Not Your Typical Hanukkah Song...

Before John Zorn and the radical Jewish music movements of the 1980s, Ricky Orbach was out there playing his Jew-centric, cutting-edge music in New York’s underground during the Punk movement’s halcyon years, all while continuing to wear his yarmulke and holding down a day job as a gem dealer in Manhattan’s diamond district. But the seeds for Ricky’s musical endeavors were planted much earlier than that.

Born in 1955 in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Holocaust survivor parents, Orbach’s childhood was suffused in the music of his parents’ and of the changing times: from the story-song recordings of “Peter and the Wolf” to his grandfather’s cantorial liturgy to The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles. During a stint at NYU, he saw the best music the Village Clubs had to offer, ran into Bob Dylan and as a Jersey kid, saw The Boss in every small club in the tri-state area.

While attending Tel Aviv University’s overseas program he was signed to CRI (Columbia Records International) after being discovered playing in a bar in North Tel Aviv. He spent the next 18 months honing his craft, working with other artists, producing, writing commercials, recording and performing. The highlight was a 3-city tour opening and then playing guitar behind the late expatriate American blues pianist-singer Memphis Slim. Ricky joined the Israeli delegation at the Grosvernor House hotel in London for the CBS records convention in London 1977 before returning to NY upon learning that his father had suffered a heart attack. A new chapter had begun.

Back in New York, Ricky formed his first punk rock band; Pontiac Rosenbloom and the Exiled.as Pontiac Rosebloom playing music to an unlikely audience of punks, bohemians and disenfranchised individuals. Songs like “Terror,” “She’s A Walker,” and “Selection Day” a tale of a son inheriting the stigma of a concentration camp perspective from his father– caught the attention of an impresario who owned New Yorks famous “Club 82.” And thus, after seeing Ricky’s performance at a bar in lower Manhattan, Pontiac Rosenbloom and the Exiled were offered a summer residency at the venerable Club 82 for “after-hours” entertainment. It was there on opening night, that the band quickly won over the audience with it’s intense live show and attracted an even more unlikely subset of fans; Hells Angels. Still wearing his yarmulke, jumping across the stage and playing his guitar high over his head, Rickys Jew flavored punk music drew hundreds of “Angels” every Saturday night along with a growing local fan base. Described as “…New York’s only Kosher Rocker” by DJ Alfredo of WNEW on the air after having seen him perform at CBGB’s the DJ went on to say referring to Ricky’s performance that “you should catch him at any price.”

Once after playing a set at Max’s Kansas City on the same night as a project headed by Santana Drummer Michael Shrieve, Ricky and Shrieve hit it off and were in a studio in Soho within a week recording 4 of Ricky’s tunes.

With time set aside in the 1980’s to marry, grow a family and a business, Ricky’s obsession to create Jewish influenced art only grew. In 1992 Orbach collaborated with (a fellow child of a Holocaust survivor) pianist singer and composer Ben Zander on a project known as “Songs for Survivors.”.  After a full page article about Ricky appeared in the NJ Star Ledger, Ricky began to play out again both as solo artist gigging in Lower East Side clubs and with a band with whom he would perform under the name “Wolf.”

Ricky then enlisted guitarist Marc Bosch (Ian Hunter, Garland Jeffries, Carole King), Bassist Kenny Aaronson (Bob Dylan, Joan Jett, Billy Idol) and drummer Kevin Tooley to record and sharpen up a few of his new tunes though none have (yet) to be released.

Orbach organized the 1st “Festival of Lights” unity concert benefit in 1995. Featuring Ricky’s own band (Television drummer Bill Ficca, Tripod Bass player Clint Bahr and Pontiac Rosenbloom and the Exiled alumnus guitarist Elroy Moscovitz) along with Klezmer icon Andy Statman, world music genius Beat composer David Amram, Ladino bouzouki master Avram Pengas, rock guitar legend Danny Kalb and others, “Festival of Lights” was also filmed by filmmaker Claudia Heuermann for her documentary about the NY Downtown Jewish music scene entitled “Sabbath In Paradise.”

And now as we hurtle into 2009, spearheading one of Joodayohs first releases is Ricky’s new project known as “Kohane of Newark.” Ricky enlisted a veritable who’s-who of cutting edge musicians across a wide range of genres to participate in the recording of a rock opera described as “Killer Jew-Punk” and “musical manna from heaven” by guitarist extraordinaire Gary Lucas. Heralded as an “American Serge Gainsbourg” by author Steven Lee Beeber, Ricky’s debut CD entitled New Midlife Crisis features “…compelling songs” that are more like “…Lou Reed’s Berlin than the Who’s Tommy,” according to Leigh Lust former head of A & R for Atlantic Records.

It appears that after years of being a musical sponge, Ricky’s absorption is about to be shared. But be prepared, it’s not a pretty story.

It’s bittersweet and sadly true. New Midlife Crisis is really a record Ricky made to avert a major crisis.  In fact, one more midlife crisis might just do him in.

Emotionally, the record goes from sad to hilarious, profound to primitive almost effortlessly. New Midlife Crisis is a landmark American-Jewish record worthy of repeated hearings, analysis and study just as we studied the first Modern Lovers Record, Leonard Cohen’s “I’m your Man,” or Bruce’s “Nebraska.” Just as we studied Dire Straits “Sultans of Swing,” the Doors “Strange Days” and Steven Malkmus entire body of work, New Midlife Crisis begs your ear because it stands singular in the body of American-Jewish song worthy a Leon Weseltier review.

American-Jewish middle class society has it’s own landscape and mythology. From Teaneck to Brunswick to Elizabeth and Oceanside, tri-state metropolitan clusters of middle class Jews live in silent desperation. Dylan sings about Johanna. Ricky sings about Shoshana. Bruce sings about Asbury Park and Ricky sings about the Hamptons. Lou sings about waiting for the Man and Ricky sings about the tycoon’s son’s bar mitzvah.

It’s clear after listening to New Midlife Crisis that most things of lasting value in Ricky’s life have come to him thru suffering, risk, self-sabotage and plain old screwing up.

What’s a child of Holocaust survivors supposed to do with his life?