My Chanukah Playlist
While I'm no big fan of Christmas music (as evidenced by my article on the topic last week), I have no illusions about the quality of Chanukah music. Nobody but five-year-olds and over-enthusiastic mothers like "The Dreidel Song" and the novelty of Adam Sandler's name-dropping "Chanukah Song" wore itself out a decade ago. So, because there really aren't any good, well-known songs about Chanukah, I've decided to put together my own playlist of great songs by Jewish musicians instead. Here's how the Chosen People rock.
Any music-savvy Jew is proud to have one of our own at the forefront of punk rock. Joey Ramone of the seminal punk outfit The Ramones was born Jeffrey Ross Hyman and grew up in Queens, New York with a raw song in his heart that was so hot you could cook latkes on it. Of all the songs in the band's exhilarating catalog, I've always been partial to "Sheena is a Punk Rocker". Joey wrote the song for the band's 1977 debut LP Rocket To Russia and it's since been hailed as one of the most quintessentially punk tracks in history.
A few years later, three more punky Jewish boys from New York decided to represent the semitic set in the fresh world of hip hop in the form of The Beastie Boys. Whenever I want to demonstrate just what make the Beasties what they are, I trot out "Hey Ladies" from 1988's awesome Paul's Boutique. Few artists have mastered the art of sampling quite like the Beastie Boys and nobody has done a better job with funny, clever lyrics.
The poet laureate of Jewish musicians is, without a doubt, the great songwriter Leonard Cohen. He gave a welcome irony to folk music, transitioned into a smoky piano player with ease and reinvented himself in the 80's and 90's as a master of a special kind of lounge music. In my arrogant opinion, "I'm Your Man" is what slow-dance tunes are supposed to sound like. It's one of my favorites from Cohen's extensive canon.
Among Cohen's contemporaries, no great Jewish musician stands out quite like Bob Dylan. His extensive and ever-expanding recordings are disproportionately awesome, but they don't get much better than 1975's Blood on the Tracks, Dylan's whopping 15th studio album. "Shelter from the Storm" embodies the best of Dylan's many talents. It's a moving ballad that captures the sentiments of its time, rhyming excellently and pushing some serious emotions with just enough humor to keep it from being too much of a downer.
Jumping ahead a few decades, one of the finest Jewish artists still recording today is the piano maestro Ben Folds. His solo work has been every bit as good as his work with The Ben Folds Five, and often surpassing it. In this season of mostly Christian cheer it's easy for a lonely Jew to feel a little left out. That's why I'm putting "Jesusland" from Songs For Silverman on this playlist. No song better captures a sense of spiritual isolation than this excellently harmonized track.
As the last days of Chanukah wind down, it's important to remember that there's a lot of great music out there produced by folks who have, at one time or another, lit the candles of the menorah on a cold winter night.
