Monthly Archives:

September 2020

Live Music in the Age of the Pandemic

March 17 was my last day in the office for months, and St. Patrick’s Day also featured my first concert of the pandemic era. The Dropkick Murphys played a full show without an audience. Playing air banjo along to “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” in my kitchen, I felt like everything was going to be OK—even for just a moment—and that was a powerful feeling. But in the months that followed, getting a full band together in one location was infeasible. In April…

Continue Reading

The Enduring Impact of My Two 2017 High Holidays Articles

The two Jewish punk articles I wrote for the High Holidays in 2017 keep getting inscribed in the Book of Life! The wire service JTA published “Punk Bands Prove Shofar Isn’t Just for the High Holidays,” which ran in numerous newspapers in the US, Canada, and Israel. On Monday, The Wisdom Daily cited the examples in my article to show that “the shofar can be heard in rock ‘n’ roll recordings, and these may have virtually nothing to do with the Jewish…

Continue Reading