Throwing Harvey Pekar Into a Valley
By Dan Friedman
Smith — the online magazine that brought you the six word story — now brings you the 90-headed Harvey Pekar beast.
To celebrate Harvey Pekar’s 70th birthday, their “Pekar Project” was to ask a number of artists to draw his head at 70 as a surprise present. Originally there were 70, natch, but so many artists presented their interpretations that there’s nearly 100 and the “heads still keep rollin” they say. One of the heads (pictured here ) was by the Forward’s own Eli Valley.
If you want to see Eli Valley’s own elegant head in motion and his art work explained, he’s playing Joe’s Pub on Monday in a Forward-sponsored event with The Sway Machinery and Girls in Trouble. Also there to accept her prize and read will be Irina Reyn, the newly-announced winner of the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers (for which I was a judge, full disclosure).
For more info about the Forward and the Foundation for Jewish Culture presenting “Eli Valley vs the Sway Machinery in the Temple of Self Hatred” With special guests Girls In Trouble click here.
To buy tickets click here.
Balkan Beat Box Out With Its 'Nu' Album on Tuesday
By Devra Ferst
If Arab club music, Israeli hip-hop and klezmer had a ménage à trios, its love child might sound something like Balkan Beat Box. Joining musical genres and artists across political spectrums the group aims to erase political borders through music saying, “our ears don’t have them, why should we?”
The group blends musical influences from Jerusalem, New York, Morocco and Eastern Europe with rhythmic beats from the Balkans into an energizing and eclectic dance party like mix on their new album “Nu Made (Remixes).” The album is primarily remixes of their songs by various artists including Mahala Rai Banda and Nickodermus, as well as by the band. It also includes the previously unreleased track Ramallah Tel Aviv and instructions on how listeners can download remix parts from a website and create their own remix of the track Bulgarian Chicks.
The group was formed in 2004 by Tamir Muskat and Ori Kaplan (formerly of Gogol Bordello) and performs with a large group of musical artists including guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood here of The Sway Machinery, whose first album “Hidden Melodies Revealed” also premieres this coming week. Read a feature about the group here.
Promoting their new album, which comes out on April 7 in both vinyl and CD, the band played an exhilarating concert at New York’s Webster Hall on April 2. Each member of the band played several instruments throughout the show ranging from electric guitar to clarinet. Two drummers had an improv “beat off,” challenging one another with different beats until they ultimately played in together in a rhythmic harmony.
A competition ending in harmony and a wild dance party; now there’s a thought about how to deal with political borders.
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