Can Phish Tell You How To Get To Sesame Street?

Last week I received a piece of fascinating Muppet news:  Sesame Street and Phish share genes.

Turnsout Trey’s dad, Ernie Anastasio, worked at PBS when Sesame Street wasbeing created and he served as the inspiration for Ernie of Ernie &Bert.  So Ernie and Trey basically share a baby daddy!

WhileI have found no substantiation of this online, nor any photos of ErnieA to back up the related claim that the Muppet was inspired by hisfacial features, its still an intriguing revelation for someone who isboth a Muppet and Phish fan.

Bothplay important roles in the creation of JDub.  Other than working inthe music industry, the only other job I ever seriously wanted was towork with the Muppets at the Jim Henson Company.  I don’t remember whenthe idea first took hold, but I have a strong memory of hearing ofHenson’s death in 1991 and committing myself to mentioning Henson in myBar Mitzvah speech two years later (didn’t happen). Sesame Street andThe Muppet Show were great, but my interests in the creative world oftalking furry creatures and the magical realism of their existenceextended to pretty much all Henson projects (Labryinth!!!), perhaps with the exception of Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.Still, when, as a sophomore in high school, I told my parents I wantedto apply to University of Connecticut, home of the only Bachelor of Fine Arts in puppeteering program,they were non-too thrilled.  Not the controlling type, instead ofcrushing my dream flat-out, they arranged a meeting with a full timepuppeteer in New York City while there on a layover en route to the Alexander Muss High School in Israel.It was the most depressing outing ever.  The puppeteer presented smallshows in his tiny apartment near Washington Square, seemed to barelyeek out a living, and, when I told him about my Henson Co dreams, toldme he had once been lucky enough to wag a Muppet tail on Sesame Street."Henson’s crew is a small clique," he told me.  "There’s almost no wayto break in."  And that was pretty much it.  Dreams crushed, Icontinued on to Israel, discovered The Roots, Sonic Youth, and thePharcyde via borrowed cassettes, and spent the next two years convincedthat the music industry was a much more sound career path.

Inmeetings with funders, I often share a very true anecdote about hearingPhish break into Avinu Malkeinu in ’96 at a show at the Ventura CountyFairground.  The pride in hearing a Jewish song (sung well, in Hebrew,by a non-Jew) played to a crowd of thousands, the awakening thatJewishness could be expressed (and lived) beyond synagogue, JCC, andHebrew School walls, and  the awareness that  others around me seemedto be having similar thoughts all played direclty into my motivationsfor co-founding JDub six years later.

TheErnie revelation last week was fun to learn, pulling these two strandstogether for me.  Without either interest, I seriously doubt JDub wouldexist today.  Yesterday, the Muppet connection may have grown a tinybit closer.  I met with a staff member at Sesame Workshop about therelaunch of Shalom Sesame,the 1987 mini-series that introduced American Jews to the Israeliversion of Sesame Street, Rechov Sumsum, and served to empower positiveJewish identity in kids through overdubbed Hebrew songs by Bert &Ernie and new clips with Sarah Jessica Parker and Itzak Perlman.  Keepyour fingers crossed for us, friends. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll see aJDub band or two dancing with Grover, Elmo, and Moishe Oofnik a year from now.

Which JDub band would YOU want to see on Shalom Sesame???

 [Editor’s note: this piece originally appeared on the JDub Records blog on 10/20/09]