Kaveret Reunion at the Israel Festival June 2013

It was the summer of 1973, I wore a faded blue denim string bikini, round wire-rim glasses à la Lennon, and my hair was long and parted in the middle, just like John’s. Moving from the US of the late 60s – early 70s to Beer Sheva, Israel, was like growing up in Oz and having a twister spit you out in Kansas. I was one displaced hippie chick, sitting in the only cool place for miles around: the swimming pool at the lone hotel at the end of the road, aptly named Desert Oasis, it marked the end of the town as well.

That’s when I heard it for the first time, something that made me stop in my disaffected teenage tracks and listen. Hu kana otan bezol, hen hayu mle’ot behol, hu nika otam be’spirt kol sha’atayim (He bought them very cheaply/They were full of sand/He cleaned them with turps every two hours…see the full translation here ). Strange, funny, melodic, a bit trippy… and in Hebrew. It wasn’t like anything else I had heard, even the song’s title – Baruch’s Boots – gave the sense of an alternate Israel – hip, ironic, free to say or be anything at all.  It was just a song, it didn’t change my life, but it was the first time I remember hearing an Israeli song I liked, it was the first Israeli band I liked: Kaveret.

Fast forward: forty years down the road, Kaveret’s impact on Israeli music and culture is undeniable, and outrageously impressive considering their short run from 1973 – 1976. Surrounded by a crowd of fans, thinly disguised as journalists and photographers, the former band members – Danny Sanderson (lead vocals, acoustic guitar); Gidi Gov (lead vocals, percussion); Yitzhak ‘Churchill’ Klepter (vocals, electric guitar); Alon Olearczyk (vocals, bass guitar); Efraim Shamir (vocals, rhythm guitar); Yoni Rechter (vocals, keyboards) and via the internet, Meir ‘Poogy’ Fenigstein (vocals, drums, percussion) – gathered this morning at the Herods Hotel in Tel Aviv to announce their reunion concerts at the Israel Festival 2013.

Yehuda Talit, Kaveret’s producer, opened the press meeting, expressing his excitement at the reunion, and Yossi Tal-Gan, Director of the Israel Festival said, “The Israel Festival is proud to close the 2013 festival with Kaveret. They are the melody of this country.”

White locks and spectacles notwithstanding, the assembled band members generated the same sense of camaraderie and insouciant humor that the name Kaveret has come to represent. When you come to the concerts on June 19th & 20th (you know you will come to these concerts!) what can you expect to hear?
“We haven’t yet begun serious rehearsals,” said Efraim Shamir, “but our aim is to be Kaveret, just as we were then, to be precise and true to the original.”
“We may include songs that didn’t make it into the repertoire, like Mehakim leShula (Waiting for Shula), it’s a song of Meir’s,” said Danny Sanderson.
Yoni Rechter added, “When we start rehearsing, things will happen. When creative musicians get together, things happen…things that cannot be predicted here and now, things that may surprise us as well.”

Most of the former Kaveret members have continued to pursue their musical careers as solo artists and with other bands, the Israel Festival concert will include an individual song from each. Kaveret is also compiling a boxed set of six CDs that will include material not previously released, recordings from rehearsals and other esoteric bits of Kaveretania.

Asked whether the reunion raises any ego issues for the guys, Gidi Gov said, “But there never were any [ego issues] then either,” while Efraim Shamir noted, “I’ve never yet met a person without an ego,” and Danny Sanderson summed it up saying, “Today it’s more about eggroll than ego.”

How much of a rocker can you be forty years down the road?

Gidi Gov said, “It never was rock… Baruch’s Boots??!”

It may not have been rock, but it was a joyous revolution in Israeli music, and as Danny  Sanderson said, the Israeli Festival concerts will be “an evening of Kaveret nostalgia.”