You Don't Have
To Go Downtown to
Get the
fusion/I still smell the bodies piled in
ditches in the ground."
• "Ride 'em Jewboy" by Kinky
Friedman and the Texas Jewboys:
Perhaps the most misunderstood
pro-Jewish Jewish musician around,
Friedman's choice of band name
and song titles offended many Jews
and provided a misguided chuckle
to many bigots. Those who actually
listened to the songs knew that
Friedman was a,proud Jew, and that
"Ride 'em Jewboy" was a tribute to
those who perished in the
Holocaust. "Dead limbs play with
ring-less fingers/A melody which
burns you deep inside/Oh, how the
song becomes the singers/May
peace be ever with you as you ride."
From the 1973 album Sold
American.
• "Tattoo" by Janis Ian: Ian was 10
when she first learned about the
Holocaust from books in her parents'
home library. As an adult, she tried
for years to write a song addressing
the calamity. The poignant "Tattoo"
reminds us that Holocaust survivors
have never completely healed. From
Ian's 1993 album Breaking Silence.
• "With God on Our Side" by Bob
Dylan: Beautifully illuminating the
folly of claiming that God takes sides
or condones war, the song includes
the lines, "Though they murdered
six million/In the ovens they
fried/TIE Germans now too/Have
God oiheir side." It remains one
of Dylan's most provocative songs.
From Dylan's 1964 album The Times
They Are A-Changin'.
• "Untitled" by Peter
. Himmelman: Also known as "The
Taxi Song," Himmelman based this
quiet, yet powerful, tune on an
actual taxi ride with an anti-
Semitic cab driver who didn't real-
ize his passenger was Jewish. The
driver declares his admiration for
Hitler, saying, "Hitler's only fault
was that he had to go and lose."
The song ends with this vow: "I .
spent the next morning with a man
who had death camp numbers on
his arm/And I swore to myself I
would do anything to protect him
from further harm." From
Himmelman's 1992 album Flown
This Acid World.
— Scott Benarde
a hit in England with
Reid's mother, born in
"Can't You Hear My
England of Polish parents,
Heartbeat?"
maintained a Jewish home
In 1969, she joined the
and made sure Keith and
horn-driven
rock band
his older brother, Michael,
Ten-Wheel
Drive
as lead
had bar mitzvahs. Reid,
singer and harmonica play-
however, had heard enough
er. At the suggestion of a
Holocaust stories and suf-
band mate, she changed
fered enough anti-
Genya Raven: "I have
her name to Ravan (pro-
Semitism in primary
only just begun
nounced raven). Ravan is
school that a bar mitzvah
to love my Judaism."
also credited with being
was the last thing he want-
the first female producer
ed. It was one more ritual
hired
by
a
major
record company to
that set him apart.
produce a singing group.
"The last thing you wanted to do as
Her parents never disclosed what they
a kid was stick out, but I just stuck
endured in Skarzysko Kamienna, a small
out," Reid says.
but wretched slave labor camp in
Judaism, he adds, "only has negative
Poland. Prisoners primarily toiled in a
associations for me. It only meant
munitions factory. Records indicate that
unhappiness and suffering. It goes
back to my dad and what happened to as many as 23,000 Jews died there from
disease, starvation and execution from
him and the events of those times."
August 1942 through the summer of
1944, when the camp was overrun by
Rock Pioneer
the Russian army.
For Ravan, singing was praying. "If
The embers of war were still smoldering
you listen to some of my songs with
when rock pioneer Genya Ravan (nee
Goldie and the Gingerbreads, and songs
Zelkowitz) was born to Holocaust sur-
vivors in Lodz, Poland, in April of 1945. like "The Sweetest One," and
"Shadowboxing" from Urban Desire (a
As Goldie Zelkowitz, Ravan co-
solo album from 1978), you'll hear me
founded Goldie and the Gingerbreads,
davening.
considered the first all-girl rock band to
play their own instruments, and scored
ROCK 'N' ROLL on page 68
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67