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anukkah in santa monica comes back into consciousness thanks to a once popular now sort of cancelled humorist named garrison keillor tom lehrer 1997 keillor s radio variety program prairie home companion first aired on saturday nights from 1974 through 1987 he ended it to focus on other projects but was by no means done with radio two years later keillor premiered the american radio company of the air which only really differed from phc in terms of where it aired new york not minneapolis it also needed original material from one humorist to another keillor convinced tom lehrer to come out of semi retirement though apparently the convincing wasn t too difficult keillor s music director rob fisher had worked on tomfoolery the cameron mackintosh produced revue of lehrer songs from the early 1980s that played 120 performances off broadway a stint in dc and extended time in the uk fisher and lehrer remained friends and so the former could easily call on the latter for song possibilities lehrer wrote three songs for american radio company one was a post thanksgiving hymn to the traditional tune we gather together the second set to irving berlin s early ragtime hit everybody step was called everybody eat the final one was hanukkah in santa monica which keillor commissioned to make a point there were at the time no popular chanukah songs because no gentile songwriters had written any and the jewish songwriters like berlin were too busy writing christmas fare as lehrer noted about a decade later there was thus a deplorable lacuna in the repertoire which this song a sort of answer to white christmas was intended to remedy american radio company premiered on november 25 1989 keillor s return merited positive reviews lehrer s songs got a more mixed reception the washington post felt the pair of tom lehrer satires fell flat lehrer gave a short interview with kcrw s bob claster a week after the broadcast in which he was pretty dismissive of his songs they re just parodies and joked they aren t good enough to record but they are good enough for public radio eventually arc changed its name back to prairie home companion and keillor moved the whole operation back to minnesota lehrer s songs still aired but they didn t really have staying power at least not for a few more years then rhino records once the kings of comedy cd reissues decided to release all of lehrer s albums in a single box set it also included some rarities like four songs from the electric company recorded between 1971 and 1972 and three never before recorded songs in a session from 1999 overseen by the man who already knew hanukkah in santa monica fairly well rob fisher fisher had a few years earlier founded encores the new york city center program that revived forgotten broadway shows in concert performances after tomfoolery fisher picked up extensive conducting and music direction gigs including four years with keillor s american radio company fisher led the program s house band the coffee club orchestra so when it came time to record these new lehrer songs with a band rhino brought in fisher who brought in many of his coffee club orchestra personnel they included seymour red press the legendary saxophonist who was a decades long broadway fixture as the go to musician contractor for broadway shows until his death last year at age ninety eight press also contracted the band for the lehrer sessions and played clarinet and flute on the tracks they also included trumpeter john frosk originally from manitoba and an alum of benny goodman and tommy dorsey s bands trombonist jack gale guitarist jay berliner clarinetist lawrence feldman drummer arnold kinsella bassist dick sarpola and violinist and saxophonist andy stein the remains of tom lehrer came out in the summer of 2000 and lehrer gave quite a number of interviews about the box set to the new york times the washington post the av club australia s the music show to other venues that aren t accessible anymore but hanukkah in santa monica didn t get much attention beyond being one of the newer tracks how did it get to the point where it is today a holiday staple arranged for choirs orchestras and more the answer as best as i can tell is because of michael feinstein himself a staple of the manhattan nightclub scene but in 2000 he wasn t quite the fixture he would become though he d recently opened his own club feinstein s hosted at the regency hotel it closed in 2012 reopened at 54 below in 2015 and left last year he did a holiday engagement at his eponymous club and didn t want to limit himself to christmas songs and here was this recently issued song by tom lehrer basically falling into his lap from then on as feinstein told broadway world last year he s sung hanukkah in santa monica every year because i did it one time a few years ago as a lark and now people will always yell it out if i don t sing it the gossip columnist liz smith was a massive fan of feinstein s and of his rendition of the song going so far to reprint the complete lyrics of hanukkah in santa monica in one of her columns when the composer marvin hamlisch died in the summer of 2012 smith revealed that lehrer s song used to throw hamlisch into fits of laughter when some of his friends would start singing it at their annual christmas party one of the party s hosts nora ephron who had died six weeks before hamlisch it s quite a journey from mickey katz to garrison keillor to michael feinstein to marvin hamlisch for one minor holiday novelty song by a lyricist who if made aware would probably be as baffled by the entire trajectory as i am but then tom lehrer born and raised on the upper east side didn t really have much attachment to judaism beyond the cultural saying more than once that he often quoted one line from james taylor s sweet baby james maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep recently i found myself irrationally upset when lehrer was mistakenly referred to with respect to a compilation album of songs by jewish songwriters as the token goy lehrer s musical taste best embodied in this amazing 1980 desert island discs bbc episode does make me wonder what if any influence mickey katz had on his work i suspect since efforts to reach him unsurprisingly went nowhere he may have harbored the same suspicion many more intellectually minded jews of a certain age did that katz was making fun of them for assimilating that he was too crude too overt a reminder of what they professed to leave behind as samuel ashworth wrote in his 2018 essay on katz it s easy to see these songs as presenting to jews of the 50s jews who wanted more than anything to be accepted as white americans a clownish version of themselves that they could pretend they were better than but looking down on katz misses so much about what made his songs work so well craft and musicianship was everything to him you don t write a song like duvid crockett if you don t have an innate understanding of wordplay let alone in two languages yiddish and english and as the clarinetist don byron who once recorded an entire album of katz tunes once said a lot of people thought that mickey katz couldn t play he said but there are things he played i couldn t even finger so that can t be right katz songs don t have the sophisticated lyrical palette of a lehrer song because they don t have to but they accomplish similar things reward multiple listens provoke delight discomfort and sometimes offense and move past cynicism to its true roots disappointed idealism i mean a rhyme like i m spending shavuos in east saint louis feels like a katz riff so maybe he and lehrer were closer lyrical kin after all this essay s already plenty long so let me close with what i believe fuses mickey katz and tom lehrer bringing us more into the present while staying rooted in the past khanike in santa monica mikhl yashinsky annie cohen s yiddish translation published last year wishing you all a happy chanukah a frelekhn likhtikn khanike regular crime oriented programming resumes next week and then again after the new year until next time i remain the crime lady the crime lady is a reader supported publication to receive new posts and support my work consider becoming a free or paid subscriber subscribe 17 1 share 2023 favorites loa noir event and more it s best of list season sarah weinman dec 05 2023 7 share dear tcl readers let me first start with the most immediate item to promote the library of america is hosting a virtual event for its recently published crime novels of the 1960s set tonight yes tonight at 6 pm eastern david lehman will be in conversation with the collection s editor and former loa eic geoffrey o brien myself and gene seymour you can still register here it s that time of year when the best of lists start to accumulate and who am i to fight this for my own best of crime fiction list is now online and will appear in this sunday s print edition of the book review with this evocative illustration by timo lenzen here s how it opens and why the format s a bit different than in prior years when i made this list i kept discovering ways in which these books were in conversation with one another the protagonists of my two favorite mystery series debuts seemed like they could work well together albeit warily several books explored the crimes of serial murderers and gave greater voice to those harmed noir particularly the american variety still endures as a potent lens on contemporary society and whether the tone is dark or light crime fiction as a whole still has the power to move scores of readers the list in alphabetical order danielle arcenaux glory be pegasus crime christopher carlsson blaze me a sun hogarth s a cosby all the sinners bleed flatiron books eli cranor ozark dogs soho crime margot douaihy scorched grace gillian flynn books jordan harper everybody knows mulholland books ragnar jonasson katrin jakobsdottir reykjavik minotaur victoria kielland my men astra house clemence michallon the quiet tenant knopf richard osman the last devil to die pamela dorman books i really think there is something for every possible mystery reader in this list though of course it reflects my own tastes noir unforgettable new series characters crime in translation and those thursday murder club books but in last week s holiday issue i also recommended even more crime novels old and new including a reissue death on the down beat by sebastian farr that i simply could not resist because it combines mystery and classical music are there glaring omissions on my best of list well of course i enjoyed a lot of the books on the washington post s 10 best mysteries and thrillers lists as well as on sarah lyall s best thrillers list and then there s what i semi jokingly call the shadow docket books written by friends prom mom by laura lippman beware the woman by megan abbott sing her down by ivy pochoda all of which are on oline cogdill s year end list windfall by wendy corsi staub the eden test by adam sternbergh i have some questions for you by rebecca makkai where are the children now by mary higgins clark alafair burke and here in the dark by alexis soloski whose pub date is today i should add that at least 2 3 authors on my published best of list will be joining the shadow docket because this is what happens when one is also an author with an active social life subscribe as for nonfiction books the true crime y ones will be discussed in future best evidence newsletters but my overall favorite was ordinary notes by christina sharpe just masterly in form and function and style and provocation and in non crime fiction i ve been telling everyone for months to read lies and sorcery by elsa morante translated from italian by jenny mcphee 800 pages that i did not at all want to end and which remains one of the most glorious plane reading experiences of my life the children s bach by helen garner also recently reissued is one of the best novels of the later 20th century period and my favorite contemporary literary novels were the bee sting by paul murray and the biography of x by catherine lacey but in truth i just didn t read a lot outside of crime narratives this year it might change in 2024 but we ll see finally it s just eleven days until the fall concert for the choir that i belong to cecilia chorus of new york the culmination of what has occupied so much of my time this fall we rehearsed the full program last night vaughan williams dona nobis pacem and the world premiere of daron hagen s cantata everyone everywhere commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the un declaration of human rights with several soloists and it s going to be so good the date is saturday december 16 at 8 pm at carnegie hall and program and ticket details are available here until next time i remain the crime lady the crime lady is a reader supported publication to receive new posts and support my work consider becoming a free or paid subscriber subscribe 7 share what or rather who got left out of maestro a newsletter about judy holliday which means patricia highsmith will show up here somehow sarah weinman nov 27 2023 22 3 2 share i saw maestro over the weekend i went in with below the floor expectations not because of nosegate that was overblown anyway but because i accept that biopics play fast and loose with the truth sometimes with jarring consequences so i was pleasantly surprised that bradley cooper s portrayal of leonard bernstein and particularly carey mulligan s of felecia montealegre felt true emotionally even if the film itself didn t quite hold together i know this because if i spend the movie s runtime nitpicking storytelling choices and timing how long certain shots are it s not really working for me here s what i liked mulligan maya hawke as jamie bernstein all coltish late teenage energy sarah silverman as shirley bernstein the dance sequence obviously designed to highlight bernstein s sexual fluidity the one take argument scene that the film opens with the impossibly magical 1943 moment of his subbing for bruno walter at the last minute leading the new york philharmonic to an ecstatic performance of schumann s manfred symphony among other selections but what i didn t like had more to do with what wasn t included anything to do with the revuers the group a young lenny hung out with and played piano for though members and longtime friends and collaborators betty comden adolph green do get some screen time his younger brother burton doesn t figure at all the black panther benefit resulting in radical chic yes i suppose this could have usurped the entire film but it gets at bernstein s tortured sense of social justice dating back to the mccarthy era and the emergence of major marriage fissures that had only been hinted at in prior years and i don t think you can understand bernstein as a conductor musically without beethoven there s a reason that final performance of the 7th symphony months before he died when he barely made it through...