Masterpiece revisited: Tamouz reunites for an unforgettable night

Some 15,000 people turned up to watch Shalom Hanoch, Ariel Silber, Yehuda Eder and Ethan Gedron play hits from their classic album End of the Orange Season.

By ILAN EVYATAR
Tamouz reunion (photo credit: ORIT PNINI)
Tamouz reunion
(photo credit: ORIT PNINI)
What they lacked in raw energy they made up for with a polished sound, and 40 years after recording their influential album End of the Orange Season, Tamouz showed at its reunion Thursday last week at Rishon’s Live Park that “you’re never too old to rock and roll if you're too young to die.”
Some 15,000 people turned up to watch Shalom Hanoch, Ariel Silber, Yehuda Eder and Ethan Gedron play hits from what, four decades on, is still considered by many to be the best Israeli rock album of all time.
Hanoch kicked the evening off – over an hour late due to horrendous traffic – with a solo performance of some his greatest hits together with a couple of songs from his newly released album, Zoom.
Hanoch, who turned 70 on September 1, is still kicking hard and strong and got the audience in the mood for the main course, the first full reunion of Tamouz since 1976.
When Silber & company came on stage after the break with a rendition of “The deeper, the bluer,” the crowd, mostly middle-aged and up, seemed to be transported back in time.
Silber and Hanoch engaged in a playful banter throughout the evening that in many ways reflected just how much not only the members of the band have changed in the past 40 years but Israeli society, too. Hanoch remains a dyed-in-the-left-wool left-wing secularist whose songs frequently reflect his dissatisfaction with the way Israel has gone. Silber has become an ultra-right-wing religious nationalist whose pronouncements have frequently landed him in hot water. “Messiah’s not coming” is a line from one of Hanoch’s hits, “Waiting for the Messiah.” “Yes he is,” hit back Silber, who, armed with a glass of arak sitting on his keyboard, repeatedly toasted “to life, to the people of Israel.”
But no one was waiting for the Messiah on Thursday night; what they wanted was Tamouz, and when the band closed out the night with “End of the Orange Season,” they got it.


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