The Rabbinical School Dropouts are Sun Ra, the Hampton Grease Band, Frank Zappa and the Klezmatics all rolled into one. The music of the Friedmann brothers is fresh, imaginative and the future of Klezmer music. Their big band (featuring oboe, mandolin, bassoon, theremin, toy piano, tablas, etc.) storms through a dozen creative originals touching upon klezmer, jazz, funk, Latin, rock, and varied mishegoss along the way. Jewish garage jazz with a sick sense of humor from Long Beach, California. It’s been called Esoteric Space Klezmer, but mostly its just wild musical fun.


Mesquitto from Meggido
Counterfeit Gelt
Dung Gate
Solarium Khosdil
Pillow Rock
Yanatan HaKatan II


“The old, old, old school of Hebrew-aligned Klezmer music is mostly a relic — its reed-heavy sounds performed mainly at weddings and at unlucky kids’ bar mitzvahs. But California’s Rabbinical School Dropouts have taken Klezmer into new, spacey, Sun Ra-influenced territory. Key instruments like the oboe are still part of the RBD’s act, but it’s the addition of theremins, bassoons, mandolins, and other sub-kosher sounds that give their jazz-leaning performances a Zappa-inspired zip.” Read on.

“Recalling Zappa at his giddiest and least scatological, the Dropouts seem to have developed a klezmerist form of Sun Ra worship, decked out in kabbalah references and bad Yiddish puns. Vehicles Behind Comets (Ethnic Warrior), released last year, takes their irreverent Semitic space fusion well past the asteroid belt: it’s Exodus as Star Trek, with manna in the form of Guru Guru records. No matter how many metaphors I pile up, though, they won’t capture the band’s exuberant energy, heard clearly in both the dizzy instrumental pivoting of “Yeshiva School Fallout” (at five and a half minutes, it’s the longest song here; they’re jumpy spacey, not epic spacey) and the gusty grace of “Anne Frank’s Ghost.” Read on.

“Trying to categorize the Rabbinical School Dropouts is no easy task. The 10-piece klezmer, funk and rock band finds its inspiration from such diverse sources as Frank Zappa, Raymond Scott, Martin Denny, Charles Mingus, Bernard Herrmann, Shostakovich, They Might Be Giants, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan.” Read on


“The Rabbinical School Dropouts give a modern spin to an age-old sound, mixing klezmer with jazz and injecting a heaping dose of humor that includes their name.” Read on.


  “Unless the words ‘esoteric space’ precede it, calling the Rabbinical School Dropouts a klezmer band is a misnomer. Though they have familiarized themselves with its motifs and forms, a cacophony of bassoon, Indian tablas, theremin, bass, clarinet, oboe, trombone, saxophone, electric guitar and jazz drum kit indicates that they are more accurately an experimental music collective that draws on, nods to, and perhaps only because of our prior experience with that peculiar Ashkenazi musical form is described as, klezmer… The overall sound is akin to the whacked-out Cantina Band in the first Star Wars movie and they’re about as catchy. This is klezmer hijacked by the Animaniacs; intelligent, humorous and done to the extreme. You’ll be hard pressed not to get up and dance, and after all, that was the point of klezmer in the first place: dance music for parties.” Read on

San Diego Jewish Journal: “The snare drum rattles, the mandolin evokes a mystic, pulsing rhythm, the clarinet squeaks an Eastern European riff that makes the flesh rise with goose bumps. Add to this sound an experimental dose of hypnotic and chaotic, yet structured noise. Picture Fiddler on the Roof’s Tevye acting in a Felini movie. Meet the musicians who would be on this hypothetical soundtrack: the Rabbinical School Dropouts.” Read On.

“This is the sort of mostly-jazz, with a bit of a whacked edge that I enjoy immensely. From the deliberate “Adom-atik” Israeli-dance feel of the opener to “Nuclear Jet Set,” to the funked up “Mosquito from Megiddo” or the closing “Semitic Slam”, this is all a pleasure.” Ari Davidow