Photo: Ryan Monaghan
Golem Celebrate 3,000 Years of Beautiful Tradition, Starbucks
Klezmer punk stars Golem took the stage for the JDUB Records 5th Anniversary — part of the Celebrate Brooklyn series at the Prospect Park Bandshell — with a “Helloooooooo Brooklyn! We are to celebrate you!†What followed was every bit a Jewish wedding, with spastic chicken dancing, Yiddish love songs, unsupervised children running around hopped up on sugar, and two lead vocalists who very much earned the moniker “wedding singers.†Annette Ezekiel acted as MC, naming songs and throwing out one-liners, while Aaron Diskin danced, shirt unbuttoned to there, like Jon Lovitz to songs like “Ushti Baba†and “Warsaw Is Khelm.†The finale brought a flurry of batons, accordions, hula hoops, and tossed babies as the opening bands came onstage to help do — what else? — the hora. The crowd likewise formed three circles and pranced round with abandon. And in a moment of unscripted marketing, they lifted a Starbucks employee holding a tray of free iced coffee into the air on a standard-issue metal folding chairs, cries of “Mazel tov!†ringing through the night air. —Lauren Salazar