Morrissey goes to the Middle East

Tucked into his grumbling about the Olympics yesterday was also a brief word or two from Morrissey about his recent Tel Aviv tour.

Now, playing a gig in Israel is a highly charged thing for a foreign artist to do. The usual form is for a band to book a date, receive flak for doing so, and then invent a dentist's appointment or a plectrum shortage in order to cancel. (I'm looking at you, Pixies.)

Elvis Costello was acute when he axed his 2010 Israel mini-tour - he said that merely playing there would be "interpreted as a political act", that whatever your motives, whatever your personal beliefs, whatever the make-up of the audience to which you play, it does make you seem a bit ambivalent about what's going on in the occupied territories.

Morrissey is a man who can't talk about taking a stroll down the Old Kent Road without it ending up a years-long legal battle over whether he's racist or not, so he doesn't seem to be the best-placed person to navigate this region of raw emotions and subtle inference.

But he had a go, with Tablet Magazine recording his reasoning:

“There is no point punishing a nation for something that the leader of the country does or says. Look at Syria.”

That seems fair enough, although obviously Israel is a parliamentary democracy and Syria has only just thought of trying adding more than one party to ballot papers, which makes it a little bit different. There's a way for the Israelis to voice their disapproval with their government that isn't open to the people of Syria; it's just most of them don't use it.

But at least he indicates - although not in his usual, forthright, take-no-prisoners, I-say-it-as-I-see-it-Elsie-Tanner style - that there is a problem, that there's something the politicians are up to. But he is here for the people, not those in power. This isn't about fawning over those in power.

Hang about a moment, what was that he said in his statement?

Thank you to the city of Tel-Aviv for granting me the Keys to their city. I just might die with a smile on my face, after all.

Oh.

But maybe it was the citizens who gave him the keys? Do you know, Huffington Post?

The former The Smiths star was in the city for a gig on Saturday and during his visit he was presented with the Key to the City by Mayor Ron Huldai.

Oh.

Still, if there's one saving grace from this, it's that his earlier career slip-ups will have taught Morrissey to avoid going on stage and wrapping himself in a contentious flag sending out mixed and confusing messages in a tinder-dry atmopshere.

Right?

Oh.

Of course, Morrissey couldn't spend very long taking advantage of his new-found freedom to prance around Tel Aviv draped in the Israeli flag, as he had to come back to Britain to warn us about the dangers of cheap patriotism at the Olympics.

Lebanese activists call for Placebo ban

Placebo's decision to press ahead with a gig in Israel shortly after the IDF had shot some people in the head for trying to take aid to Gaza has caused a bit of upset in Lebanon.

Which is unfortunate, as they're meant to be playing Lebanon tomorrow. Not if Samah Idriss has his way, though:

'You are not welcome in Lebanon,' Lebanese writer and editor Samah Idriss said at a news conference jointly held by five non-governmental organisations on the eve of the concert in Beirut.

'The band must choose either to play in Lebanon or to play in a state that continuously violates rights,' Mr Idriss said on behalf of the groups, which include the Campaign to Boycott Israeli Supporters in Lebanon and the Campaign for the Lebanese Boycott of Zionism.

Hang about: it's one thing to worry about Placebo playing Israel, but if they're going to have to choose between not playing Lebanon or not playing states which show a bit of a disregard for people's rights, that's going to limit the number of tour dates they can look forward to. Most of the Americas, pretty much all of Europe and Africa, and more or less Australasia as a whole would be out.

Still, these are dangerous times, but surely Brian Molko is a communicator skilled enough to defuse the situation and show that Placebo take these things seriously:

rian Molko announced his 'endorsement' of Israel in an interview. The interviewer then asked if it was important to have Israel's endorsement these days, to which Molko quipped: 'Yeah, if you want to go sailing.' Molko's comment showed Placebo 'ignored the massacre last week against the Freedom Flotilla and went even further, announcing their support for Israel,' Rana al-Masri, one of the activists spearheading the boycott campaign, told AFP.

Possibly not the best time for the trademark quips, Brian.

The focus of the protests is that Tel Aviv festival, which we'd been led to believe Placebo wouldn't be playing. But apparently did.

Pixies dump Israel following storming of flotilla

Given that Israel seems to enjoy being condemned, as it fuels the sense of hard-done-bys in the world's most Emo nation, the news that the Pixies and Placebo have pulled out of next week's Tel Aviv festival probably won't have much effect.

The Pixies haven't even confirmed that they've made a political decision, instead:

blaming "events beyond our control"

Given that most events in the Middle East seem to be beyond anyone's control, that's probably fair enough.

Interesting, though, that the bands were happy to accept the bookings at a time when Israel was still blockading Gaza, destroying the local economy and throwing hundreds of thousands into extreme poverty.

The Middle East can now sleep safely

We wonder, what on earth would Madonna and Guy Ritchie have to say to Shimon Peres about peace in the Middle East? And, as the three of them stand together, Guy's shaky hand clasped on Peres' shoulder, whose endorsement will prove to be the most damaging to whom?

Madonna is currently in Israel attempting to give some credibility to the her cult, which attempts to combine Jewish mysticism with overpriced water and the collection of direct debits.

Who isn't wondering what the next Metallica album will sound like?

Of course you are. And here's Kirk Hammett to explain to us:

"There is a really unusual theme that's working its way into the music," he replied. "I'm not really sure how to react to it. Maybe it's someone else trying to tell us that we should react to it, but a lot of the music has an eastern harmonic flair to it, a harmonic minor flair to it, and when I say harmonic minor, that could be construed as like eastern sounding or Middle Eastern sounding or maybe Arabic? I don't know if it's just the zeitgeist, a sign of the times, or maybe because like, you know, Middle Eastern culture is so prevalent, or maybe the negative things about Middle Eastern culture. Maybe artists are conscious, just want to shine light on the positive aspects of Middle Eastern culture, i.e. the music. But there's passages that sound, that use harmonic minor and dominant, and those sounds are distinctly Arabic sounding or Middle Eastern sounding, and you hear them in all the songs.

We can imagine a Metallica album making people think of the Middle East - a long, miserable, drawn-out series of unspeakable horrors that leaves everybody praying for a little bit of peace.