The Land is Defunct!! The Land is Defunct!!

Some things will cause you to pop out of your seat and make a fool of yourself. One such thing is the music of the Top Hat Carriers, a Jerusalem based band that produced punk-tinged tunes with Dadaist lyrics in the late eighties.

I was invited yesterday to take a minor part in a project featuring Top Hat Carriers' frontman Ohad Pishof. Later last night, at the house of my friends Shlomo and Ricky, I told them of this. Shlomo then got up to the computer and magically made it play a rare track from the Carriers' debut tape, which was distributed in 500 copies around Jerusalem sometime in the previous century.

In my garden, the world is perfect.
People are mean, it's a boring city,
A boring city, you can pinch the sun
Vanish in fire.

Motherfuckers!
The land is defunct!!
The land is defunct!!

Two pints of beer and a glass of whiskey turned into a dance in the midst of the living room, shaking the floors of Tel-Aviv's most ornate and precious historical building. I may have lost my reputation for seamless dignity in the eyes of my friends, but you know how the saying goes: Dance like no one's watching, and love like you'll never be hurt, especially if you love Jerusalem punk-music.

If you do, or are inclined to, check out the Carriers here, in a relatively mild mood and here, ending a concert with the legendary listing of their names in the feminine Hebrew form. Interestingly, the popular Ynet internet portal happens to mention today this homemade and rather revolting clip, in a feature on classic Israeli clips of the eighties.

If besides Jerusalem punk-music you like Tel-Aviv underground poetry, tonight at 9:00 or so the latest Ketem evening will take place at "Makom", 12 Vital St. in Florentine. It'll feature legends Efrat Mishory, Maya Bejerano and Professor Gavriel Moked, live jazz and a few lines in Finnish to be recited by yours truly.