Hebrew National, My Bagel’s on Lock-Down, Matsa Rhymes, R Jew Kidding & MC Sideburns. These are all names that he has thrown out there in the middle of the night. I know him as Steven Beeber, Jew Punk and the author of the book “Heebie Jeebies at CBGB’s.” Gin and tonic, much cider and several martinis on a Wednesday night in Atlanta. We had a great “Drinks With” session so here you go.

Dry Ink: Please introduce yourself.

Steven Beeber: I am Steven Lee Beeber, otherwise known as Steven Beeber, aka Steve Beeber, alias S.L. Beeber, nom de plume Little Steven Beeber, alter ego, The Bebop Deluxe, sometimes going under the assumed name Bebe Le Strange, in anagram form Ever Been Beatles, simply known as Buddy to you and yours.

DI: Who the hell are you? Tell us a little about yourself.

SB: I am a man of few words. With that said, if you got me going, I could fill pages and pages of this blog with blather about myself. Am I narcissist? I don’t think so. It’s just that I feel this need to communicate, to explain, to give maybe, give till it hurts. So there, you already known something about my internal state. In terms of my more professional makeup, I’m a writer of fiction and nonfiction and have published widely. I think writing is a kind of religion almost – all art is, in fact. Not that there’s a god involved in it, just that it offers a system that I feel is worthy of belief. With that said, if there were to be a god for the artistic set, I think I’d make it the one that the Aztecs worshipped. I don’t know his name, but he was appeased by healthy indulgence in cocoa beans, the source of both coffee and cocaine, or at least so I like to believe. Then again, he, or she? was also into human sacrifice, specifically the virginal sort, so perhaps I should rethink that. It’s not like I’m getting a lot of action lately.

DI: You’re originally from Atlanta. When did you move to Boston?

SB: Well, I moved to Massachusetts, the western part, longer ago than I’d like to remember. This was after I was Features Editor at Creative Loafing, a job I still look back on fondly. Lot’s of “participatory journalism” stories in the style of George Plimpton – among my faves were riding the garbage route through the wealthiest suburb in Atlanta for “Rich White Trash,” attending “Las Vegas Night” at a North Georgia nudist colony for “The Naked and the Nude” and examining the sometimes rocky route of methadone treatment in “There’s No Such Thing As A Free Naked Lunch.” In any case, once I left CL to get my MFA in creative writing, I relocated to the Amherst/Northampton area, today best known as the hometown of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, who can often be seen walking the streets with their babe in arms. After thoroughly enjoying the whole college-town, liberal-hipster-paradise thing for far too long, I moved to Boston, Cambridge, specifically, a liberal-hipster-paradise of its own, and I guess I’ve been here around six years now. Aside from the dark, extended winters and the insanely early hours for bar closings, it’s still Puritan Land on some level, it’s a pretty fab place. You should come visit sometime.

DI: How did the idea for “Heebie Jeebies” come about?

SB: That’s a tough one.

DI: I ask tough questions.

SB: I’ve heard… The reason being that it sort of came about after a long time, and then also came suddenly all at once. By this I mean that having grown up Jewish at a time when it was not necessarily considered cool to be so, I did have my radar faintly attuned to any signs of Jew-Rock Worthiness that I could find. Pushing aside Barry Manilow, Billy Joel and, yeah, Neal Sedaka, I quickly latched onto Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman and Joey Ramone in turn. Of course, it was their music first and foremost that got me. The additional bit that they were Jewish was just sort of a cherry on top. As time passed, and I grew older and older my origins became of more interest to me. The further you go the more you realize where it was you actually came from. While thinking about issues related to this, I suddenly stumbled on the insight that Lou, Jonathan and Joey were a sort of Jewish trinity of pre- and early punk. Then it hit me that Dylan and Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs, two more extremely pivotal pre-punk figures were the same. When I put together that the common thread that united all of these was New York –Richman’s Modern Lovers, though based in Boston, made their name there – it suddenly also hit me that punk began there. Thinking about Lenny Bruce’s comment that “It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, if you live in New York you’re Jewish” I became intrigued. Once I realized that Lenny was a kind of Jewish patron saint to the early punks, that many of those punks actually happened to be Jewish and that, most importantly, punk was the only real rock, as opposed to jazz, folk and hip hop, movement to come out of New York, I was on my way. Combine the use of Nazi imagery, ironic humor, Jewish jokes and a leftist embrace of downtrodden outsiders, and the plot thickens further. From there I started doing some serious research and what I found astounded me.

DI: Did you talk to any Jewish punk rockers?

SB: Absolutely. This was probably the most astounding thing of all. Not only did I hear life stories that I could relate to (parents who didn’t approve of a career in rock, desires to avenge the Nazis and their horror through humor, an ironic view of the world and its possibilities that was also tinged with hopefulness), I learned that many more punks than I had ever suspected were Jewish and that, to varying degrees, this played a pivotal role in the development of their music and themselves. Perhaps chief among these was Tommy Ramone, the original drummer, manager and largely un-credited creative genius behind The Ramones. Tommy was born in Budapest in 1949, only a few years after his parents barely survived the Holocaust. He moved to America with them in 1956 largely due to the continuing anti-Semitism they experienced, and once he arrived here, he was thrown into a far more religiously Jewish world than he had ever known during his secularly Jewish upbringing. As a result, many of his preoccupations with thuggish behavior, the place of outsiders, the use of humor as a weapon and the worthy target of Nazism popped up in his music. Similarly, Lenny Kaye, the co-founder with Patti Smith of one of the pivotal pre-punk groups, grew up in New Jersey very aware of his “nerdy” seeming Jewishness. Before becoming Smith’s guitarist, he was a rock writer, just as were countless other Jews like Richard Meltzer and Sandy Pearlman who basically helped create the genre. That’s why Patti—who wanted to convert to Judaism at one point—first befriended and picked him to be her coconspirator. Others like Chris Stein of Blondie, which was the name for Hitler’s dog, by the way, the five Jewish guys in The Dictators, the two Jewish guys in Suicide, the Jewish manager Malcolm McLaren, the equally Jewish New York Doll Sylvain Sylvain and the uber Jewish early punk rocker Genya Ravan – a literal Holocaust survivor – were also fascinating to talk to, as were many many others too numerous to name here, such as Danny Fields, who discovered The MC5, Iggy Pop and The Ramones among others, Hilly “Hillel” Kristal, who grew up on a Jewish agrarian socialist collective and later founded CBGB’s based on its principals, and Will Eisner, creator of the first graphic novel and, as a teacher, a deep influence on PUNK magazine creator John Holmstrom. In fact, I talked to approximately 150 people in all, both Jewish and non-Jewish.

DI: What were some of the more memorable interviews?

SB: Oh god, there were so many. Bar-hopping around the East Village with Dearfrance, the daughter of an infamous Jewish gangster, early doorwoman at CBGB and a singer on John Cale’s “Mercenaries” tour; uh, being given a tour by Joey Ramone’s brother Mickey of “the Hyman’s old synagogue, Jewish community center and high school – the last the same as that of Simon & Garfunkel; being made privy to the secret of the cinq a sept – which is the two hours during which French wives are allowed to seek the male equivalent of mistresses – while interviewing Malcolm McLaren in a Paris bistro; being bombarded like something out of Clockwork Orange by the original masters of The Talking Heads “The Great Curve” after interviewing Jerry Harrison in his studio, and waiting out the interminable pauses of a certain unnamed guitarist who repeatedly nodded out between questions. And yet, perhaps the most memorable moment of all was when I interviewed Joey Ramone’s mom Charlotte in her Forest Hills home. Surrounded by childhood pics of Joey  and her mixed collection of modern art and Ramones memorabilia, I sat down at her kitchen table and set up my tape recorder ready to begin. Before we could, however, she disappeared into the kitchen, only to return with coffee, bagels and the traditionally Jewish cream cheese and lox. Now, while most people, Jewish or not, consider lox a lovely delicacy and liberally pile it atop their cream cheese and bagel at Sunday brunch, I, bad Jew that I am, can’t stand the stuff. Joey Ramone’s mom, however, would have none of it. “What, you don’t like lox?” “No, sorry.” “What kind of Jew are you,” she laughed. “A blonde one.” “Yes, I see … well, you’ve got to have some lox with your cream cheese, just a little.” And she started to mash a bit into a smear of cream cheese, determined that I try it. “No, really, that’s fine. The cream cheese is great, I don’t need the lox.” “But you’ve got to try the lox. What are you, crazy?” “But I don’t like it.” “You’ll like it.” “I’ve tried it … a bunch of times. I never do.” “But you will, trust me. Come on eat.” “No thanks.” “Eat,” she said. And suddenly it hit me – what am I doing? Joey Ramone’s JEWISH MOTHER is trying to get me to eat, eat, and I’m sitting here denying her. When am I ever going to have such a perfect JewPunk experience again? “Ok, ok,” I said. I took the bagel she’d prepared, bit in tentatively and miracle of miracles, it was delicious. “This is great,” I said. “See, I told you,” she said, folding her arms and smiling. I munched away happily as we began to speak and thought I’d finally understood what it was all those other Jews liked – and I had Joey Ramone’s mom to thank for it. Well, about a week later, when I was back in Boston, I was at a brunch where there were bagels and lox and I set myself up ready for a feast. I mixed my cream cheese and lox, spread it on my bagel, bit in and … it sucked! It was horrible, bad as always. And it’s been ever since. Only with Joey Ramone’s mom did it work. I guess you could call it punk magic.

DI: Did you get a chance to interview Joey Ramone?

SB: Unfortunately no. He died not long after I started the book, just like Dee Dee and Johnny. However, I did have a kind of encounter with him. I was in New York, at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital with my girlfriend at the time. Her stepfather was having surgery and we were sitting in the waiting room on the eighth floor, watching the original version of The Producers, which was on TV. Now, what could be more perfectly Jewish-New-York than watching The Producers – complete with its “Springtime for Hitler” sequence – while sitting in a hospital? Anyway, while we were there, we heard a bit of a commotion outside and got up and looked out the window. Below, at the entrance to the hospital, one limousine after another pulled up and deposited its passengers at the door. Since the door was under an awning, we couldn’t see who these people were, but we figured they might be representatives at the nearby UN building and we wondered if some sort of assassination or terrorist attack had occurred. Well, it wasn’t until a couple of days later, after my girlfriend’s stepfather was recovering and we were back to normal and catching up on the daily papers that we realized what it was. Joey Ramone, who unbeknownst to me had been in the hospital, had died at almost the exact same time. The limos were full of his celebrity friends coming and saying goodbye to him. This weird congruence of events – the “Blitzkrieg Bop” singer dying within feet of me while the Nazi-mocking “Producers” was on TV – seemed more than just a coincidence. It seemed almost as if Joey’s spirit were there, putting a kind of blessing on my enterprise.

DI: How did your book “AWAKE” come about? Can you talk about it?

SB: “AWAKE! A Reader for the Sleepless” originated at a concert/reading put on by Soft Skull Press to launch its book of song lyrics composed by famous writers, Margaret Atwood and Paul Auster among them. Af the after-show party/wine-and-cheese thing, I ended up talking to the editor, founder, head honcho of Soft Skull, the incomparable Richard Nash. Once he realized that I had written “Heebie-Jeebies” he exclaimed, “Damn, I wish you’d done that book with us. If you ever have any other ideas, let me know.” As it turned out, being a longtime insomniac and fascinated by the fact that many writers and artists seemed to be the same, I suggested “AWAKE,” although I didn’t have the title at the time. “Great,” he said. And a week later a contract arrived and we were off. The collection ultimately included poets, writers, artists, photographers, comics, creators of underground commix, picker-uppers of found objects and even a Suicide Girl, in addition to many others. It’s funny, scary and moving by turns and it’s all tied together by my theory that insomnia is a way for writers and artists to gain greater access to their subconscious. You see, when you don’t sleep for an extended period of time, your dreams begin to sneak through slightly even in your waking hours. That’s why you sometimes hallucinate if you have insomnia over a really long period. In fact, that’s why I don’t bother with serious drugs. I’m already riding the astral plane… on fumes.

DI: You had Gary Lucas from Capt Beefheart play with you when you read in New Yrk. How did that happen?

SB: Gary was one of the most interesting interviews I did for the JewPunk book. Not only is he a super bright guy who went to Yale and majored in English, he’s played with just about everyone of note, many times in a much more important capacity than has ever been realized. Captain Beefheart, who was a notoriously tough critic, actually exclaimed about him in concerts whenever he performed his amazing solo rendition of “Flavor Bud Living” and Jeff Buckley was largely indebted to Gary, his original collaborator, for his two biggest hits, “Grace” and “MOJO Pin,” which Gary co-wrote. Gary’s also performed with Leonard Bernstein, Iggy Pop, John Zorn and countless others, while continuing to create a catalogue that’s as amazing as it is diverse. His album, “The Edge of Heaven,” reinterpretations of 1950s Chinese pop songs is about as different as is possible from his amazing Hendrix-in-trance-mode styled “Skeleton at the Feast” and that is just as different as the wonderful recordings he continues to make with his punk/new wave supergroup Gods &; Monsters, which includes original Modern Lover Ernie Brooks on bass and original Television drummer Billy Ficca on drums, not to mention regular guest stars and producers like David Johansen, Jerry Harrison and Mary Margaret O’Hara. When I was asked to appear at the KGB Bar’s Sunday reading series in New York, I made sure to include Gary along with other AWAKE contributors like comic Catie Lazarus, poet Priscilla Becker and writer Bud Parr. For Gary’s spot, I read his story “The Golem and Me” while he played background guitar. This was all very postmodern as Gary’s story was based on his experience of performing a live soundtrack to the silent film The Golem while in Prague. It was also damn entertaining. I think “This American Life” should put it on the air (we’ve got a recording), so if you know anyone there, start twisting his or her arm.

DI: What’s next for you?

SB: Right now I’m up to my ears in papers. I’m teaching five classes this semester, one of them about Media Representations of the Holocaust, but the rest about writing, which is basically insane. I usually try to write a little everyday myself, but these days all I do is read student writing and comment on their grammar and punctuation mistakes. Actually, some of the papers are really good, but I feel like groaning here. With that said, I’m still working on a novel I started a few months ago called “About the Author.” It tells the story of a grad student in English who decides to write his thesis about a long-neglected, little known writer – a certain Steven Lee Beeber. At the same time, I’m putting together another cool anthology, this one on “first punk experiences.” Folks like Lydia Lunch from Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Ian MacKaye from Fugazi, Hugo Burnham from Gang of Four and Roger Miller from Mission of Burma are just some of those involved. I’m not sure when it’s coming out yet, but once I am, you – and your readers—will be the first to know!

You can visit Steven at www.jewpunk.com