Pussy Galore in all of their transgressive glory called a song “you look like a jew”. it was a great song actually- off of a great record. There’s this squirrely guitar line with “primative” (ie heavy simple and awesome) drumming with some mumbled lyrics that end with a shout of “you look like a jew”.

i was thinking about that song today- while pondering the whole nature of rock vs. art vs. commerce vs being truly “punk rock”/ anti materialist / anti-establishment. Frankly there’s nothing anti about selling a painting for 500,000 except anti-poverty. Pussy galore never sold a lot of records- but some of their records became kind of valuable for a time in that collectors mentality.

I was also thinking about that line because I am a jew. i’m a jew who grew up in the south with parents who came from the north. It was only after i came to ny to go to college that i understood what that meant. I had an a-ha moment out of the blue. After living in NY for about 3 months I was walking down the street and it struck me that my parents were so different from most of the people i knew growing up because they were from somewhere else- from a different culture really.

it occurred to me at that time that i too - looked like a jew- and acted like one- and sounded like one- and on one level i understood that and on another i hid it- so a part of me felt hidden. i don’t think that i ever experienced much outright racism due to my status as a jew. i say this without irony- but my friends made fun of me for being cheap- carrying coupons (i did carry coupons), and yes they called me a jew. I didn’t take it all that seriously- because it wasn’t said all that seriously. however, i knew that as someone who was “different” i had to simply take the ribbing because to take offense would be offensive.

When i came to NY though i felt out of place because i was southern. i nodded to people on the street and said thank you to people at the cafeteria. I was a soul lost at sea- neither fish nor fowl- and i am still lost.