Two weeks ago, shortly after we finished the Halloween performance at All Alma, a young punk rocker came up to me and told me that she missed the show. I gave her, what is called, a response from the hip: “Your serious mistake, the whole band dressed up as Joey Ramone.” As I finished saying “Ramon”, she already started walking away from me and in the process gave me a look that I recognize from childhood as the “I have no idea what you’re talking about, you freak” look. For some reason I was offended. Why was I offended? Because I felt old again. why again Because every few days something like this happens to me. What’s wrong with my waist? Why does my date of birth appear on her every time she leaves the place?
>> My 40-year-old crisis: for all the columns of the project
My girlfriend once told me that there was no way I was telling a story that didn’t include the phrase “in the nineties”. I’m just trying to give people the best anecdote (okay, probably not one from this century) they’ve heard all day, but after a little dedication the ball usually finds itself in my net, usually an own goal. Then the invisible referee picks up a yellow card and gently says: “Hey, friend. Yes, yes, you, you’re old. Sit down for a second and rest on the bench, download Tiktok or something.”
Now, every 40-year-old crisis is different, but here is what drives me crazy the most. By 1993 I was done grinding out the Pixies, Nirvana and Guns and Roses, I would still go to Scouts and concerts by Fortis and Carmela Gross Wagner, but what snuck up on me the most was American punk rock. To me only punk rock would count and the whole story of “classic rock” might as well have been your grandmother’s music. I just had zero interest in Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and anything recorded before 1977. In fact, to this day I swear a Jimi Hendrix shirt will get you into any bar because it just makes you thirty years older whether you realize it or not.
So since the mid-nineties until today I dedicate a lot of my time to my holy trinity: writing punk rock, recording punk rock and performing with punk rock, the very young and revolutionary music I discovered at the age of 15. It’s just that with every month, year and decade that passes I notice how much time has passed Since I was cool. Before Green Day broke out. Before there was Yosels ID. Before there was such punk rock in Israel. 29 years have passed since 1993. I wonder if my music, all so young and subversive, passes to young people like things from the sixties and seventies, which were then 30 years old, sounded to me when I was young? Could it be that Religion are traffic? Shad Candice are Oriya Hip? Wait wait, come to the bar, are they actually Stella Maris?
So no, I’m not going to put “Lil” in front of my name, grow little braids, or tattoo my eyelid. I can only be who I am, where I am from and when I am. The realization that time is getting shorter only makes me stronger. I don’t do it on purpose or rather, I just know what I know, I know it well. I am good with him and he is good with me. If being a 15-year-old punk said that most of the time I wasn’t understood, why would I be upset if I wasn’t understood at the age of 45? On the contrary, it should be my greatest success, right? Maybe. But I was still offended after the show, when she didn’t know Joey Ramone and didn’t know what I wanted from her life. It’s going to get worse and worse. I will insult, I will laugh, time will pass, fashions change. And I stay fucking me.