FROM GRADE SCHOOL
Meet The New Boss,
Same As The Old Boss
TO GRAD SCHOOL
Israeli rock 'n' roll rebels against those who stopped rebelling.
Except, of course, for the veterans still putting out hits.
LARRY DERFNER ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
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LOIS HARON
8516989
Allied Member ASID
el Aviv — After three Is-
raeli teen-agers were
trampled to death trying
to get into the Arad rock-
'n'-roll festival in July, President
Ezer Weizman concluded that
the import of American pop cul-
ture, especially rock, were in
large part to blame.
"We have to be wary of the
Madonnas, we have to be wary
of the Michael Jacksons," Mr.
Weizman intoned.
The president's remarks gave
the impression, especially to
Jews abroad, that the country's
young people were turning away
from Israeli culture and chasing
after American rock 'n' roll, just
like they chased after everything
else that smacked of American
money, glamour, sex and free-
dom.
What the president didn't no-
tice was that the youths caught
in the Arad stampede were
struggling to see an Israeli rock
band, Mashina, not an Ameri-
can one. The Arad festival fea-
tured only Israeli,
Hebrew-language rock'n'roll.
Same old song
For 20 years, there has been
this unlikely thing called Israeli
rock, and it is more popular here
than the American or English
brands. Some of it is truly good,
occasionally even inspiring.
This erev Rosh Hashanah,
state-run Israel Television's
Channel One will not be pre-
senting its usual entertainment
program of Eretz Yisrael and re-
ligious songs, but instead will air
an Israeli rock show taped at Tel
Aviv's Hard Rock Cafe.
In the Top Twenty display at
Tel Aviv's Tower Records, col-
lections of ABBA and "Top of the
Pops" rank highly, but No. 1 is
the latest album by Rami Kle-
instein, which has sold some
60,000 copies. The equivalent
sales in the United States would
be 30 million copies.
Beneath Mr. Kleinstein's
record, the display is dominated
by albums by the most popular
singer in Israeli history, Arik
Einstein, by
singer/comedian/talk-show-host
Gidi Gov, and by intellectuals'
favorite Yehudit Ravitz.
All these artists, especially
Mr. Kleinstein and Mr. Gov, sing
rock 'n' roll, but they do a lot of
adult love ballads, too. They are
mainstream Israeli pop stars,
and appeal to teen-agers, their
parents and sometimes their
grandparents. Mr. Einstein him-
self is a grandfather, while the
others are in their mid-30s to
mid-40s.
The Witches' latest
single includes the
refrain, "You wake
up in the morning
and you hate
yourself.'
Beyond them are the hardcore
Israeli rockers, who are younger
and more difficult. The most no-
torious — and arguably the best
— is Aviv Geffen. In his early
20s, he has a bisexual stage per-
sona, plasters his face with
clown make-up, speaks
unashamedly of his psychologi-
cal deferment from the army,
and is the composer and scream-
er of the most famous line in con-
temporary Israeli rock: "We are
the f—ked generation!"
It was the signature lyric of a
song about being an abused child
of drunken, violent parents. Mr.
Geffen's unpretty voice on this
and other songs about an un-
pretty Israel can cut through
you.
Strawberry fields aren't
forever
But in Israel as in America,
it's hard to stay a convincing
rock-'n'-roll rebel once you've
made it.
"To sing, 'We are the f—ked
generation,' while you're living
in a villa — it's a joke," said Yu-
val Safian, 27, looking through
the CDs at Tower.
Asked if there was a spirit of
rebellion in Israeli rock, Mr. Safi-
an replied, "What is there to
rebel against? Our parents al-
ready rebelled, then they came
back."
Until a couple of decades ago,
the "chitlin' circuit" of Israeli pop
music was the Army Entertain-
ment Corps, where singers
learned how to perform cute
numbers in a happy, insipid
style.
For today's rockers, the route
up is through the clubs, mainly
in Tel Aviv, where nothing real-
ly happens until after midnight,
and performers tend to come on
tough, tortured or inscrutable.
One of the new alternative
groups is The Witches, a
women's trio playing basic
garage rock, and whose latest
single includes the refrain, re-
peated over and over at high
speed: "You wake up in the
morning and you hate yourself"
They're not bad.
One of the newer, most suc-
cessful and interesting groups is
Tea Packs, whose members
came out of the poor develop-
ment towns of the Negev Desert.
Unique among Israeli rockers,
Tea Packs lead singer Kobi Oz
smiles nonstop onstage, and
dances around joyously in his
long, braided ponytail and Bud-
dy Holly-style glasses.
"We bring in music from
North Africa, Turkey, Scotland,
plus straight rock 'n' roll and so-
phisticated lyrical texts — which
is a Jewish tradition — and
come up with a music that is
purely Israeli," said Mr. Oz.
This, to him, is the New Israeli
Music.
Yehuda Eder, 44, is a rock
producer and one of the founders
in the mid-70s of Tammuz, con-
sidered the first Israeli rock
band. "For us rock 'n' roll was re-
bellion," Mr. Eder said. "We were
rebelling against our parents,
who brought us up to think only
about the nation, the nation, the
nation, to love the nation, and
we started singing about per-
sonal love and personal pain,
which up until then wasn't le-
gitimate.
"There's no rebellion anymore
in Israeli rock 'n' roll but that's
also the same all over the world.
There's no real identity today to
Israeli rock 'n' roll but again,
that's the way it is everywhere
else in the world."
But there are some identify-
ing characteristics to Israeli rock
— an emphasis on meaningful
lyrics, and a mixture of Eastern
and Western instrumentation
and melodies. It's a music that
comes out of its time and place,
which is saying a lot for rock. El