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Yesterday my band had the honor of performing on a float in the Alameda, California 4th of July parade. At three miles long and 170+ entries, the Alameda parade is one of the longest Independence Day parades in the country.

Our float was for the Forbidden Island Tiki Bar, a fantastic, authentic tiki bar that happens to be within stumbling distance of my home. True kismet. The float was a 24ft. flat bed truck decorated with tiki torches, fishing nets and palm trees. It was literally a "rock and roll" experience, with loud reverb crashes at every bump in the road. Fortunately no one fell off the truck, and we won the first place trophy for civilian bands - I think that's opposed to military or school marching bands.

Anyway, here's a picture someone took of us, with me proudly wearing my Mosrite.

That's a great photo Mel. Congrats on your winning the first place trophy. Looks like you wear your Mosrite proudly.

What tunes were you playing, and was it the full band with drums and the lovely lady with the beard on keyboard?

Woops, I just spotted her long hair and the cymbal in the background.

Yup, full band. We put the generator and the amps against the cab, drums next, then keys then guitars and bass. We had the two front stake-sides in place and made small "fence-lets" for the rest of the perimeter so we wouldn't fall off.

We thought about playing the same song over and over the whole time, but for the sake of our driver (Karen's husband) and the other floats around us, we played through a full repetoire. In addition to the yiddishkeit stuff we played some Ventures (Walk Don't Run '64, Diamond Head), Chantays (Pipeline) Astronauts (Baja) and of course Dick Dale's Misirlou.

While we had a bumpy ride, I really feel sorry for the Forbidden Island gang - they ran the whole length of the parade handing out fliers and coupons. By the end they were ready to plotz.

Here's a view of the whole float.

Thus Mel and the Rockin Rabis were born

Very nice.

I have seen you guys played on Youtube a while back and was very impressed. Here is one of them just in case no one has posted here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylKmC4EiFWE

Cool photos, Mel! Have you retired the Jaguar since you got that thing?
And why is it so freakin' hard to photograph a sunburst without it looking like a target, with no transition between colors? All my photos come out looking like that.

KRamone27 wrote:Thus Mel and the Rockin Rabis were born

Er...they were "born" quite a while ago, and have 2 CDs under their belts (or is that under their Talis and tzitzits?).

The Meshugga Beach Party idea first came up in 2002 and I recorded an album "Sixteen Songs of the Chosen Surfers" Then I put a band together to play the material. We played around the SF bay area for a few years and in 2005 were approached by Jewish Music Group to re-release the record with additional material as "Twenty Songs of the Chosen Surfers" At that point we started having more gigs and the lineup changed, with Karen and I being the remaining original members, and Shecky, Stu and Treyf coming on board in early 2006. At the end of 2007 we released our first full band effort "Let's Go Shleppin'!"

The Mosrite has definitely become my guitar of choice since I got it earlier this year. I sold my backup MIJ Jaguar to help recoup the cost of the Mosrite and now my AVRI Jaguar comes along to shows as backup. I do miss some of the versatility of the Jaguar, with the rhythm circuit, mute and middle pickup I added. That's what set me off to put together a V3, which, while lacking the rhythm circuit and mute at least will have the additional tones of three pickups. I think I'm in the minority here, but I really like the speed frets, and I having found string bending to be an issue, at least within the context of my playing.

The sunburst of my Mosrite has a strong target look, much more so than the MIJ Jazz Bass Treyf is playing in the picture with me. Personally I really like the strong yellow center and red band; I think that's one of the things lacking from the modern Fenders.

Desert Surfer, thanks for posting the link to our Hava Nagila video. I still can't believe how many times it's been viewed. Perhaps the best part are all the comments from disraught fans of the Scandanavian heavy metal band Meshugga who think their metal masters have taken a new direction.

.......MAAZEL-TOV!!! OY!! I'm KVELLING!!
the little Vonce (not bad for a Shagetz, huh?)

Oy, Dennis, an honorary member of the tribe you are!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rcLiTt1DRs
Mel, this ain't surf, but you might appreciate this video,
I loved it!