Join Steven Lee Beeber, author of The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGBs, as he explores the Jewish artists who forged the New York's punk scene on the Lower East Side of the 1970s. His book, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk, published in 2008, is based on interviews with over 125 people—including punk legends Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein (Blondie), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Hilly Kristal (CBGBs owner), and John Zorn. Both the book and the talk dive into punk’s New York beginnings to reveal it as the most Jewish of rock movements in both makeup and attitude. Rooted in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, punk emerged as a powerful expression of Jewish cultural tradition, finding unique voice among the post-Holocaust generation. Mixing biography, cultural studies, and musical analysis, Beeber uncovers the irony, romanticism, and humor that defined the Jewish experience in punk rock, showing how New York Jewish rockers consciously and unconsciously reinvented both themselves and popular music.

Steven Lee Beeber's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Details, Spin, Playboy, Maxim, Mojo, the Boston Phoenix, and the Paris Review. He is editor of Awake: A Reader for the Sleepless. His website is www.jewpunk.com