewish (since he was a raging antisemite!), but the fact - THE FACT - that Nazi skinheads were an unfortunate part of punk in the 80s (see, I know some things) was essentially ignored in favor of a fantasy that punk is an idyllic scene with no Nazis. Not true, and unfortunately, any account of Jewish history that ignores significant antisemitism will always be an incomplete one.

And finally, Beeber seems really, really reluctant to admit that a lot of the development of punk rock happened in England. In a book like this it's understandable to treat New York as the birthplace and breeding ground of punk, but the fact is that even if it wasn't born there, punk owes as much to British punk as New York punk. (This, in my opinion, is a product of insisting that every item in the book not only be related to the Jewish punks or Jewishness but be literally Jewish itself, which forces a narrow view.)

But anyway. All of this griping, and I still really liked it. How can I write a review more punk or more Jewish than that?

[Jime · Rating 3 out of 5]

The musician cast is the same as in McNeil and McCain's "Please Kill Me" but instead of entertaining the reader with stories of punks and pre-punks shooting up on the stairs, getting the clap, cross dressing, and stabbing Nancy Spungen, this book argues that the Jewish background of the subjects is responsible for Punk as a significant aesthetic and cultural movement. Given the stories recounted in "Please Kill Me" it seems like a stretch to say that Jewish influence is somehow to be blamed for the appalling culture destruction that was Punk as practiced by the Jews of the NY scene. I'll leave that to people channeling Goebbels - and to the many skinheads whose scene was mostly ignored by the author, despite their having almost as much Nazi paraphernalia as the Jews profiled in this book.

There is almost no support for the book's thesis obtained by examining the punk scenes of other cities. It is unfortunate that the experience of Jewish Punks outside NY is barely discussed. And doubtless the Jews in the NY scene were indirectly traumatized by the Nazi death camps, watching Vietnam lost to communism on TV, Reaganomics, and seeing their parents labor in dull careers to provide material security to ungrateful offspring. But this was not only the experience of Jews or New Yorkers. Even if one doesn't have relatives who were gassed, thinking about the Holocaust is traumatizing. Ditto for Vietnam and the many wars before and after. And insufficient appreciation of elders' sacrifices was part of the general youth culture of the time (although the book does argue that this culture was itself a Jewish creation and phenomenon, since so many Jewish youths were leaders of it, scoring a point for Goebbels.) It's not clear that the reaction of Jewish youth to these influences is very different from that of other youth, except for the inside jokes Jews occasionally smuggled into songs. So there's little case that Punk is an especially Jewish expression, though as the book shows there certainly were a lot of Jews making the music and working in the business side of it.

Despite these shortcomings, I don't regret having read this book. The chapters about Hilly Kristal and Jonathan Richman were close to uplifting. They were welcome relief from the degradation, wasted talent, narcissism, exploitation, destruction of self and others, destruction of almost all positive values and the positive culture that might have been, that shocked lobes into senselessness in three chord blasts.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

i really tried to like this book, especially since the subject matter is very near and dear to my heart! but frankly i was very disappointed, most of the material seems like a rehashing of what i had read in Please Kill Me except this author is trying to convince you of his theory that Judaism played a key role in the creation of punk. of course i want to buy into this theory with every ounce of my heart, but the poor writing, repetitiveness of each chapter and some sort of naivete that comes from the author's experience with the punk world really left me with a sour taste in my mouth. the fact that he did not mention my band probably pisses me off too! haha. maybe in the revised edition he will throw in a sentence or two about us...lol!

*update* after writing this review, i got a fairly nasty response from the author and never bothered to offer a rebuttal. i even noticed that he rated his own book five stars, hey whatever sells copies right? seriously this book is not that bad, you can literally read it on the toilet or in an afternoon quickly, so if the topic interests you go for it. just remember to take it with a grain of salt because the author is by no means an "expert" on the subject matter.

[Lori · Rating 1 out of 5]

I do believe this is the worst, most heinous book I’ve ever forced myself to suffer through. I guess maybe I might add more here, but for now just read the comments I left as I read along this misery from hell. I know the reasons this…this…man, it was this guy’s freaking thesis embellished! I know the reason(s) it was published; I’ve been an editor for a long time. I do have some things to say, but not right now.

Just do yourself a favor: HARD PASS. Hear me?? HARD. PASS. It’s been out long enough, this won’t hurt sales. Actually, I wonder what the sales figures were back when.😂😂😂

Just read Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian Whatshername (no, I’m not looking her last name up right now, it’s after midnight and I’m too tired. Besides, everyone knows Legs.). (Yes, there are two periods there for a reason.)

I recommend this pile of dreck to absolutely NO ONE.

~Lori😎