The clock rings at 6:45, I used to not get up so early. It’s quiet here in Yad Eliyahu, I used to hear “line 24 towards Carmelit” under the window. I quickly organize myself and leave for my work, which means heading towards the previous neighborhood we lived in, the heart of the city. I usually ride a bike but now it’s summer and it’s really hot and there’s no way I’m riding it, because I’ll just get wet to work. I think for a moment “it’s Sikh this heat, what’s up with the climate, it’s much more important than you” and after a moment I’m back to thinking about myself.
– Fast reverse with the sound of a tape running backwards –
I am 12 years old and my father is a guitar teacher. He tried to push a guitar on me from a young age but I didn’t understand what he wanted until we had an action in scouts about the Beatles, my most cliché. I returned home, took all their CDs from dad and went up to the room. A few months later, I’m already going up with my band, Beat 69, at the community center Beit Broida to sing the first song I wrote in my life, “Danny Makur Lebamba”, an epic about the cruel downfall of a boy who loved Bamba too much that will be a big hit among connoisseurs in the area Bekat Ono. A little later I go to the Tsliil store in the Sabionim Mall and ask the saleswoman for music with guitars. She brings me “Liquor” by Sheitz. I’m flying. It’s in Hebrew! Within a few months my band is already recording a demo CD and Tel Aviv is entering my life. At the age of 13 I hang out in rehearsal rooms in the market, perform at punk nights on the turntable and in a shoe factory for the sake of the factory. Good childhood.
We are heating Sheytz in the youth city in Kiryat Ono. In a moment of 13 year old bravado or naivety I go to Yuval Mendelsohn at the end of their balance and give him a copy of our demo. Six months later he produces our first album and another six months after that several songs from this album are played on the radio, we appear as the pledge of the year at the music awards ceremony, appear all over the country, collaborate with Ninet Tube in the music village Nitsanim (Aviv Gefen steals us a Yips in the backstage – no voice), independence rock, Motomusic, Volume Kinneret, items in the media, fans, autographs and haters who say that we are treated only because we line our pockets for the media, because we are from Sabion. There are also performances that throw us a ride from the audience. We don’t get excited, dodge and keep playing like Madderpackers.
Keep your chips. Beat 69 with Ninet (photo: courtesy of Raanan Fogel)
The band ceased activity in the twelfth grade. I join the Nahal band, I know a lot of very talented musicians, some of them become my friends for life. I study there full time, become a musical arranger in the military bands and scrape by at the expense of the PAZ. At that time I have a girlfriend from Tel Aviv, I go to her by car and there is never parking, but I find all kinds of tricks. I already want to move to this wonderful and terrible city. While studying film at Tel Aviv University, I know Noga (now she is my fiancé) and after a year we want to move in together. Looking for apartments on Facebook and Hand2, standing in lines in stairwells to see trashy apartments at exorbitant prices, apartments where the shower is also a kitchen. In the end, we end up in an apartment In Allenby 100, Montefiore corner, Harifit. Harifit is important in Allenby. We look through the large windows, pouring rain outside and the Peace Tower shimmering in the background, we look at each other, nod and immediately say to the couple leaving – “Let’s close.”
The first night felt foreign. We sat on a mattress on the floor and ate dry crackers. But little by little the dirt, and the black on the pavement in the streets, and the homeless people that you are already getting to know everyone in the neighborhood, and the beeping, and the smell of the sewage at the entrance to the building – all these somehow become a feeling of home. Five years in Allenby 100. Noga worked in an anthroposophical garden in Florentine and I played guitar with strong black coffee, edited video, made short films and released music. Jasmino under the house, electrical and lock shops and second hand books and the cobbler and everything is broken and nice. To zig zag back from the frequency, a whole life in a square kilometer.
The rent continued to rise year after year, we withstood it, even the corona virus and the closures we survived there. But at the beginning of 2022 the evacuation and construction came. The problem with construction evacuation is that the evacuation is required for the construction. During that time, I also wrote my album, which was released just now, “The Third Fogel”. Its temporary name was even “Allenby 100”, but that’s too much of a hip-hop album name.
Looking for an apartment in 2022 is not like looking for an apartment in 2016. It was a big frustration and we felt we had no place in the world. At the last minute a friend of ours saw an apartment in Yad Eliyahu’s hands. I stand first in line the morning after, we get her and sign. Relief, the city didn’t throw us out despite everything, just pushed us east. Green gardens and a neighborhood grocery store and everything feels stuck in the nineties. It’s good, I love the nineties. The apartment is sweet, bigger than the previous one, there is parquet, we painted the walls salmon pink, in short a good vibe. But even here we know that we are on borrowed time. They have already put a sign outside the building that is also slated for demolition. I’m pretty sure we won’t be able to continue living here in the end. I hope I’m wrong. I mostly want to play and write songs. Not that much has changed since I wrote “Danny Makur Lebamba” at the age of 12, only maybe the next album will already have moments from Eliyahu’s hand.
7:30 in the morning. Gets on the bike, rides to the office. Okay, so let’s move a little.
Ra’anan Vogel will launch “Fogel the Third” at Levantin 7, Saturday (12.11) 20:00. Nomka (Noam Sadan) will be a guest