Albany, NY -- I'll Never Get Lost Again
... well, in theory, anyway...
On Sunday, while I was still in Jersey, I bought a portable GPS system, the Garmin
Street Pilot 2720. I'm hoping to replace my car this spring or summer, and I was hoping to get an in-dash navigation system in my next car, and was finding that it was limiting my options. A friend asked me, "Don't you drive rental cars half the time anyway? Why don't you get one you can take in all cars?" By the end of the weekend, I'd bought the Street Pilot, and I'm very happy with it so far. It's fairly accurate, and in fact, saved me 20 minutes on my way home from NJ last weekend. I also feel like I always learn several new geographic facts every time I drive -- did you know that there used to be a small municipality on the Slingerlands bypass called
Karlsfeld? Neither did I, until I spotted it on the GPS map today.
A smaller purchase that I made recently is a pair of
Dr Scholl's Massaging Gel insoles. They're very comfortable in my dress shoes, which normally wreak havoc with my feet and knees. I am soooooo gellin'!
I've been sick and run-down for most of the last month, especially the last week, which explains my lack of writing (though I have several posts in the process). We haven't heard from Ari in weeks. What's his lame excuse?
Albany, NY -- More on Matisyahu
Other sites never link to mine... never. But two of them did this week!
The first one I found was the
West Wing News Blog, a clearinghouse for online West Wing news and reviews. It found a brief post of mine about last week's episode and included in a list of comments about the show.
The second was
Blog in Dm, a Jewish blog that picked up on my rant about Matisyahu over the weekend. The same site found a link to a post from JewishFringe.com about a
backlash against Matisyahu, especially now that he's
dumped the boys over at JDub Records as his management. Not surprising; this is what happens with pop culture... it's the ninth minute in Matisyahu's 15 minutes of fame. We're at the point where the fad has gotten a bit too popular, the artist's head has gotten a bit too big, and the grownups are starting to catch on, which of course means that the kids start to get to turned off of it (as I pointed out in my last post).
The grownups at Beliefnet have not one, but two articles this week that talk about Matisyahu. My former colleague at MJL, Michael Kress,
reviews "Youth" on Beliefnet. He liked it a bit more than I did. And Saul Austerlitz
talks about Jewish music becoming hip.
Livingston, NJ -- Matisyahu's "Youth"
I'm down staffing a BBYO convention in NJ, and got hit by the flu yesterday, so I feel crappy.
I picked up Matisyahu's two albums on Friday, "Live at Stubbs" and his new one, "Youth." I wasn't particularly impressed, but then again, reggae isn't my thing.
Matisyahu has gained some pop-culture popularity -- his first single last year, "King Without a Crown," was very successful, and it appears that "Youth" will sell a couple million copies. He's playing the Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza festivals this year, and he has in fact gotten the attention of some of the less-affiliated young Jewish crowd that the Jewish philanthropic world had hoped he'd get. However, I'm pretty sure it's just a fad... I played the albums while driving down to Jersey on Friday with four of my BBYOers in the car (who are certainly part of Matisyahu's target audience), and they had no interest in listening. "Matisyahu? We're sick of him. He's gotten kind of annoying."
But who told you so? From an
AP article from last year:
Aaron Bisman, 25, is among those leading the trend. He founded the Brooklyn-based record label and event production company JDub Records for Jews who weren't necessarily involved with a synagogue. He wanted to create something for people around his own age whose outlook differed from that of the more traditional Jewish organizations.
Bisman represents several musicians including Matisyahu, a Hasidic reggae star who has gained fans and attention for his blend of music and religion.
Matisyahu's first record, released in the fall of 2004, sold 20,000 copies in five months. His second album sold that many within six weeks.
Sara Joki, 23, of Saratoga Springs said Matisyahu and performers like him "make me proud of my generation."
"Religion is not the most popular thing in youth culture these days," said Joki, who is Jewish. "But people like Matisyahu going on Jimmy Kimmel and singing about God, and seeing people go wild for it, it's just amazing."
.
.
.
Jason Brzoska, 25, director of learning communities and marketing (edit: now COO) for the Web site and organization, myjewishlearning.com, is among those who question whether buying the T-shirts or listening to the music helps build a solid religious identity.
"I don't know if it's really bringing disillusioned, disengaged Jews together," Brzoska said. "The problem with pop culture is that it's ephemeral."
He said young Jews may not necessarily make the connection between spirituality and culture, "but its emergence may be an indication that the Jewish community is stronger than we think."In three years, will Matisyahu be relevant to anybody but reggae fans? Maybe he won't even be relevant to them... I don't know how his brand of reggae compares to, say, Bob Marley.
My guess is no, and it remains absurd to me that Jewish leadership is trying to push this sort of thing.
