A song back with Carmela Gross Wagner, 2011/Dave Shahar
In the list of improbable things in the history of local culture, we will surely also find the iconic status of a band with a name like Carmela Gross Wagner, not to mention the content of its songs (and we will talk more of course).
But this is the reality: more than 30 years after their seminal debut album, the cheeky kids of the neighborhood take the stage as living legends.
In the cycle picture of the famous golden age of Israeli rock, Carmella Gross Wagner is one of the more unusual graduates.
Less hit and pop, more intellectual, and certainly one that enjoys wallowing in what others find less pleasant to sing about: second generation traumas of the Holocaust, fantasies about liquid sexuality and fragile masculinity, masturbation, violence, AIDS.
Everything that is hidden under the green cover, in the mixing of high and low Hebrew, in the joker voice of Eran Tzur, in the rough guitars of Uri Frost, in the magical keyboards of Avshalom Caspi, and in the appropriate drum beats of Uri Black.
This is dirty, rebellious, decadent and mocking music of outsiders, not the anthems to dance at the graduation party.
Zur is not ashamed to return to the past, and here he is actually organizing celebrations for his starting point as a lead singer - the first album of Carmela Gross Wagner.
This is the band's fourth reunion, and in recent years he has returned on several occasions to various milestones in his career, reunited Tato, returned to the same company as mine, and also celebrated Carmela's second album.
This is not (only) nostalgia for the years of youth, but an artistically justified move: from the distance of time, the pioneering songs of Zur and Co. throughout the period only sound more impressive and courageous, certainly in a conformist and conservative society like Israel.
You can say, as the cliché goes, that they were "ahead of their time" - but in a country that lives in eternal war, it seems that their time never really came.
Carmela unites, yesterday/Orit Panini
This year, of course, it blew up in all of our faces, and also disrupted the aforementioned Union plans. The Union concerts that were announced months in advance and for which the tickets sold out quickly - were postponed. As a result, the location was also changed, and instead of the mythical club in Kibbutz Galvoit, the Union moved with the barbie to its impressive new home in the harbor Jaffa, which opened about a month ago and this was my first opportunity to go to it. It is bigger and more spacious, includes more railings for those who like to lean and levels for those who suffer from tall people, and also more than one bar. It has not become fancy: the spirit of the place is completely there, the sound is at its best, and the platform outside provides its charm. You can rejoice in the joy of the place.
The band also tried to rejoice. There's something about it: she sounds excellent, as if 30 or so years haven't passed and everything around has changed from one end to the other. I've seen many performances by Eran Tzur over the years, and I can say with certainty: Carmela Gross Wagner is the best musical suit he's ever worn. Each of Frost's solos is an invitation to a journey, and the keyboards and drums merge with it. It culminates in a sweet and wonderful noise coming from every point on the stage. The audience welcomed them with joy as they began to sing the band's theme song, and joined in the public singing of "Mirage Butterflies" ("I love you").
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They sound great, even after 30 years/Orit Panini
It should be emphasized again that the current union celebrates the first incarnation of the band, and the songs that were written during it.
Between the first album and the second Carmela actually broke up, and became a solo project of Tzur.
That's why all the hits of "Black Flower" were here (such as "Until the disease speaks", "Wet and hot", "In your garden", "The friend of the crazy", "Insult", "Enoch the educator"), and other songs, bonuses, created along period but were performed later or in other settings (such as "Cockfights" or "Ciphorn" from the next album or the unknown "Chonk Me" sung by Caspi).
Other notable songs from the second album, such as the dark hit "Arab B. Keslo", on the other hand, were absent from the set list.
The logic behind this is clear: to give center stage to the integration of the four forces on stage.
But the lack of "Arab B. Keslo", a song about grief and loss of control and disaster and catastrophe, illustrated how much all of these are present outside the hall, and missing on stage.
A fine band like Carmella Gross Wagner deserves to celebrate itself regardless of October 7th, but just as that day and the war that followed it made many songs suddenly sound different, so they also dim the songs where that doesn't happen.
The wonderful and fascinating alternative world in most of the band's songs exists in a parallel reality.
They sound great, tight, mesmerizingly produced, but it's hard to get excited about them now at full power.
It's not the lineup's fault at all, but another way for the situation to mock us in the face.
The secret weapon: Alona Daniel/Orit Panini
And yet, towards the end of the performance, some moments managed to soar with her to the sky.
It happened thanks to a secret weapon from a different band altogether: the wonderful Alona Daniel, leader of the Tatoo band from which Tzemach Tsur (and also Belk) El Carmela emerged, came up as a surprise to sing two songs: "Women Writing Poetry", which Tatoo still managed to perform, and the ultimate hit "Impressionist Image" - Still a perfect song, confusing and fascinating.
Danielle, a lone guest in the evening, has a stake in these songs, and there's the underappreciated charm she brings to everything she touches.
Her combination in such an evening is nothing less than dreamy, and reminds: it's time for Israeli rock to remember that it is a giant.
In the encore, the ensemble returned to perform "Summer", "Arab Hula" which the band originally performed but gave to Barry Sakharoff, who produced its album together with Korin Alel, and of course: "Black Flower", which Tsur dedicated to the victims of the war, the kidnapped and the bereaved families, and the whole audience sang With.
And here, at the end of the evening, the performance merged with time, in a sadness that has no end.
As I walked out of the show into the street, from the new Barbie into the harbor air, I went to the merch stand to buy a shirt with one sentence, which summed up my feeling: something here is broken to pieces.
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Carmela Gross Wagner