Thursday, March 21, 2013

PEOPLE IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD: Jimmy Keys

Old Jimmy keeps it fresh at Uncle Tommy's Taverna in Zaghaven.  Keys likes to play old Greek
rebetika (rembetika) music.   Rebetika is old Greek folk music that grew out of particular urban
circumstances.  Lyrics often reflect life's harsher realities like crime, drink, drugs, poverty,
prostitution, violence...
But rebetika, and Jimmy, also deal with a variety of themes that any social stratum must deal with.
Death, eroticism, exile, disease, love, marriage, the mother figure, war, work, and simple everyday matters.

If you're cool with Jimmy (or even better you slip him a twenty) he'll lay off his program and play
requests.  Oddly, the only Stones song he knows is a stripped down "Sympathy for the Devil," but he
knows some other rock classics such as Whole Lotta Love by Zep, Baba O'Reilly by the Who
(both songs weirdly typical of old Greek musicians),  a lot of early Beatles
(he does Magical Mystery Tour!) and my favorite of all his jams:
"Linus and Lucy," the Snoopy theme.