Rosh Hashanah is traditionally a time for summaries in Israeli music, when the major radio stations broadcast the annual Hebrew parade. In most cases the audience vote manages to reflect the accepted taste of that year, but when you look back at past parades, you can find some very puzzling choices.
“Isolirband” above “The Flower in the Garden”, 1982
The band Isolirband was one of the favorite phenomena in Israeli pop of the early 80’s: a band composed of Roni Weiss, Moti Dichna, Sarit Seri and others, sang humorous songs and had some success in the pre-Eurovision with the song “Melody”. All these earned her and the recorded “Melody” the third place in the annual parade of the C network (the first places were reached by Benzin with “Yom Shishi” and Avi Toledano with “Hora” which was successful in Eurovision).
This is all well and good, until you find out who the song is that came in fourth place: “The Flower in the Garden” by Zohar Argov, winner of the Mizrachi Singer Festival that year. It is unnecessary to expand on the importance of this song, written and composed by Aviahu Medina, to Israeli music in general and the oriental genre in particular. It was the song that heralded the beginning of a new era, an era in which the mainstream could no longer ignore the successful folk genre. But the revolution started in the fourth place, below the “Isolirband”.
“Sweet sweet” over “I and you”, 1971
Today it may sound strange, but in real time there were several logical reasons for the selection of “Metok Metok” by the Northern Command band as Kol Israel’s song of the year in 1971. First, we are at the end of the era when the military bands are the most prominent commercial success in Israeli pop. Second, the lead singer of the song was Yigal Bashan, already then a youth idol and a huge star. And thirdly, Eric Einstein never hid his distaste for music festivals, parades, competitions and anything where music and art had to be graded. So it turned out that “I and you”, the classic written by Einstein and composed by Miki Gabrielov, settled for third place.
“Reading 3” above Shlomo Artzi, 1992
The annual parade of 1992 was one of the strongest of all time, with many songs that survive well to this day: “Rare Breed” by Korin Elel, “Rabbi Joe Kfarah” by Tipax, “Heksha Maharuch” by Gali Atari, “Zodiac” by Yaron Hadad, “Totim” by Ethnics and the great conductor “Short Love” by Meir Banai. But there were also songs that failed to leave a real mark, such as the one ranked 16th: “Bach plays” by the band “Reading C”, a good rock song in itself but one that has been forgotten over time. Shlomo Artzi was ranked four places below him with a “moon”. Love my country or not, “Moon” is probably the most prominent song in his repertoire, but in real time it did not bring him success in the annual parade.