Woodstock in Jerusalem
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture
Photo courtesy of Yehoshua Halevi - Golden Light Images photography - www.goldenlightimages.com
It’s summer in Jerusalem and the living is easy. And thanks to our friends who run the Kraft Football Stadium, the city experienced one of its most enjoyable musical moments this week.
The Jerusalem Woodstock Revival, a 6-hour outdoor show held on Tu B’Av and benefitting American Football in Israel, featured a half dozen English-singing rock & roll acts,
While there wasn’t any nudity, mud, or flagrant drug use, the ‘festival’ succeeded beyond all expectations in channeling the good vibes of yesteryear, albeit with a unique Jerusalem take on things.
The kippot competed with the tie dye – often on the same patron, as the crowd of 1,400 spread their blankets spaciously on the Astroturf, and played frisbee, drank cold beer, juggled and grooved to the music.
The band I’m in – Dolly Weinstein – opened the show, and we had a blast, even though we had a hard time hearing each other due to the fact that we were refused a sound check. Oh well, when you’re playing 60s garage rock like ‘Hush’ and “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man’, sound quality is secondary, right?
Highlights included bluesman Ronnie Peterson and his band performing a scintillating set of Bob Dylan songs, ranging from the plaintive acoustic “With God on My Side” to the sinewy wail of “Highway 61 Revisited.”
Yood, featuring phenomenal guitarist Lazer Lloyd, would have made Jimi Hendrix smile, with a blistering set of Hendrix covers. Chicago bluesman Mark Rashkow joined the band midset to add some of his panache to songs like “Hey Joe” and “All Along the Watchtower.” However, despite an inspired take on “Hatikva” ala Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner, the band went a little over the top at some points with its free form histrionics and would have fared better sticking to the songs.
The crowd was also treated to spirited sets by Crosby, Stills and Nash cover band Long Time Gone and Doors tribute group Crystal Ship (featuring my buddy Steve Rodan on bass, and his son on drums), whose lead singer nailed Jim Morrison’s deep baritone. Local celeb Dave ‘The Hairdresser’ Silverman even made a guest appearance on harp.
But the musical highlight for many was the show closer Geva Alon. One of the country’s most gifted singer/songwriters, Alon nailed his tribute to Neil Young, managing to both eerily evoke the legend in versions of “Ohio”, “Heart of Gold” and “Rockin’ in the Free World” but to also infuse his own superlative style into those standards. He ended the night on a truly magical moment.
The crowd, some dressed in full hippie regalia, was a mix of Jerusalem-area middle aged Anglos, and younger native Israeli music lovers. One attendee said he knew so many people that he felt like he was at a bar mitzvah celebration. Adding to the festival atmosphere were the abundance of children running around and freely playing at the stations set up in one corner of the stadium. Even the porta-johnnys boasted long, Woodstock-length lines, but they were orderly and people were full of good cheer.
Organizers Carmi Wurtman, and AFI heads Steve Leibowitz and Danny Gewirtz, along with PR whiz Nadia Levine did an outstanding job in presenting the show, with almost no gaps between acts, plenty of concessions, impeccable sound, and even a huge screen running the original Woodstock film throughout the evening.
At the end of the draining night, Leibovitz announced that the concert would become an annual event. Can’t wait for next year.
Here’s a clip of Crystal Ship, and then one of Lazer Lloyd and Yood remaking ‘Hatikva’ ala Hendrix.
Legendary rock bassist chooses Jerusalem stone
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Immigrant Moments, Music, Profiles
The summer is full of flights with new immigrants coming to Israel from the US and Canada. In m my mind, they’re all latter-day Zionist heroes, but not all of them have played on records by Bob Dylan and Miles Davis, or shared a stage with The Doors or Steely Dan.
Meet Israel’s newest immigrant, Harvey Brooks – bass guitarist extraordinaire and the Forrest Gump of rock and roll. He’ll be arriving from Tuscon, Arizona with his wife Bonnie on an August 4th Nefesh B’nefesh flight, but his whole 40-year musical career has been one soaring flight.
He’s played bass guitar on some of the most groundbreaking records of the post-Beatles era – including Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew (1969), The Doors Soft Parade (1969) and 1968’s Super Session featuring Michael Bloomfield, Al Kooper and Stephen Stills. And that’s only a fraction of the some 100 albums he’s appeared on or produced over the last 40 years on his way to cementing his status as one of the most respected figures on the American music scene.
He spoke with me for an article in the The Jerusalem Post.
“We’ve been going back and forth for a number of years, and every time we’re here, we’d talk about moving,” said the 65-year-old Brooks, whose stepdaughter Lori lives in the Gush Etzion settlement Neve Daniel. “Our two other kids are secure and established now, and we figured this is the time for us, for an adventure. It’s a good time to come.”
Calling Tuscon home since 1998, Brooks and Bonnie opened a guitar and music shop (17th Street Guitars and World Music) inside an international food market, the 17th St. Farmer’s Market, and started a Web business together with Jerusalem-based Web developer Charlie Kalish call Treasure Hidden that sells items from both establishments as well as other artifacts. To add to the symbiosis, Brooks formed a band with the market owner, called the 17th Street Band, playing a mix of rock, soul and blues.
“We’ve just released an album called Positively 17th Street,” said Brooks proudly, adding that while he’s going to be spending most of his time in Jerusalem, he plans on keeping his US endeavors ongoing. But when asked if he’s going to become musically active in Israel, Brooks said, “absolutely.”
“There are some great musicians in Israel. The last time we were here, we got to meet Ehud Banai, he’s a wonderful man and a great artist. Hopefully, we’ll spend some time with him,” said Brooks.
Welcome to the ‘hood, Harvey.
Nostalgia Sunday – On the street where you lived…
Filed under: design, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Nostalgia Sunday, Travel
Today I visited all the houses where I’ve ever lived in Israel. Almost — I’ll get to that in a minute. Thanks to Zoomap.co.il, which has been photographing the city streets and each and every building in Israel, you too can take a look at your old digs and check up on how badly the place has continued to deteriorate since you yourself lived under its leaky roof.
For example, the apartment building near trendy Sheinkin Streeet in Tel Aviv where I don’t live anymore. Don’t be put off by the disgusting facade. Location is everything.
And then the place in glorious north Tel Aviv, off HaYarkon Park, where I moved to escape trendiness and find parking.
And the place after that — not a great apartment — but still right on the park.
I started to get hooked on finding a picture of every place I’d ever lived here. That’s when I found out that Zoomap also has its flaws: this is a picture of the building in front of the Jerusalem building where my family lived in 1973-4. You can see our building peeking out on the left-hand side. Apparently the Zoomap folk were too tuckered out to walk up the hill to take pictures of the cul-de-sac.
But I got back on track with this picture of my grandmother’s old apartment which was Party Central for several years in the early 80s.
I could not find an address for the Hadassah Youth Center on Mt. Scopus and so could not do a search for a picture — another failing of Zoomap is that, like GPS, it doesn’t recognize institutions, only addresses — but I’m pretty sure this is the immigrant absorption center in Dimona where Young Judaea parked us for a few months om 1979. Again, the dowdy appearance is deceiving; the Black Hebrews were also living there at the time, which made it kind of cool.
And this is where I live now! Back to Jerusalem, just up the street from grandma’s old apartment. Life is funny.
Google Earth doesn’t get down to building resolution for Israel so use Zoomap to take a trip down memory lane. Or purchase some real estate. It’s part of Bezeq’s 144 directory assistance site which is now translated into English. Happy trails!
Night Garden in Jerusalem Exhibited the Beauty of Solar Power
Sunshine helps flowers grow and now, thanks to a joint collaboration of the Israel Electric Corporation and O*GE Architects, it makes enormous steel and metal flowers grow, too.
In mid June, visitors to Jerusalem could stroll through a solar powered garden of larger-than-life sized flowers. As described by O*GE Architects, visitors could “immerse themselves in a sensual delight of magical light, bright sounds and fragrant aromas… The garden demonstrates the importance and beauty of alternative energy.”
The garden included a variety of flowers in different sizes, shapes, colors, and types of illumination. The Giant Lotus flowers, for example, towered at over 4 meters in diameter and would open and close, subtly changing colors. The tulips, on the other hand, were illuminated by a single color in varying intensities. Dewdrop flowers were bunched together in masses, creating “a poetic ambience of tranquility, sensual beauty, and pure serenity.”
The movement of the flowers was accompanied by music composed by Ravid Hang and Andy Isler. (The music can also be heard in the clip above.)
O*GE Architects hope to continue exploring issues of architecture and design, environmental protection, and social responsibility. They pursue many environmental design projects, including their Recycle Be-shikle Workshop.
Read more about solar power in the Middle East::
Phone Home with Sunbeam Power Using Lebanon’s Alfa
Solar Energy is Israel’s Best Energy Bet
Rich Oil State Dubai Plans to Power Up with Solar Energy
(This post was written by Karen Chernick, the Arts and Design editor at greenprophet.com)
For the home
Filed under: Art, Business, design, General, Israeliness
When you live in the Middle East, even the uber-Westernized version that is Israel in 2009, you need some touches of ‘real’ civilization now and then. And when you live in Jerusalem, which, it must be said, can be somewhat provincial compared to the more cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, you’re always grateful for the pockets of fine living, wherever they may be found.
One of those pockets rests at the corner of Ben Shetach and Hasoreg streets in downtown Jerusalem, sandwiched between Jaffa Road and Nahalat Shiva. Sitting catty-corner from one another are Hafatzim, an Israeli company that produces and markets home accessories and Harmony, a high-end home furnishings store. Hafatzim, which means both ‘objects’ and ‘wishes’, offers a line of home accessories created for the line of stores in Israel, Egypt, Italy, southern France, India and Vietnam, and imports high quality crafted products from England, the Czech Republic, Albania and Ecuador.
Harmony, just across the street, offers European furnishings, both sleekly modern and comfortably contemporary, as well as a large selection of home accessories and a full level of infant and toddler furnishings and toys. This is the place to pick out an elegantly designed Natuzzi couch, Provencal style dishes or clever Luka stickers for the walls of your home. Basically, it’s all the things that you wish you didn’t need or desire, but do want, all sleekly clever or plushly European. Hafatzim, on the other hand, is more colonial India, taking, if you will, the more positive aspects of colonialism, such as teak furnishings and pure cotton tableclothes that evoke more genteel times.
There is much that is expensive in these stores, but, they both have sales, and often. Hafatzim also offers a newsletter that informs interested customers about upcoming sales, as well as a gift registry and other treats. Hafatzim products are sold at the Tel Aviv store in the neighborhood of Neve Tzedek, in Rehovot, in Jerusalem and on-line. The stores’ wares are also sold wholesale to hotels, stores and retail chains, restaurants and other business establishments at special rates. Harmony’s sales are less publicized, but it always pays to ask about a certain piece of furniture that’s caught your eye, cuz you never know when they have something discounted in that same line. And Harmony recently opened an outdoor furnishings store just across the street, and just in time for summer living.
Happy shopping.
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