Yoni Went to a Concert and He Was Happy

I was at this concert a couple of nights before Halloween – I wasn’t really up for going out but a friend had hooked me up with free tickets to see this Israeli band called Fools of the Prophecy, and though I only knew a couple of their songs, I figured the price was right and it was something to do on a Saturday night.

When I got to the club they were playing at in Chelsea, I realized that it wasn’t going to be some dinky little concert. There was a line stretching down the block, a small crowd of people arguing with the bouncer about getting to tickets someone was holding for them inside, and police barricades to keep everyone out of the traffic. When I finally got inside the building, I started to realize how big the concert would be – there were masses of people pressed up against the walls of the hallway just inside the door, pushing their way through the small corridor to the room where the concert was about to start. After picking up my tickets I pushed my way towards the general direction of the tuning up I could hear and, using my elbows perhaps a little too violently, managed to get into the main room and find a spot right in front of the soundboard.

The décor was a little strange – there was a gigantic spider suspended from the ceiling, and web strung from the rafters – but I think it was there because of an upcoming Halloween event, not for the Fools. Otherwise, it was like any other concert I’d been to – a warehouse-like room filled with people packed shoulder-to-shoulder, gigantic amps, and a pissy sound guy trying to keep people from putting their beers on the soundboard.

So like I said, I only knew a couple of their songs before the concert, but it took me about two minutes to start really getting into it. From out of nowhere, a friend of my parents stumbled into me, recognized me, and blurted out “I had no idea what this was going to be! This is crazy – I gotta go!” It was definitely strange seeing her there, but not really wanting to have a conversation, I just smiled and let her pass. Thinking back, I’m sure that she had seen a flier for the concert, and the words ‘band from Israel’ made her think she was getting Jewish music – men with sidelocks singing European melodies with a Yiddish intonation. Clearly, she was not very up to speed on the music scene in Israel, which can range from trance to pop to grunge. What we were hearing coming from the stage was a mixture of reggae, hip hop, and Middle Eastern music. It was unbelievably good.

I haven’t been to a tremendous amount of concerts, but I’ve had my fair share, and I’ve seen the ones where some mediocre band is playing and everyone is kind of waiting to hear something they recognize, just sort of standing in front of the stage and having a drink, scanning the crowd for friends.

This was not that kind of concert. Looking around me, it seemed like there were two different types: first, there were a lot of local New Yorkers who had probably seen a flier somewhere, or heard about the band from a friend, or something like that. They clearly were not familiar with the band, but the music and the rhythm was intoxicating, and it didn’t seem to matter all that much that the words weren’t actually in English. Even with my understanding of Hebrew, I couldn’t make head or tail out of the lyrics. They were like some 18th-century poem that you study in high school, talking largely about life and existence and social mores, but you’re pretty sure isn’t really about anything at all.

The other crowd at the concert surprised me: a serious amount of hardcore fans. They were mouthing the words to every song and bending their knees with every beat. I had never realized what a following the Fools had, but listening to the music I was beginning to think that I might join the pack.

The concert was unbelievable. Six guys who were just having the time of their lives onstage, singing a not-always-understandable jumble of Hebrew and English, and bouncing around as they played. I half expected one of them to crowd surf (none of them did). Fools of the Prophecy has actually been through New York a few times, and I think they once played at a Staten Island Yankees game – but they are much bigger in Israel, where they’re all from.

Check them out here. They’re definitely worth checking out, and you can see their upcoming concerts and hear some of their music there. Reading their bio will give you some idea of the band’s background, but if you can handle the bio on their Hebrew website you might start to understand who they really are – up now at the site is a the story of how each member of the band was born, with a promise for the second chapter soon. I guess they like to start at the beginning. As of now they have two albums, one that went platinum and the other that’s well on the way – and are still producing.

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