May 5, 2006

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Eef Barzelay

So I finally met Eef Barzelay. He played at Iota last night, and there turned out to be no backstage area into which I could attempt to sneak. In fact, ever since I first downloaded The Ghost Of Fashion after finding out about him when googling myself, maybe four years ago, I had assumed that I would eventually see him live at some point, and I hoped I'd get a chance to meet him. Now I did, and it was predictably anticlimactic. The conversation went something like this:

I walked up to him and said, "Hi Eef! Is that how you pronounce it? Eeeeef Barzelay?"

"Uh, yeah. That is my name."

"Guess what my name is... David Barzelay!" And then I paused, expecting him to go, "Wow! That is friggin' amazing! We're probably, like, cousins or something! You're my new best friend, cousin! It's so cool to meet you!"

But he didn't. Instead, he just sorta leaned back and said, "Oh. Cool." That was it.

"Uhh," I continued, "so, I started listening to Clem Snide," his band, "four or five years ago after googling my name."

"Oh. Uhh... okay... uh... well, you're probably the, uh... the only fan we have who discovered us that way," he said, while looking around the room with disinterest.

It continued for another half a minute or so, but never got more interesting than that. Needless to say, we are not now best buds. We did not exchange e-mail addresses, or compare our family histories to determine whether we are distant relations. We did not discuss Israel, or bond over having such a fucking cool name. And when we parted, there was not the warm hug or handshake one gives to family.

It turns out he was born in Israel, and there are a ton of Barzelays (and even more Barzelais) in Israel, even if there aren't many at all in the United States. So it makes sense that he would be less than overwhelmed with the relevation that he has a fan with the same last name. Personally, I was very excited when Jenna Barzelay befriended me on Facebook last year. I was like, "Wow! That is friggin' amazing! We're probably, like, cousins or something! You're my new best friend, cousin! It's so cool to befriend you!" Eef, on the other hand, was like, "Yeah, so what? Your name is like 'John Smith' in Israel."

Oh yeah, but the show was great. His inter-song banter was especially good. It ranked in at least the top ten, maybe the top five shows I've ever seen for inter-song banter. He was really hilarious. In fact, I think he'd do just as well with stand-up as he does with music. He told a story about the last time he played in D.C., how a woman came up to him after the show, and asked him whether he is autistic, because she works with autistic children, and he reminds her of them.

It was really funny at the time, and if you'd seen Eef perform, you might agree with the woman. He does have a lot of Rain Man mannerisms. But it all adds to his charm.

He sounded good, too, and he played mostly new material (a good portion of it was even newer than his album, released about a month and a half ago). And wonder of wonders, he didn't do a fake encore! He gets major, major props for that.

Posted at May 5, 2006 4:33 AM | Comments (4)

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