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Like Raymond Scott on acid (wait: Raymond Scott was on acid!), the Rabbinical School Dropouts play something that is nominally klesmer, nominally Chanukah, and wholly jazzified middle east. They're what happens when Pere Ubu forget to take their ritalin, when the One O'Clock Lab Band stays up past midnight, when rabbinical school students drop out.

As far as I can determine, there is nothing seasonal about this record, which consists primarily of Michael and Jon-Jon Friedmann compositions. Call it klesmer, or world jazz, or folk music of the Caucasus Mountain region, it is a lush, spicy melange, percussive, rich in brass and wind. It differs from klesmer, which in my mind is more string oriented. It is influenced by jazz and folk, but it is not completely of either one of these. Classification is the one task I set myself for all the records I review, but I'm failing miserably on this one.

The music is good, though. Probably avant garde in whatever genre it belongs with, it is an indescribably mysterious and romantic kind of music that could easily score the next Richard Linklater short.

--Richard Banks
(Reviewed in 2002)

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From the liner notes:

The Rabbinical School Dropouts have achieved some critical notice, particularly with their Cosmic Tree release. Nominally Klesmerists, they offer up a jazzy middle eastern stew (is there such a thing as middle eastern stew?), spicy and pungent and unapologetic.

The Rabbinical School Dropouts are Jesse Bluelake Barkin, tenor sax, Pakistani necklace; Nicolas Carvajal, drum kit; Hank Friedmann, bass clarinet, wind machine; Jon-Jon Friedmann, cello, guitar; Michael Friedmann, clarinet, tenor sax; Scott Paul Levine, oboe, theremin; Bart Miller, piano; Jonathan Rotter, trombone; and Patrick Shaw, bass.

Rabbinical School Dropouts

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