Nostalgia Sunday – On the radio

August 28, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Music, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, tv 

It’s hard to describe how important radio was — and is — to Israelis but we’ll give it a shot. In a land where up until 20 years ago there was but a single television station — and a non-commercial one that shut down broadcasts at midnight, at the very latest — radio was where you got your news, every hour on the hour. Radio announced the founding of the State. Radio brought you the latest music. And it was radio that broadcast ads with catchy jingles which stuck in your head and the heads of everyone else around you, and everyone in the country, really.

The power of this collective commercials consciousness is so strong that even today, should you chant to people of a given age group, “Bo ligdol eetanu”, they will immediately snap their fingers twice and holler back, “Bank Hapoalim!” (click on this link and all the other links in this post and you’ll hear the jingles).

Shapam is the official broker for commercial airtime on the Voice of Israel and, by uploading a tiny portion of their archives, they have done a wonderful public service for all of those scratching their heads and going, “What was the name of that awful carbonated wine we used to drink because there was no good wine in Israel?” (Fantasia), “Did I imagine it or was that really Sassi Keshet singing the Dogli song?” (Yes, it is he), or “How long has Osem been using that same tag line” (At least since 1961, if we go according to the release date of this early “Zeh tov, zeh tov, zeh Osem” spot).

Some very famous singers supplemented their incomes by writing and singing ad jingles, from The Dudaim pitching Wissotzky Tea in the Sixties, Arik Einstein hawking Telma instant soup or Danny Sanderson promoting Yosef the Carpet King in the Seventies. It’s understandable, as Israeli artists didn’t earn much then — or even now.

Following the great egg dearth of the 1973-4 Yom Kippur War, entertainer Gadi Yagil was hired to promote egg consumption in 1977 in the spot known as “Beitzim, beitzim“. The ad became a classic due, in no small part, to the fact that the listening public didn’t necessarily associate the song with the primary topic but rather, with its secondary meaning.

That same year, the airwaves got up and boogied to the disco beat with an ad for a new soft drink named for that thriving metropolis, that glorious city on the hill, that new Jerusalem which beckoned to all Israelis: Queens. Seriously.

Shandy, a mixture of beer and lemon soda, has recently been launched on the Israeli market. But this isn’t the first time. For a brief moment in 1982, there was a beverage on the market known as “British Shandy“. It was apparently terrible (one friend used to call it “British shandeh“) but the jingle has looped in my brain ever since. Another that arises unbidden in the dark hours of the night: Achim Farag (Farag Brothers)… 1,2,3,4 photo studios!

If you, like me, know with certainty that Dor ha-jeans shoteh Queens (The jeans generation drinks Queens), don’t wait a minute longer. There are many more jingles to click on and listen to at the Shapam site.

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Amy Winehouse was headed to Israel

August 28, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Music, Pop Culture 

Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse back when they worked together.

This summer might have ended up with a bigger bang than the one the residents of the South are feeling under the heat of regular rocket fire from Gaza. According to prolific British record producer, DJ and performer Mark Ronson, who performed at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds on Thursday night, his late partner/client Amy Winehouse had intended to join him in Israel for the show.

Ronson, who produced the acclaimed album Back to Back for Winehouse, who died last month in London, honored the late singer by playing reworked versions of several of her songs before the packed crowd of 5,000. According to a report in Ha’aretz, with tears in his eyes, he then asked the audience to applaud in honor of Winehouse, and noted that her brother, Alex, was in the audience.

“He looks just like Amy, only with short hair,” Ronson said, who performed with his band the Business Intelligence. One special guest who was able to come with Ronson to Israel was Boy George, the one-time iconic singer for Culture Club, who delighted the crowd with some of his classic hits.

Ronson didn’t only perform here, he also spent the morning of the show speaking about peace and music with a group of young Jewish and Arab Israelis at the Peres Center for Peace, in Jaffa. It was Ronson’s second visit to Israel this year, and he ended the show by vowing that he’d be back. It’s nice for the country to have friends besides Glenn Beck.

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New CD captures Kabbalat Shabbat in Tel Aviv

August 26, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Music, Religion 

The new CD from Tel Aviv's Beit Tefilah

It’s Friday in Israel and, as sun begins to set later this afternoon, more than 1,000 people will gather at the Tel Aviv Port to welcome the Sabbath Bride. It’s the weekly Kabbalat Shabbat service, run by the Tel Aviv-based Beit Tefilah Israel (“House of Israeli Prayer”), an organization which has set for itself the task of building ” an active Jewish community which speaks to the breadth of the secular public.”

Now, the egalitarian, pluralistic Beit Tefilah has released its first CD with music from their popular Friday service by the beach. The CD has 17 songs which are performed by the Beit Tefilah Ensemble, led by Atalya Lavi who participated as a contestant on the ninth season of “Kochav Nolad,” Israel’s version of American Idol.

The CD – called “A Tel Aviv Prayer” – includes both classic Kabbalat Shabbat liturgical works (such as Lecha Dodi and Adon Olam) and music composed to Israeli poetry (for example Haim Bialik’s Shabat HaMalka). There is even a Hebrew version of the Louis Armstrong song “What a Wonderful World” that substitutes for one of the psalms of Kabbalat Shabbat.

Beit Tefilah isn’t the first Israeli congregation to release an album of its music. Jerusalem’s Jewish Renewal community Nava Tehila did that already a few years back and has started work on a second CD.

The new Beit Tefilah CD is for sale online at http://www.btfila.bandcamp.com. If you want to try before you buy, every song is available to stream from the site too.

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Night of the living dead

August 10, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture 

With Tisha Be’av past us, a different nine days is beginning today.

Jerusalem-based Internet radio station Radio Free Nachlaot is launching their annual ‘Nine Days of Jerry’ broadcasting to mark the birth, death and life of Grateful Dead guitarist and 1960s cultural guru Jerry Garcia.

The station, which purports to be the place where Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and the music of the Dead intersect, is featuring nine days of Garcia-related music including many rare live performances by a number of guest DJs.

The highlight of the ‘Jerryfest’ will undoubtedly be on Sunday, August 14, when the celebrations peak with a live show in Jerusalem at Mike’s Place. The Elevators, a band based in the Mevo Modi’in area populated by the Carlebach-Dead crowd, will perform, led by Aryeh Naftali. Special guests will include blues/rock master Lazer Lloyd Blumen and Jewish soul veteran Yehuda Katz.

The evening, which is a fundraising event for the radio station, will begin with a festive Mexican dinner, followed by the show. And no matter where you are, you can listen in on a pay per view set up. More information is available here.

If past events like this are any indication, the spirit of Garcia and the Dead will be out in full force.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Shlomo Artzi Rocks On

August 7, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Music, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture, Profiles, Social Justice, tv 

This is Shlomo Artzi’s moment. Last night, he stood out among a stellar cast of performers before the rally for social justice in Tel Aviv, leading the crowd in a moving rendition of one of his greatest hits, Shir Baboker Baboker (Early Morning Song or Pitom Kam Adam) (“Suddenly, a man awakes one morning, feels himself to be a nation and begins walking”). But Artzi is no one-hit wonder; he has many to his credit along with a body of work spanning over 40 years that’s worth looking back on.

Artzi began his musical career at age 16 as a duo, Tsemed Sinai, together with girlfriend Riki Gal (then Rivka Menashe). There’s no footage online of the teenage pair but here they are, some years later, in a clip from educational TV.

After his army service, Artzi appeared as an actor in the television dramatization of the popular book series Hasamba, the Harry Potter of its day (for Israelis at least).

In 1973, together with his band Gveret Tapuach (Mrs. Apple – a nod, one assumes to his idols, The Beatles), he took second place in the Israel Song Festival with Shir Baboker Baboker.

The following year, he won the Israel Song Festival with Ha-Ballada al Baruch Jamili (The Ballad of Baruch Jamili). The song referred to a landmark familiar to anyone going up to Jerusalem: emblazoned in black paint on the side on the dilapidated Bab-el-Wad (Shaar HaGai) water pumping station were the words “Baruch Jamili P[etach] T[ikva] Palmach, 1948″. “Who was Baruch Jamili?” Artzi asked, plaintively. “What did Baruch Jamili do? / Where is he / Baruch Jamili?”

The high point of the evening was when the real Baruch Jamili was brought onstage. The song was criticized for encouraging vandalism and graffiti but my Israeli mother thought it was great and so did I.

He represented Israel in the Eurovision song contest in 1975 with the largely forgettable At v’Ani (You and I).

Like any long-lived performer, Artzi’s career has had its ups and downs. In the early 1980s, his popularity waned. I saw him in concert, if you can call it that – it was Artzi, a drummer and a reel-to-reel playback. And yet, it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen; he was the consummate showman, connecting with the audience and giving his all.

It didn’t help that in the mid-80s, hip comedy duo Tal Friedman and Moshe Frester used Artzi’s soft-rock music as foil in one of their routines. Friedman, as the world’s worst roommate, in interviewing innocent country bumpkin Frester for the privilege of renting out a closet in his Tel Aviv apartment, asks what music Moshe likes. The answer, “Shlomo Artzi,” repeatedly triggers an epileptic fit.

Despite the knocks, Artzi kept on going. His style evolved from pop to rock, he cultivated a new generation of fans and began filling large venues, including the Caesarea amphitheater. He’s become more outspoken but -– as always — knows how to please a crowd. Here he is closing the 2010 season of the local Dancing With the Stars. Who knew that only a year later, many of those same young people would again by galvanized by Artzi, this time for a far more worthy cause.

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