Nocturnal Show
I guess it’s a cultural thing. Still, it’s sort of saddening that many top artists are drug addicts. It is even more saddening when they get to the point that they make shows in front of audience while clearly under drug influence; and the worst is that substantial portions of the audience don’t seem to care - in fact, they look as if they use drugs themselves. Judging by the show we went to see yesterday, some even use them in the club, during the show.
It was very Tel-Avivian. Many parameters just fit what you can imagine about shows in a club in Tel-Aviv. The location. The parking problems. The darkness. The greed of the club owners. The bad seats. The lesbian couple in the back. The smoke, with its combined odors of cigarette stink and haevily sweet smelling grass. The fact that it started - in the middle of the week - late in the evening, and lasted for 3 hours until 1a.m. The very good performance. The entire experience - what Tel-Aviv natives, as opposed to the common Israelies, like to call atmosphere.
We got there without planning too much. A few days ago Elina mentioned this extremely popular singer, and noted she’d like to see his show (actually, she said it while we were on another show - an excellent Yehudit Ravits performance we saw last Friday with a couple of friends). Yesterday she came to visit me, and looking at a newspaper I found he was performing in the evening. I called the place, and despite my scepticism they still had places - not the best, but places. So we went there.
It turned out that the places they had were really bad. Not only in the back, but also near the wall and behind a corner, so looking at the stage I could feel pretty much like a GPS receiver looking for a satelite in the middle of a storm. Elina could see a bit more - if her sight could penetrate the smoke. Atmosphere, you know. Elina’s seat was tolerable, but the fact that the owners decided to sell my place as a seat, and ignored my complaints, convinced me never to go again to this club. Too much greed on their behalf. Thus, the show begun from a low starting point. Nonetheless, the guy is truely a first-line performer and has good songs; so it improved and was actually a very good show - had we been in a different place I would enjoy it much more, but it was still good almost all the way through.
Towards the end, he started to behave strange. Forget words of songs in the middle. Start to tell riddles and stop in the middle. Try to breath from the nose in a pronounced sniffing motion. Walk unsteady. Be pale. Not a collapse, but it suddenly became obvious - for me, at least - that he was high on drugs and his trip is about to end. I wasn’t too surprised when he started fooling, let his band cover for him, and other things - which at first glance can be explained by the late hour, the tiredness, the long performance (almost three full hours); but I know better.
I came out with a mixed feeling. It was a good show, but for some reason I never emotionally connected this specific singer, let’s call him S.A., with drugs. It makes a lot of sense, from what I know about the guy’s biography, and from the way he dressed (with a blck too short shirt that he probably bought years ago, before his divorce and his son’s evasion from the military duty) but I still couldn’t help feeling the emphacy - he controls the local pop scene for almost three decades, and he is now clearly on his way down. I wander if he realized it already.
So the show was not what I expected. Still, it was definitely an experience to remember, and one definitely worth talking about.
Oh, and the club? Sorry, I don’t publicize bad places. Contact me if you have a suspicion about a specific place.
