"You think you're your own age, but that's an illusion. In the songs, you're all ages together all the time"

With a new and wonderful solo album and a reissue of Punch's debut album that will be celebrated with two concerts in Ozan, Yossi Babliki, one of the most exciting heroes of Israeli rock, tells on the "Culture Committee" podcast about the anger at the politicians, talks about cancer and discovers in what sense he is the Shimon Peres of rock .

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Nir Yahav and Nadav Menuhin

11/09/2022

Sunday, September 11, 2022, 00:05

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Time is the most tested illusion there is.

Babliki (Photo: Amnon Viner)

Yossi Babliki, one of the most exciting heroes of Israeli rock in the last three decades, does not miss the days when his band scorched the radio with hits like "Adina" or "Vandama Shashuv".

"Here now the first Punch record has been re-released, after 31 years. It's a long, long time, and a lot and a lot of appreciation and recognition that it's not taken for granted, and at a certain age you already start to appreciate the fact that you can be nostalgic in real time about your life - and not just 30 A year ago to say 'it wasn't bad' - because I hated that period. I was bad and bitter in my 20s-30s. I didn't feel understood, I didn't feel connected, that what I dreamed of was coming true. Let's go back to now: here now, in -2022 I have a lot of appreciation and gratitude for what happened to me."

In the "Culture Committee" podcast, Babliki - who recently launched a new solo album called "Dreams Part I" and at the same time celebrates the re-release of the Punch band's debut record - talks about the passing of time, the new songs, the health battle with cancer, the end of Punch's road ', the dreams, the companions and the anger at the politicians.

Parts of the conversation are below, and you can listen to the whole thing right here.

If you want to listen to the podcast on Spotify - click here

On dealing with cancer:

"For me, 'War and Peace' is a song that talks about an illness. I've had professional cancer four times already, a relatively mild cancer, and the kind that if it's discovered and the tests are done once every three months - then if it comes back, it's chronic like that, but it's possible take care of it. But when such clouds approach, it really is war. It's 'armies marching into the city', and sometimes it's scarier than war, it's your body, it's right here. Really 'War and Peace' is an unusual poem in my writing because I'm a man of questions , I'm not a person of answers, answers scare me many times in songs. In 'War and Peace' there is some closed case where you do respond, you do receive an answer, you receive a balm for your pain. It was a prayer song of mine that I put together again in the release of 'Dreams Part' A, and it was important for me to tell myself that among all the questions and doubts and doubts and stings - yes, there are times when you receive an answer, you are saved."

"Another one of our illusions, which dreams shatter, is that you think you are your own age, because the body tells this story and time and chronology, you are all ages together all the time. You are both this three-year-old child and the old man you don't know yet. In the end, time He is the most tested illusion there is. And I think that songs really have this amazing thing that you can identify with very different elements of yourself in time. You can be this kid in the sixth grade and this old man in a nursing home and also your time, and this time travel for me opens up a lot of places in my personality , that as Yossi at the age of 57 - it's terribly limiting."

"Look, on the one hand, age is an achievement. Because voila, I wasn't sure I'd make it. And on the other hand, you know, there's something about old age, for someone like me who only thinks about the future, a sort of Shimon Peres of rock and roll - I have no past, I have no present , only dreams, come on - there is something at this age that poses a huge challenge. There are those who open it up to a more global way of thinking, there are those who are just upset that they don't have much time left and there are those who are so responsible and smart and prudent and I am all of these together."

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About Punch's demo album:

"If there is something that fills me this year, that tells me wow, the road was worth it - it's the demo album. It's an album that I constantly felt was a piece of my youth and dreams and the most authentic statement that I and my friends had back then, in 1986, as young guys who Not yet on Network C. At the time, we really wanted to release it on cassette. We were very jealous of Pollyanna Frank, on the issues of the hat, DXM, and we were lucky that we were signed and had hits already, and it was already abandoned. But we had the feeling that our real debut album as a band, as a punch ', it's not there. It's like our chapter A, it doesn't have a record. Life is life and this cassette circulated among Punch fans in such a way that every time someone would give me back a burnt CD of these songs, and every time it would burn me with this burnt CD , you have no idea. It's really a feeling as if your age 3-0 has been erased, and it's a basic, very basic age,And when the third ear - I think it's time to give them some kind of Israel award for what they do in music here in Israel - they approached me to do Punch's first, and asked if there were any demos we wanted to add, I said - no demo, I have a whole record to give you.. ".

On the time he worked in the property tax department of the Tel Aviv municipality:

"I was released from the IDF and tried to be a stair cleaner, or a house cleaner, that sponge doesn't work for me.

I was bad.

The house was dirtier when I was done with it.

I understood that there would be no money from this.

Then my friends started working at the municipality and told me an amazing job: you come, sign a ticket, then you go, walk around the streets, no one sees you, and you come in one sign a ticket.

I rolled into the department where you go and inform people who haven't paid their property tax that their place is going to be closed, and I didn't understand where I was getting into.

It's not like you're telling someone they won the lottery, you're now bringing them painful news, you're the messenger, and dogs are on you and affairs... and a month there I held on, and it's a month that creatively was one of the most blessed in my life.

'We haven't learned anything yet from wandering the streets', and 'I'm in love with a girl from Bat Yam'.

Because you see the people and you say, Oh God, that's why you want to close the place, have you gone crazy?"

"In 2013, I did some thinking for myself, and I realized that it is impossible to have more new songs in a Punch concert - because the catalog is such that Punch's audience expects about 14 songs, and if you didn't give them, you didn't give a good Punch performance I didn't like this idea, and then I said that under the 'Yossi' hat no one expects too much. This is an area that I can still plow, I can sow it with new materials, without when I put on a show then they will tell me: why wasn't it? Adina' and things like that."

A piece of youth.

Punch at the beginning of the journey (Photo: Courtesy of Black Gold/The Third Ear)

On the plans for the future:

"There is 'The Prime Minister's Lawyers,' a rock opera that I started writing during the Telansky and Olmert trials and it has been a long time. And it is already something that is close to being lit. And I have a project of Psalms. I am not a fan of most of the sacred music that is made, it is I'm bored - and I'm a singer, and I'm a musician, and I have a lack of touching these texts in a way that would personally move and move me. It's currently a failed project of two or three years, I don't have one good song yet, maybe there won't be, and I strongly believe in projects that have no limit."

"One of the things we need, in my opinion, is to get rid of the politicians. People who do election rounds one after the other are people who should resign, 120 people from the Knesset. If your house committee leaves the house and says we can run the house, then that means he resigns, right? So They make another committee. It must be legislated in a fundamental law, that a Knesset that dissolves resigns, and [that instead of all the MKs come] new ones... No one gives the verdict on the money of these elections - [it could have been] another hospital In the north, more dormitories, more social workers who can heal more things here."

Rock and Roll's Shimon Peres.

Babliki (Photo: Amnon Viner)

On the protests in Balfour:

"I don't believe in Balfour. I've lived all my life between the religious and the secular, between the right and the left. I'm in the middle of these stories. You understand how it's perceived on the other side, and you say: I'm not transferring a human being to me, so what are you doing? If you have an opinion, you're supposed to convince the other side. You're convinced of yourself. So I didn't connect with it."

"There has never been a band in my life that I loved as much as Algiers. Aviv and Gabriel remember the blessing, this is the closest thing to a rock revolution that my eyes have seen, and I was there [and saw] how it was created and how it rose and how it happened and it gripped and the despair and the hope, and I was so emotional In the first years as the last or the first fans of the band. I really think that Aviv and Gabriel are my most favorite creators, who touched my heart the most in the last 20 years also in the world, absolutely, and I think that in some place Algiers and the works of Aviv and Gabriel arranged some place that we Even in Punch we didn't realize it ourselves. These are two huge creators, even after Algiers and alongside Algiers, really huge, they diminished again. They rewrote the book of Israeli rock, opened pages to it that we didn't know about, suddenly it's no longer a sound to do It's a pose that you're a band from London, you're committed to the place, you're committed to yourself, you're committed to the problems and also to the beauty that this place produces. This, for me, breaks the equation."

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• Yossi Babliki

• punch'

• Algiers