The album, which at the time sounded like a punch in the stomach to the local mainstream, because it redefined Israeli protest rock, is already considered a classic, almost a mythology.
Banai recorded it with members of the refugee band, which formed around him in the rock opera “Mami” – the late guitarist Yossi Elephant (who also produced a musical), the late drummer Jean-Jacques Goldberg, the young bassist Gil Smetana and the percussionist Noam Zaid.
Together with them, Banai created a group of kicking songs, which gave voice to rejected groups in Israeli society and shocked everyone who listened to it attentively: “Black Work” – on the discrimination of Ethiopian Jews; “Mix the plaster” – on the Palestinian workers; “Stage worker” – for the lower class workers; This song was inspired by Banai from the time he worked as a stage worker in performances by the Pale Tracker Trio, in which his cousin, Gavri Banai, was a member.
To these songs were added the travel songs that Banai had accumulated over the years, and which expressed his own outsidership within Israeliness: “Your Time Has Passed” and “City of Refuge” (which became hits), “Continues to Travel” and “Blood” – songs to which a new generation of young Israelis joined Who set out in the 1980s to discover the world.
Musically, Banai and the band, led by Elephant, created connections between three elements: rock, British “new wave” and oriental music. The result sounded strong, muscular, “thin” in the positive sense of the word, an album that sounded like a noble savage.
The style and sound were considered groundbreaking in the local arena and marked the path for many who followed them, especially in the connections between rock and oriental. The album sounds screaming and painful on the one hand, almost discouraging, yet very powerful, exciting and moving, with songs that penetrate the soul and do not leave the heart and mind even after decades.
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33 years have passed since then, and in the year of the Corona, producer Haim Shemesh decided to create the series “So.Now”, which is dedicated to new versions of Israeli masterpieces. He turned to Bad Proof, one of the most prominent music producers in Israeli rock in recent decades (Barry Sakharof, Meir Ariel, the Elders of Safed), and asked him to choose an album.
“I was debating between several albums,” a proofreader from his New York apartment tells me. It’s a name that has connected me to the current era, of the Pike News and of Trump.
To listen to the album “The Golden Calf”, with all the renewed performances of “Ehud Banai and the Refugees” >>>
“When I was 19 I had a special relationship with Elephant. I was supposed to perform with him at the Logos Club, as a drummer, on the night he passed away, but before it was time for us to go on stage together, what happened happened” (Elephant had a heart attack and passed away; AN). I was there with him, and something of him is etched in my mind, his character, his walk on a thin rope, which I also identify with. “
According to Mochich, the budget for the new album was low, and the time to prepare it was relatively short. “So in choosing the performing singers, ‘I went for sure.’ That is, I chose singers I know and love, that I worked with and knew would hurt Bull – Berry Sakharof, Assaf Amdursky, Eran Tzur, Korin Elal, Efrat Ben Tzur and Kfir Ben Lish.
“They, together with Haim Shemesh, chose which song each one would perform. I asked them to record the singing in the country, each as he was comfortable and in which studio he was comfortable with, on which scale he was comfortable, as if he were singing the song to his best friend or child. “The recordings were sent to me in New York, and I adapted to each one the musical arrangement that suits him, according to the original melodies of the songs.”
The special sound of the album created proves the necessity of the circumstances. “In New York I fell on my scooter, and broke both hands. I was plastered with both, I could not drum or play guitars. But I could turn buttons, so I decided to connect old analog synthesizers, which are played with fingers, and old drum machines, which I collect from old. “80, and with them to play and re-record the songs.”
“The idea was to take the raw material and make another record out of it, to stay away from the source as much as possible,” explains Mochich. “There’s no point in doing the same record twice, just with other singers. The goal is to give these songs, which are so familiar and beloved, another angle, a new cover they haven’t had to date. So I built myself an artistic concept, with the old synthesizers that need to be tuned,” Like guitars, like rock and roll, each time their sound sounds a little different.
“It is very different from electronic music that is made today with a computer, which is very accurate and has duplications on top of duplicates. For me the music is not repeated. Every box I play is different from the previous one, and there are layers of sounds, each played live. Most of the work I did a week, and it took me another three weeks to complete the album completely. “
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“I recorded the singing alone at home, I had to choose the right rhythm and the right way to sing it, alone, and it was very interesting and challenging,” she recalls. “With ‘Your Time Has Passed’, which I know of course, I thought it would go easily for me. I tried to play myself with the guitar and sing, but I did not understand what was going on there, and I was stressed.
“It’s a song that’s a puzzle. It gives the listener a lot of space for imagination. Throws you his angle to the story, draws pictures in words and tells story after story after story. And I, as a student, study the song and discover how simple it is, and how much fun it is.
“In the end, the first takeaways I recorded for both songs, here at home, were the ones that went into the album. Maybe thanks to the initial excitement. When you sing over and over in the studio, you lose the spontaneity of the soul.”
Did you like the end result?
“I did not believe, I was surprised, I was amazed. Bad used very beautiful, very delicate and very significant musical colors. He created the same rage of the original album, but it sounded very beautiful.”
How connected were you to the original album in real time?
“I’ve been connected to Ehud all these years as a listener. We only met once, when I hosted him at my show, after years of watching from the sidelines. I see years of him performing and not stopping, with his band and alone. He’s always in shows, like Bob Dylan.
“The two songs I sing on the album have a truck, and to me that’s the right image for his career. He propelled the truck then, and since then he has not stopped. He keeps driving, and it’s amazing.”
Some say that “The Refugees” was an album by Elephant no less than by Ehud.
“Elephant was a genius, the greatest gift Ehud could have received. You get such a player, with such a character, that he himself creates musical situations.”
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Musician and singer Eran Tzur remembers Ehud and the refugees as a spectator-listener from the audience. “At first in ‘Mami’, and after that they would perform with the original album in Tel Aviv’s clubs. There were times when Elephant was so stoned that they had to help him get on stage. He and Jean-Jacques Goldberg wrapped Brock and a new wave in the Eastern influence Ehud’s Persian. Jean-Jacques was a very simple and basic drummer, but very strong and tough. He had the strongest bass drum in the country. Because of him they reached very strong musical strengths.
In the new album, Tzur performs the songs “Mix the Plaster” and “Melancholy”. “Ehud took the ‘Mami’ protest and continued it. ‘Mix the plaster’, a protest song from the few in Hebrew that speaks from the side of the Palestinian laborer from Gaza, something no one dared do before. And he does it in a simple and very effective way.
“Decades have passed, and still the Arabs are the ones who are building the state for us, the Israeli cities, with all the absurdity involved, and they still sometimes receive bad treatment from contractors. It is an ambivalent experience that crosses nations.”
How do you approach performing the songs again?
“I was looking for the most interesting hue of the voice I could sing in. I recorded the song according to Ehud’s original harmony, according to the chords he chose, and Evil Proves used a different musical harmony. It illuminated the songs in a different light.
“I agree with bad that the original was amazing and there is no point in doing the same thing again. So I liked that he attacked it in an extraordinary way. He took a risk and gave the songs a completely different and surprising interpretation. I thought the songs were in a certain landscape, and suddenly they are somewhere else, in another country. Very, very good. “
How did you connect to “Melancholy”, which is a sad love song?
“I saw the mayor of a port in Portugal, on the Atlantic coast, and a woman in the background, and I have nightly meetings with her. I do not think ‘melancholy’ is the woman’s name, even though he says of her ‘there was a partial dose’, but the mental state he is in. In the song.In melancholy there are degrees.It can also be sweet sadness, does not have to be clinical depression.
“As a performer, I definitely connect to the song and the image I have in mind. When you are not writing a song yourself, and not deciphering to the end exactly what is going on there, you can stay high and fly over, like from a bird’s point of view. You do not have to feel the song’s ground. There is freedom in that.
“I really like Ehud as a person and as a writer. I believe in him, so it was easy for me to connect to the things he does. On the one hand he is humble, and on the other hand impressive. He has a restrained power in him, and also in his writing.”