It’s 7:30 on a Tuesday night in Alphabet City and girls in dirndls are dancing indoors on long picnic tables at zum Schneider.  Oktoberfest doesn’t get raunchier than at this little Bavarian outpost of the East Village.  Boys in lederhosen, beer by the liter, and brotwurst - Eins, zwei, drei…gsuffa! 

The band that fuels the revelry is Mos’l Franzi and the Ja Ja Ja’s.  They have a brand new cd out that celebrates the Oompah.  They give you the traditional – “Roll out the Barrels (in German, natch) and they give you the new traditionals – “(Who the Fuck is) Alice” (Real title?  Who cares?) and “Life is Life”.

Generally speaking there’s a new pop song that the oompah bands in Munich are all playing during their Oktoberfest and the zum Schneider band usually has it ready to go here in New York as well.  “This year there didn’t seem to be a consensus,” Sylvester Schneider, maestro of  the Ja Ja Ja’s (and owner of the bar to boot) said.  “Usually about two or three weeks before Oktoberfest starts we have a pretty good idea of what will be the one new song that everyone is playing, but not this year.”

The cd runs toward the more traditional side but the band keeps the sound current.  It’s more about the energy and enthusiasm with which they play than it is the song itself.  There’s a subtle, if such a thing can be subtle, East Village punk sensibility that runs throughout.  This is not your German grandfather’s 50 piece brass band.  “We’ve got two originals on there as well, including the Volker Polka.”

“When Sylvester asked me to put the band together he was very clear that he wanted to play traditional oompah with East Village energy,” said band leader Benjamin Ickies. “And it’s a tall order.  We’re an incarnation of a working rock band, This Ambitious Orchestra.  We’re not playing ‘un-traditionally’ but with a lot more personality than you might hear in a song that’s one hundred years old.  Of course I can’t say that bands from a hundred years ago weren’t also playing with the same mindset.”

“This music,” Ickies said, “isn’t very challenging on a technical level.  The challenge is to have everyone bring every ounce of energy they can to it, together.  Of course, people bring their pre-conceptions to any kind of traditional or folk music. But there’s a reason this music is still around.  There’s a reason it’s stood the test of time.   We have to bring the energy to honor that.”

Mos’l Franzi and the Ja Ja Ja’s play Saturday through Tuesday through next weekend.