Category: English

If Neil Young doesn’t come to Israel, then

I’ll go see him elsewhere. I’ve just received my entry ticket to the Rock Werchter festival. Neil Young is performing on July 4th, the second day of the 4-day festival.

I became a fan of Young in the past few years. I love his songs, his lengthly guitar solos, and his political thoughts. It’s amazing that this singer is still creating new and exciting material all the time. Many of his generation (he’s been in Woodstock!) are not active anymore.

I’ve featured his songs a few times on the blog, and here’s the song No Hidden Path from his last album Chrome Dreams II:

More about Neil Young in Wikipedia, and for news, check out Thrasher Wheat’s excellent fan blog.

Apart from Young, the festival has lots of other big names that are definitely worth seeing: Radiohead, R.E.M, Lenny Kravitz, My Morning Jacket and Moby to name a few. Check out the site for all the details.

So, in two months time, I’ll be at a small Belgian village, enjoying those performances. Yeah!

Happy Passover 2008

Last year I’ve complained the same ritual repeats itself every year. This time, your suffering Jew complains about the fact the eve of the holiday is on Saturday, thus taking away a vacation day from work.

Being a Jew is never easy, and especially hard during the 7 days of Passover. No bread, no pizza, no cookies and no beer! Luckily, I skip these rules…

Dancing Camel Party Passover 2008

Regarding the beer: I’ve attended the traditional “Biur Hametz” ceremony at Dancing Camel’s brewery in Tel Aviv. Instead of cleaning and burning down every piece of bread, as requested by Jewish tradition, we “got rid” of all the beer (non-Kosher as well).

There were 4 regular commercial beers, and 6 special seasonal beers. I’ve tasted all of them, and it was very fun. It’s just a pity that the sound in the brewery was awful, and it was hard to talk with other people. I’ll check it out next year!

Anyway, I don’t have too much to say except Happy Passover!

Max Romeo in Zion

In the past few months I’ve dived into reggae music. One of my favorite artists is Max Romeo, and I was lucky enough to see this veteran reggae prince, here in Israel:

Max Romeo

After a short warmup by his 7 band members, I was excited to see a 60+ man with long gray dreadlocks sing clearly and dance on the stage.

His repertoire includes lots of hits. He began with some big hits, but it seemed that it took him some time to warm up. At the beginning of the show he looked as if he had done this act too many times. His band was enthusiastic throughout the show.

Later on, Max Romeo and the crowd got closer together and the bass beat was felt strongly across the hall. The peak was his song “I chase the devil” which was renewed by The Prodigy years later, and was a big hit.

My favorites were “Little time for Jah”, “Three Blind Mice”, “One step forward”, “200 years of history” and “Public enemy no 1.” which wrapped up the show.

Max Romeo In Tel Aviv

The crowd didn’t let go of him and demanded more and more songs. His guitarist promised that he’ll be back on the next day for another show…

A few more notes: his base guitar player (a female) played on headless bass and there was something that I’ve never seen before: Sometimes they began playing a part of the song, stopped playing, asked “Are you ready?” and then played the song from the beginning. Well, that was the first time I’ve seen this…

Anyway, it was a great musical and emotional experience.

Max Romeo, March 5th, 2008, live at “Barby”, Tel Aviv.

More pictures of Max Romeo’s show in Tel Aviv

Idan Rabinovici – Young and Touching Singer-Songwriter

Idan Rabinovici recently released his debut album named Bedroom Folk. He celebrated the release in a big performance, with lots of musicians:

His style is usually minimalistic. He accompanies himself with an acoustic guitar, and sometimes another person plays along or sings along. At this special show there were lots of musicians with various musical instruments.

Idan Rabinovich

The show was great. Apart from the full album’s songs, we had the chance to hear songs that didn’t make it into the album. The place, Levontin 7, was packed, and Idan’s excitement was felt all over.

Since it took me too long to write about this performance, it’s hard for me to elaborate about the show, but I can conclude that it was great. I’ve purchased the album and I listen to it again and again.

So, if you’re living in Israel and interested in good original folk music in English, you can see his next shows through his MySpace site or you can buy the album here (Hebrew site).
I usually prefer buying albums at live shows – more money goes to the artists and less money goes to the middle men.

So, I enjoyed his music, and you also will.
His next show is on April 17th, at “Zusammen”, Lilenblum 25, Tel Aviv.
More pictures from Idan Rabinovici’s special show.

Rave Cook – Yet Another Great Street Party

Tel Aviv’s street parties could be the reason for building the city.

Rave Cook Street Party 2008

Even if it wasn’t the original plan of the founding fathers, this spring brings fabulous parties to the streets. Like the Purim party, this party lacked big sponsors, thus making it a great experience.

Rabbi Cook street was closed on a sunny Friday afternoon and the party went through with music, live bands and drummers all over the place.

Tel Aviv Street Party
Enough said. Here are more of my pictures from Rave Cook 2008.

And Mr. Lerman‘s pictures are here.