The Forward, HEEB, and Jewish Music
Word from: Mordy
The Forward has started a new section in their newspaper. The section is a lighter attempt at a Jewish Page Six. Celebrity gossip, snarky remarks, etc. Of course, guess who immediately felt their territory was being threatened? If you guessed HEEB, the purveyors of all that is lowbrow Jewish culture, you'd be correct. In a Jewschool exclusive, David Kelsey calls the new section desperate, unsettling and upsetting.
Let me move on. Monday, September 19th, HEEB and the NYJMHF are putting on the First Annual Jewish Music Awards. Tickets are $30. Much cheaper than Grammy seats. And what do you get for your money?
Worse are the candidates. Obviously struggling to find bands that fit the categories, HEEB truly stretches it, showing a lack of knowledge of Jewish music as wide as their judgment for other Jewish periodicals. (That would be very little, for all you keeping tabs at home.) Best Jewish Punk includes nominations like Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies and New Found Glory. So basically, a punk cover band and a band whose only Jewish affiliation are their bris milahs. Why exactly does HEEB think NFG deserve to be nominated for this award? Since when is "My Friends Over You" a Jewish song? Instead of nominating Yidcore, or Kletka Red, two actual real live Jewish Punk bands, they pick two inane choices. Unfortunately, this trend of calling an artist who happens to be Jewish, a Jewish artist continues throughout the awards. Joey Ramone is getting a HEEB Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award. And Peaches is nominated for Best New Approach (another category that leaves me speechless. Since when is having sexual relations with your father a Jewish theme? Oh. Since Noah, huh?)
So yeah. I'll admit this post has a bias. I write for the Forward and feel very protective of it. But next time you want to bash a newspaper and call their new section desperate, look into your own awards ceremony and see how far you're willing to stretch a poor concept.
11 Comments:
At 11:22 AM, David said…
I think Heeb should wait for five, ten more years (if they make it that far) before they start giving out 'Lifetime Achievement' awards...
At 3:46 PM, David Kelsey said…
Mordy,
Joey Ramone protested Reagan visting a cemetary that included Nazis with the Ramones' classic, "Bonzo goes to Bitburg". so there was, at least with this song, which was given airplay on alternative rock stations at the time, specifically Jewish inspired content. He therefore was not just an artist that happened to be Jewish.
And while I criticized a specific new section, I hardly "bashed" the Forward generally. Quite the opposite in fact, if you read my post in its entirety, which includes the declaration that the Forward is "the only great independent U.S. based Jewish newspaper."
You are being rediculous.
At 5:11 PM, Jake said…
Wow and here's David Kelsey. Welcome! I wish Robert Pinsky showed up to comment on the post I wrote about his book the other week, too.
I think, both sides made valid points. Forward (which I too love) is trying to attract the new crowd by doing the pop-culture shmaltz and it's a little weird. it's like Yiddish circle offering yoga classes, y'know? Doesn't flow. Which is good! because I'm not a huge fan of the pop-culture overdose that goes down in Heeb. But then, they don't aim at diggin into metaphysical intricacies of their identity. They don't aim at being intellectuals. Or discovering the new obscure voices of the likes of Kletka Red. They instead focus on Joey Ramone (god bless him). I personally stopped reading Heeb after the second issue. But that doesn't mean they're not good at what they do - that's why I asked dearest Lilit to write for our blog...
sidepoint: Mordy, if u got offered a job at Heeb, wouldn't you deflect and changed your opinion on the matter, like, immidiately?
At 12:54 AM, Mordy said…
Sigh. It's a shame I need to make this comment. I generally try to refrain from explaining my posts in comments, but I think here it is needed.
David Kelsey and Steven I. Weiss have apparently gotten into some kind of fight over the HEEB article on Jewschool. I'd just like to remove myself from any arguement. While I disagreed with Kelsey's point-of-view, I really just wanted an excuse to trash HEEB's Jewish Music Awards. (irony) I'm a snarky chassidich hipster that way (/irony).
All I'm saying is that I have no grudge with Kelsey, and I hope he did not take my criticisms personally. (His post seems to show that indeed, he did not.)
But for the sake of stirring the pot... I'm not ridiculous, you are! And so is... uh... New Found Glory. All you teeny-bopper SoCal-derivative loving pop-punk listeners! Ha!
At 2:16 AM, David Kelsey said…
Mordy,
I can't help liking a man who comes clean about his nefarious motivations.
Best of luck,
DK
At 11:16 AM, Anonymous said…
Hey. Found this weblog via www.jewschool, and the entry entitled "Forwards, Backwards and Sideways, Posted by Mobius | יום שישי, יולי 29, 2005
http://www.jewschool.com/2005/07/forwards-backwards-and-sideways.php
>> Arieh
At 6:56 PM, jewish said…
I don't believe HEEB was source of either the categories or the nominees.
Even they are not that clever.
At 10:39 PM, heebnvegan said…
I know it's months later, but I really appreciated this post when I first read it. It inspired me not to mention New Found Glory a single time in my article about Jewish punk:
http://newvoices.org/cgi-bin/articlepage.cgi?id=479
Nothing against them, but as you said: Since when is "My Friends Over You" a Jewish song?
:-)
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