Random Musings

I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE Eyal Golan

What a cutie!! He's up there in my book with Sarit Hadad since I got his new LIVE DVD added to my Mizrahi music collection (which at the present time only includes Sarit Hadad's entire album collection, well almost, Lior Narkis, Shlomi Shabat, and friends, Kobi Peretz, Zohar Argov, Haim Moshe, Zehava Ben, Oren/Stalos, Eyal Golan, the list goes on and on and on...)

Here are some interesting random facts I picked up on him in my spare time (which is today since our issue is closing early and today is mostly a free day for me)

Eyal Golan is half-Moroccan. He's a Rehovot-born soccer player turned music star who has the voice of an angel (well, ok so I'm editorializing here!) with hits like Tzilil Meitar (love that song!) Million Dollar (LOOOOOVE) and Lev Shel Gever (love it!)
More random facts--apparently he is banned from doing Israeli army appearences since he stopped doing reserve duty now that he's a Israeli pop star. And in 2002, he got married to Israeli beauty queen Ilanit Levi after he proposed to her on a boat sailing out to sea near Eilat. (Boo hoo for me! Now I can't marry him!) How romantic! What a cutie! Their honeymoon of choice? Jamaica.

You have to listen to his new CD Metzi'ut Aheret (Another Reality) which is this 34 year-old's eighth album to date.
The 34-year-old Golan turned to his regular lyricists including Tal Segev Yosi Gispin Pablo Rozenberg and Rachel Shapira for words to these 10 tracks. They had all previously written hits for him and this album is no different.

Golan of course is the Rehovot-born soccer player who had a mediocre start in the music field then shot to fame a few years later only to tumble slightly thereafter.

Now he's back and his star is shining brightly once more. This is Golan's first album in two years. According to The Jerusalem Post, Eyal Golan is most proud of this disc. He says, "I feel I have found my center-point of Israeli-ness on this album without the limitations of Mediterranean music. This album is the one to which I am most connected." (Wonder if that was translated or he said that in English?)

Just listen to the first slow ballad on the album. It's incredible.
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Self-Portrait of a Hero: From The Letter of Yoni Netyanyahu. I have literally read two pages of this book and I am hooked!! Yoni Netyanyahu at this point in his life (he's 17) is working in a camp in the U.S. but longs to be back in his home country Israel. There's just something about him that's different from Americans, and he knows it. He has that Israeli mentality, that idea ingrained in his mind that life is not so simple, you must work for everything. he doesn't take life for granted the way I believe some Americans do sub-consciously because they are conditioned to do so. True, he may whine a little about how his life is empty and unfilled (but perhaps we will see exactly how he fulfills it by joining the army and becoming a higher rank. Its as if at this point in his life, he's still young and searching for his identity, he already knows that he is not meant for America, he is meant to do something unbelievably incredible in Israel.

"There is no limit and no end to man's understanding. I live in this moment; I die in another," he writes to good friend Rina, "Is there any difference between the two? Are they not one and the same? There are times it is better to die then to live, and sometimes it is better not to feel then to suffer. Then there are times it is also good to feel that there's a purpose to your actions, that you're not helpless, but strong, that you are great and mighty. Sometimes it is good to believe that man is giant, a force whom nothing can stand."

He questions life with an astute ability to analyze himself and others. He's a man brimming with dreams, doubts, and an unshakeable love for his people (or so the back cover states.)

"Two things can happen to an Israeli in America--either he becomes a full-fledged American (something, that I'm sorry to say, I have seen happen too many times), or he becomes in blood and spirit, more of an Israeli then he has ever been. I'm waiting for the moment I can go back---and begin to live again."

Sometimes I wish I had been born Israeli