Wednesday, April 28, 2010

24 Days

Remember the blog post from three days ago about Bob Dylan's "Neighborhood Bully", an ironic folk-rock take-down of Israel's hypocritical opponents? Well, here is a video that characterizes our feelings about Israel's 62nd birthday. It features Canada's greatest folk composer, the incomparable Leonard Cohen, who went to a Jewish day school and composed such well-known songs (full of allusion to Jewish themes and the Bible) as "Hallelujah".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYK8pnEr4d0

This is a video of Cohen playing a concert in Tel Aviv last year, on September 24th. Tel Aviv is often called "The City that Never Sleeps" (New Yorkers, don't roll your eyes. Every region thinks they have one, it's not their fault they're not us!), because of its 24/7 hustle and bustle. Leonard Cohen's show comes less than a year before the upcoming Bob Dylan concert and an array of other exciting musical events to occur this year in Tel Aviv (off the top of my head, I know Metallica's coming soon, but that might not be everyone's cup of tea...).

Though big bands might be wary at first of traveling to Israel to perform, once they see the enthusiasm of Israeli fans at a concert, they know it's worth the trip. And aside for the big bands, there are the amazingly diverse and talented artists within Israel - bands like the funky "The Apples" or "Funkenstein", the profoundly soulful reggae of Idan Raichel, the politically left-wing oriented rap of Hadag Nachash and the Zionism-inspired rap of Subliminal (sometimes spelled Sabliminal), the incomparable violinist Itzhak Perlman (who played, among other things, the theme of Schindler's List) and other virtuosos like Gil Shaham (Israel has more violinists per capita than any other country in the world), the jazz and jazz-fusion artist Avishai Cohen, a tremendous bassist who shares a name with the trumpetist Avishai Cohen of another jazz act, a trio of Cohens...

We could go on forever... Like we said before, the music scene of Israel, especially Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, is hopping 24/7!
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The contest to ride in the Parade in the electric car that will soon be featured in Israel's battery swap stations ends this Monday, May 3rd. Don't miss the opportunity to ride up Fifth Avenue in this groundbreaking innovation - enter now before it's too late!

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