Truckin’ in Jerusalem
Even the seasoned sound and technical staff at the venerable Jerusalem music club The Yellow Submarine don’t know what to make of it.
Tie dye is abundant, as are the combination of pony tails under colorful kippas. Pot smoke is noticeable everywhere, and the mass of 200 or so dancers are doing… this weird free form shuffle, a combination of haredi shuckling and Woodstock tripping. And it’s all in Jerusalem!
Must be the second annual Grateful Dead tribute concert featuring the great homegrown band The Elevators, a largely religiously observant band led by veteran Carlebach-inspired musician Aryeh Naftali, and featuring the amazing guitar work of Lazer Lloyd Blumen, leader of Jewish blues rocker Yood.
“Ehhh, do you mind taking the ceegarette outside?” asked staffers of the revelers, to little avail, in a classically delicious case of irony – Israelis asking Americans to stop smoking!
The ecstatic crowd was filled with a few old timers who might have seen the Dead in their heyday, but mostly consisted of some very enthusiastic 2nd and 3rd generation Deadheads in their 20s who were attempting to generate an authentic hippie experience. And the band did their part, with stellar versions of Dead staples like “Jack Straw”, “I Know You Rider”, and featuring Naftaly on some nifty steel guitar – “Dire Wolf” and “Ripple.” Blumen, especially was dazzling in bringing songs to jamming crescendos in which you thought the room was going to start vibrating by the intensity.
The band also played almost the entire Blues for Allah album, including the downright weird and inaccessible title track which closed the show, and left everyone walking out scratching their heads, but delighted and exhausted by what came before it.
Purple in excess
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Music, Pop Culture
Watching too many episodes of Red Band has got me wondering to what extent Israelis are aware of the great potential for tongue-in-cheek fun that rock and roll excesses provide.
Sure, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny airs pretty regularly here on cable, and nowadays it’s impossible for anyone in the world to think about 70s guitar rock reunions without certain sequences from of This is Spinal Tap creeping into one’s consciousness. But maybe a certain telescopic approach to cultural literacy – especially among Israel’s formerly Soviet segments – has meant that Israelis have faulty radars when it comes to rock and roll irony? How else can we explain the nation’s unabashedly burgeoning love for all-out metal, a love which is apparently spreading to overseas? And how else can we explain four upcoming Deep Purple shows at huge venues which kick off next week?
A washed-up nostalgia act in the West, Deep Purple represents the all time rock greats to Russians: “Three biggest bands in the Soviet union were The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple,” promoter Yuri Laschov recently told Haaretz.
Or, as drummer Ian Paice told The Jerusalem Post, “We’re not the most fashionable unit touring out there in the world. We’re not spring chickens, but the shows we’re putting on are among the best we’ve ever done.”
To many, the distinction between Spinal Tap and Deep Purple is fuzzy at best, and a recent piece in Haaretz recalls many of Deep Purple’s greatest Spinal Tap moments on Israeli stages over the years:
The performance by Deep Purple at Tzemach at the start of the 1990s was, by most accounts, one of the most pathetic rock ‘n’ roll jokes ever seen here. The soloist, Joe Lynn Turner, (who at that time was replacing Ian Gillan, the singer in the ‘classic’ makeup of the band), struck ridiculous poses of a rock star, even though his renditions were very feeble. In the breaks between numbers, according to a soundman who was there, Turner hastened backstage where his girlfriend was waiting with a hot hairdryer to refresh and style his hair.
That was only the beginning. An even more embarrassing incident occurred when Ritchie Blackmore, Deep Purple’s legendary guitarist, left the stage in the middle of the show and refused to come back. Why? There are two versions, both of them so funny one could weep. According to one version, Blackmore was frightened by the green sticklights that many in the audience were holding in their hands and screamed at Zeev Isaac, the show’s producer, “They’re throwing fire at me! I’m not going back until they stop throwing fire at me!”
According to the second version, some people in the audiences threw teddy bears onto the stage, and this is what frightened Blackmore. Teddy bears? Eyal Ortal, a lawyer from Netanya and a fan of Deep Purple who was at the performance, explains: “Ian Gillan was into animal rights and at one Deep Purple performance in the 1980s he spoke about the killing of bears in Canada. After that, fans of the band started throwing teddy bears onto the stage as a sign of solidarity with Gillan’s agenda, and that’s what happened in Israel, even though Gillan was no longer in the band.”
With such a strong demand for repeat performances along these lines, perhaps it’s impossible that the Deep Purple anticipation is devoid of irony after all.
Better than Paul?
With Beatlemania belatedly in full swing in these parts, ahead of the September 25 appearance in Tel Aviv of Paul McCartney, the $130 tickets are being gobbled up at a rapid pace.
I’ve been underwhelmed at the prospects of seeing Sir Paul with 69,999 other aging Beatles fans. Sure, if I was presented a ticket on a silver platter, I’d be there without a moment’s hesitation. But aside from hearing maybe 8 or 10 Beatles classics, one of them probably being “Michelle”, the only clunker on Rubber Soul, the rest of the show is going to be… well, Paul’s solo career.
Let’s face it, the legends that claim an imposter took over after Paul was killed in that 1966 car crash, may not be too far from accurate. Sure the fake Paul mustered on with stellar work through the White Album and Let It Be, but by the time his solo career was launched, he was plumb out of ideas. There have been occasional moments of that old Beatles magic in “Band on The Run”, and, uh… er.., well, some of those songs with Elvis Costello in the late 80s like “My Brave Face” were pretty punchy. But is anyone going to be happy listening to his latest offerings off Memory Almost Full, albeit his critically lauded latest album?
Pondering these issues, I took the wife and younger kids to see a Beatles tribute band on Thursday night in Jerusalem’s Safra Square at an end of summer free show for the city’s residents.
The Magical Mystery Tour Band has been together for seven years, and man, are they good! Not only do they sound as close to The Beatles classic sound as is humanly possible, they also play with the enthusiasm of the Fab Four on The Ed Sullivan Show.
It was one classic after another non-stop, from “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “All My Loving” to “And Your Bird Can Sing” and “Back in the USSR”. Even though these guys are native Hebrew speakers, their vocals are dead on, and their harmonies were fantastic.
As much as seeing Paul McCartney up on stage, even if he looked like a postage stamp in size, would be a once-in-a-lifetime thrill, for reliving the magic and wonder that was The Beatles, the Magical Mystery Tour did just fine.
‘Paul is alive’ rumors abound
Well, it’s official, sort of.
Paul McCartney is on the way play in Israel – which is being touted as the biggest concert in the country’s history.
Despite the PR firm of promotor Dudu Zerzevsky calling reporters Saturday night to notify them that McCartney would be appearing at Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park (seating upwards of 50,000), and all the papers and TV news shows running items on Sunday, there’s been no official confirmation, and McCartney’s publicist, Stuart Bell was quoted by AP as saying, “Nothing’s been confirmed.”
Still, I’ve been assured it’s a done deal, and baby boomers are already speculating at how much they’ll have to dole out for tickets to the show of a Beatle fan’s lifetime.
A Channel 10 news report said that prices would be in the NIS 500 range – that’s about $145. But it’s a given that no matter the price, the show will sell out.
Costs for the show being bandied about reach an estimated $4 million, including a 100-person production team, an extra-large stage and expansive sound system, and additional touches such as two vegetarian kitchens at the show’s location for the vigorously anti-carnivore musician.
Earlier this year, Israeli Ambassador to Britain Ron Prosor sent a letter to McCartney and the other surviving Beatle, Ringo Starr, inviting them to perform in Israel for its 60th birthday.
“We should like to take this opportunity to correct the historic omission which to our great regret occurred in 1965 when you were invited to Israel,” Prosor wrote, referring to a missed chance Israeli promoters had to book the Fab Four in 1965. Legend has it that members of the government denied the proper permits to perform in Israel on the grounds that their music might corrupt the country’s morals. But Beatles historian and aficionado Yoav Kutner disputes that theory.
”It never happened that way,” Kutner told Ha’aretz. “The concert was canceled because of a dispute between music promoters Giora Godik and Yaakov Uri. In 1962, Godik received an offer from the mother of the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein that they come to Israel. But [Godik] preferred to bring singer Cliff Richard, who was much more famous at the time. When Uri bought the rights to hold the concert two years later, Godik was angry that he blew the opportunity and went to the Knesset’s Finance Committee to persuade them to bar the promoters from taking out foreign currency.” At the time, expenditures of large amounts of foreign currency in Israel, which would have been used to pay the band, required government approval.
Hopefully, in the next day or two, the concert will become official, all the 40-60-year old fans who have spent their lives hoping to see The Beatles, will cash their savings accounts, and the country will experience a month of Beatlemania that had previously been denied.
Now, if only the Pixies would come here.
Oh Gad
Can a teen pop heartthrob be religiously observant and still sing about the getting closer to the Lord? You can if you’re Israeli crooner Gad Elbaz.
The 28-year-old hunky looking ‘mizrahi’ singer caused quite a storm around three years ago, when young, religiously observant female fans starting pinning his posters to their walls, displeasing both parents and rabbis, who still have that thing about worshiping false idols.
But when I interviewed him yesterday, his insisted that his aim is true, and that he’s trying to stir passion for God and the Torah, not for himself.
Over a year ago, Elbaz decided to branch out his message and relocated to Florida – where the message of God and Torah is surely lacking. Producer Rudi Perez, who’s worked with folks like Julio Iglesias, Christina Aguilera, and Michael Bolton, has taken up Elbaz’s cause, and English versions of his Hebrew standards should be hitting the unsuspecting American public soon.
In the meantime, Elbaz, who hasn’t played in Israel in a year and a half, is making a triumphant homecoming next week – performing at the majestic Caesearea Amphitheater.
The seating at the 3,000 seat outdoor auditorium is a pragmatic blend, which perfectly dovetails with Elbaz’s music – the left section is for men only, the middle section is mixed for couples, families and friends, and the right section will be the presumably all screaming girls.
The Lord is welcome in all sections.
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