Joel Westheimer

Liner Notes for Az Iz

Recorded 1988, New York, NY

except for (bonus track): b-a-b-y with Rachel Bart, 1990

That’s the Night: The lyrics are adapted from a poem by Pam Burdman. Pam wrote the poem in spring 1985 during the anti-apartheid/divestment protests on the Princeton campus.

They came wearing black armbands, their convictions on their sleeves / From the depths of the library / They came wearing alligators from their J.P. Stevens sheets / They tried to hide their questions, but they just couldn’t stop the leaks

That’s the night you warned how being different takes its toll / That’s the night I knew that you could be controlled

They didn’t know the hunger, they didn’t know the pain / Of only knowing the heat of death miles from their home /  / They preferred to walk right by you, right by the chapel too / To the crowd that was forming to hear the Old Nassoons

Remember the time you told me that the newspapers were just not important to you and that the news was just a little like MTV / You said the New York Times and the New York Post was a New Yorker’s pledge to a New York state of mind and that you weren’t in it 

That’s the night you warned how being different takes its toll / That’s the night I knew that you could be controlled

Well a general, he controls many men / And a judge now, he controls with his pen / And you say the banker owns the house in which you’re livin’ / None need control what you believe in

That’s the night you warned how being different takes its toll / That’s the night I knew that you could be controlled

HaZ’man (The Time): For my sister for her wedding.

They tell me you were six years old when we first met, you held me in your arms / now that you are 29, and the time has drawn its line across your lives

Ha’Zman higia, atem b’Yachad / ani le dodi, ve dodi li / I am to you my beloved, and you are to me / ve dodi li

With the soft beginning light that has carried you on the echoes of the new / a signal of the time has come; when your hurried lives are slowed to share for two

We plan to learn to buy to sell, to publish what we know and what we say / and though we rarely publish this, we know what’s worth to have is that which we can give away

Poison in the Fog: I wrote this song in 1985 or 86 as the AIDS crisis was becoming a topic of regular media coverage. Reagan was President and gave precious few resources to combat the crisis. Parents who had aids were pressured to take their children out of school. In one famous case of that time, a family’s house was burned down by angry neighbors who were sure their children would catch AIDS if the family did not move away. Misinformation about AIDS was being spread (like a fog) while the epidemic continued to grow. One verse says “there’s 18,000 gone and soon so many more.” That number would grow to more than 30 million.

Your eyes look past me in curiosity and fear / I’m just another entry in a doctor’s log / You want to brand me like a leper or a queer / I’m the poison, you’re the fog

I’m just sitting on the outside looking in, and I am noticing your chagrin / You can’t hold me in your arms ever again, it’s a shame

It’s creeping in on little cat’s feet, neatly tucked between whole wheat, like a sandwich for the meek, so you just turn the other cheek

While you’re riding on your moral high, snug like a bump up on it’s log, claiming you help to find a cure for this / Who could find the poison through the fog?

There’s 18,000 gone and soon so many more / will be passing through the door of the closets that we’ve built / to house the destitute and poor / It’s a shame

The budget’s not your primary concern / There’s money left to burn, and it’s clear we haven’t learned that this will kill

You bar my children from their teachers and their schools / You taunt with fires from an angry mob / You think you’re safe, it’s just from needles and for fools / While the poison grows beneath the fog

I’m the poison you’re the fog

B-a-b-y: My first ever nephew was born and I wanted to write him a song! Rachel Bart and I recorded this in one session in a cabin on Lake Oscawana with a four-track recorder.

There’s a new b-a-b-y in our lives…