Aviv Gadj - Blood on the Sea with the Israeli Camerata Orchestra Jerusalem conducted by Meir Brixman/Photography and editing: Idan Demari and Daniel Elior - Digistage
It's not every day that a rock act comes to the theater.
It is common to think that there is a contrast between the aesthetics of noise, dirt and friction and the padded and decent seats of the stage world - but this is an outdated cliché, which for some reason still circulates in the world.
Still, if a show is staged at a rock club, or a show is hosted at a drama center, some friction is bound to occur.
The music has to tell a story.
The gun from the first song must fire in the encore.
Last night at the Beit Lisin Theater, at the very late launch of Aviv Gedge's "A Wonderful World Where Are You" album, the plot was the story of the horrors we live in.
And the gun?
It is hardly metaphorical.
This album, which was written before the October 7 massacre, was released a few weeks after it.
The blood, the fear, the magnitude of the horror, the helplessness - all these were still primary, unprocessed.
It's not that they are dull, but the world is looking for ways to get used to living with them and understand that they are here.
Gadge, himself a resident of Otaf, realized that the creation that was brewing with him and was about to see the light anyway, had to go out into the red fields.
Even if it will inevitably never be painted with blood, and even if it is completely imprisoned, like its audience, in images other than those in which it was created.
and so it was.
"Wonderful World Where Are You" gave first words to things that have no names.
It was one of the first albums released after the disaster, but even though the performances started to return already about four months ago - Gedge waited with his launch for a better moment.
Perhaps he believed, like all of us, that almost six months after the catastrophe the war would surely end, that such a moment would come by itself: the abductees would surely return, and the evacuees from the south would return to the kibbutzim and moshavim and the cities when they were sure that the nightmare was over.
But the nightmare didn't go anywhere.
This moment lasts.
There is no day and no night.
Aviv Gage, Beit Lisin Theater, March 14, 2024/Gil Rubinstein
Aviv Gage, Beit Lisin Theater, March 14, 2024/Gil Rubinstein
And here, on the stage of the theater, the thing arose and became.
A rock band, a brass band, a violin, and even a Greek choir.
The twist: the audience is also part of the show - singing, dancing, crying, shouting.
What happens outside the stage is always a central part of Gedge's performances, and it was the same this time.
The elephant in the room was also present, demanding its place at every moment.
More in Walla!
These songs turn your stomach, don't let you breathe.
The heart is torn again and again
To the full article
These are first, tentative steps, Gedge admitted on stage.
The first song in the show, "Hesed Makri", illustrated this well.
The music was conflicted.
The choir, the other musicians, Gedge himself - were looking for a way to connect with each other, to find solace.
As the evening went on, the pieces of the puzzle came together and began to run.
"Burning pines" that came later ("Why does the calf run to the blade, why is the sun cheerful"), indicated the direction.
Then, an instrumental version of "Warnings to the Soul 1995" from Algiers' first album was connected to "Bat Hamak", and the first circle was closed in the evening.
And like in the album, a sharp memory from October comes up again and again.
"We've all been through the worst and the most horrible things that you can go through, but if we're here singing songs, maybe we haven't lost our innocence and gentleness and even our hope," Gedge says before bringing up "Growing Pains".
The first tears in the audience appear all around with the mourning song, and these will increase when he presents alone a new song called "Imaginary Dog" that he created together with Ben Danzig, the son of Alex Danzig who is still kidnapped in Gaza, and in the center of it is the line: "I'm waiting, come quickly."
Something opened.
When the whole ensemble will return for "Palace of the Palms", "The Quiet Star" and "Wonderful World Where Are You", the whole machine is already working on a completely different level.
The guitar, the bass, the keyboards, the violin, the flute, the choir, the singer.
The fire was lit.
The theater was losing its dignity.
More and more people began to dance in the aisles, and this trickle would soon turn into a flood.
Aviv Gage, Beit Lisin Theater, March 14, 2024/Gil Rubinstein
And in the meantime, more songs from then and now, more lines that do their thing.
The abandonment in the song "Trust".
Chaos and mayhem at the party of "Justice and Breaker".
Another funny-bitter new song, mixing escapes and escapism ("It's nice, things like this, on days like this, up to a certain limit").
And then the crescendo of the evening will begin: a storm of anger and guitars, which will not end until the end.
Many were already standing and dancing when Gedge invited the audience to "tear the place apart" before "Blood on the Sea", which started a sequence that continued with "Every step", "Beside you, without you", "Losing and keeping", "Talk to me" by Algiers and then "Angels near me", the best performance in the concert, where everything was drowned in a dark and charged trance.
It ends, fittingly, with the expectation of returning: "home".
Not all "Wonderful World Where Are You" was performed throughout the evening.
Not the portrait of violence of "Stones in Pockets", not the melancholic "Mahogany" and not "Stain of rebirth" with the rain that washes the northern Negev.
The one song that was born for the theater, the one that contains the catastrophe within it, was mainly felt in its absence: the legend of the "Seven Capricorns".
It was disappointing, but also understandable: there are things you can't sing and dance and shout about.
The encore preferred to storm with other songs, which also found their own way to hit all the high points: the lost dream on "Kitsch", the rebuke speech of the "Golem" on the bereaved homeland, and the closing "All the High Walls", with the whole audience begging along with the singer. Give me shelter," and Gedge sings that he's speaking to "the dead that will not perish."
He dedicated the last song to his friend Dvir Karp, who was murdered along with his partner in Ra'i on October 7.
All around me people burst into tears when he talks about it.
And meanwhile, outside, Dizengoff is bustling.
Everything is growing, the roads, the buildings.
Restaurants are open, a stream of people moves from place to place, and electric bikes travel quickly.
Only the makeshift memorial corner in the square and some faded teddy bears remind of the pain that is denied beneath the surface.
"The end of the world did not leave a mark, people quickly returned to their course, things were emptied of meaning but remained intact," wrote Gedge in "Angels Beside Me", without knowing what horrible and concrete face this end of the world would wear.
But inside the theater, inside a tornado of noise and sadness, you can shout what is repressed, and you can move without forgetting, and you can talk to the dead.
One might wonder, together: Wonderful world, where the hell are you?
More on the same topic:
Spring Gage