By all counts, the music video for “Als Ding hot a Soff, nur baym Wursht senen zway,” Joe Fleisch’s Yiddish cover of the ’80s German New Wave hit “Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei” (“Everything Has an End, Only the Sausage Has Two”) is bizarre. Shot in black and white in an evocative nod to the aesthetics of James Bond, the video―a collaboration with producer Ori Toledano and director Guy J. Bolandi―alternates between shots of Fleisch singing eerily and shots of naked, androgynous women (in a secluded forest!) who have the song’s lyrics projected or painted on their bodies.

For the casual viewer who stumbles upon Fleisch’s erotic odyssey, some context would be helpful. Joe Fleisch is actually the pseudonym of 54-year-old German author and entrepreneur Jossi Reich, whose other musical endeavor, the Tel Aviv-based band the Jewish Monkeys, is likewise unorthodox. While the band’s name might call to mind the cheerful pop vibe of the Monkees, Reich’s group performs a “distinctive mishmash of rock, klezmer, funk, and Balkan music, sung in English, Spanish, Esperanto and Yiddish,” in the words of Tablet contributor Dana Kessler. From a raunchy ode to Romania to a multicultural mashup (“The Banana Boat Song” meets “Hava Nagila,” with some politics thrown in for good measure), nothing, it seems, is musically off limits.

“It’s a personality split. It’s a complete other thing,” Reich told Jewcy, delineating his musical personae. “Jewish Monkeys is a punk rock band and very satirical and very funny and is kind of an orchestra with eight people.”

For Bolandi, who has directed projects for major TV networks like Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, “Als Ding hot a Soff” was more personal than his commercial work. “The entire concept of the video was about translation,”  said Bolandi, 35, referring not only to linguistic translation, but translating high-tech concepts―computerized designs typify the New Wave ethos―into lo-fi iterations. “In a way, this is a reference to technology, actually painting on the bodies.”

Reich’s interest in the song stems from his obsession with German New Wave music growing up, such as the theatrical stylings of Nina Hagen and the political incorrectness of Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (German-American Friendship). “The music was absolutely German, very monotonous,” he said.

In “Als Ding hot a Soff,” Toledano, whom Bolandi introduced to Reich, provides the sonic heart of the project: klezmer clarient and computerized music samples. Coming from a musical household (he’s the son of Israeli singer and Eurovision contestant Avi Toledano), his prowess is no surprise. Plus, as the founder of Snowstar, a production company, it’s his job to tell stories by marrying visual media and music.

“I do Americana, Blues. I don’t have one genre,” said Toledano, 32. “I could work on a wide range of different genres and be something else every day and work with as many people as possible on different productions.”

Even if everything does have an end (or two, for sausages), let’s hope this creative partnership’s is far in the distance.

Experience the delightful weirdness that is the music video below:

Image via YouTube.

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Jewcy is excited to premiere this video, starring special guest, Broadway star and musician Lauren Molina, and featuring lines like, “Seders make my dough rise” (Greta Gertler Gold was the writer and composer).

Does the video contain a spanking with leeks a la Sephardic “Dayenu” customs? Is there an attempt to eat a matzah ball with chained-up arms? Are there Maxwell House haggadot held seductively in front of breasts? You bet there are.

You can buy the song here, so you can learn it in time for your seder and serenade your bubbe over the salad course.

If you’re hungry for more Passover ditties, the Universal Thump is also hosting The Seder-Songwriter Project, an evening at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan on May 1st featuring Jewish and gentile performers alike doing original numbers inspired by the holiday. It’ll be a post-Passover “musical seder.”

In the meantime, get your sexy Pesach fix below:

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(Also, if you only needed Shia LaBeouf to win your game of Celebrity Penis Bingo, then you’re welcome.)

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• Things got a little weird yesterday on Twitter when the woman operating the @Sweden handle—as part of the country’s nobly intentioned experiment to let a different citizen tweet/represent the country each week—started asking why some people hate Jews. We’d refer her to Henry Blodget, but she seems nice, if terribly naive.

• In honor of Pride Month, the IDF posted a photo on Facebook of two male soldiers holding hands, claiming they were a gay couple. The photo attracted a great deal of attention (of all types) but has since been revealed as staged. Only one of the soldiers is gay, and both serve in the office of the military spokesman who posted the photo.

• Andy Samberg hopes that his new British TV show Cuckoo will “cement the special relationship between our two great countries.” We just want more digital shorts.

• In her new music video for “Don’t Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas),” Regina Spektor puts toast on her face, sings to animatronic caterpillars, and sets things on fire. We think she’s wonderful.

The post Daily Jewce: James Deen, a Swedish Twitter Snafu, IDF Gay Pride, and More appeared first on Jewcy.

If you’re ever in New York, and you happen to stop by Jewcy HQ, there is a slight chance you will walk into us blasting a song written by the great Ted Leo.  Mr. Leo is universally loved by the entire staff here, and not many days goes by when we don’t play something by him.

So when  we watched Ted’s newest video, sorry, “musical,” for the song “Bottled in Cork,” there was hesitation to post the video because, well, this is Jewcy, and the Leo’s are awesome, but something tells me they aren’t fasting on Yom Kippur if ya know what I mean…

Enter Julie Klausner, literally, as a dance instructor in the video.  And also enter our excuse to post the video below–24 hours after pretty much everybody else did– thanks to Julie.

Ms. Klausner, you’re wonderful, and please keep inserting yourself in projects that we’d be otherwise unable to find a “Jewish angle” on.

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That day has come via the bands newest video for the song, “Holiday”

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