Rock on!

I had a rock-filled weekend, going to not one but two "music parties" (literally concert in Arabic). The first was for my friend's friend's band "Fade 2 Black," or as the fans know them, F2B. Back together after one of their members had to go into the army, they rocked Jerimana Thursday night at a bar named Vitality. It had free pool, a bartender who could do cocktail-esque tricks (is it sad that my standard of "cool bartender" is a Tom Cruise movie from the 80s?), and a bar that was occaisonally lit on fire. F2B stayed true to their name and mostly did Metallica covers, until a girl with an awesome voice joined them and then they did some "I Will Survive", Evanescense, and "Zombie," that 90s song from the Cranberries about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The last one twice. There was one original song from the band, which was half in Arabic and half the song "Summertime." Not exactly my bag, but everyone else had a head-banging good old time. Every one loves that Metallica.

Friday night I went to another show in an Armenian church in the old city. "B Flat" performed a mix of covers, plus a few originals, sadly (for me) all in English. Why to rock must it be in English? There's a whole untapped market of genres to be sung in Arabic, as right now the Arabic music scene generally consists of classic and disposal pop, the latter more famous for the Lebanese ladies who writhe in the video clips than their lyrics or musicality. Leena Shamamyan is at least singing in the Arabic but her stuff is very classical-ish. Where's the Arabic metal? The Arabic reggaeton? Arabic soft rock? Arabic electronica? Arabic reggae (oh, wait, I have heard this). Why mostly have acts like the Spice Girls been duplicated (The 4 Cats are getting a lot of play on Melody Arabic) or singers like Britney and Christina (Dana, Haifa, Ruba, just turn on the freakin music channels). Not to say I don't buy this music and memorize the words and have been to a Nancy concert, but c'mon, there's a good four or five video clip channels. Let's widen the range which right now is from Um Kulthum-Fairouz to Dana-Nancy. Fine, I'm just selfish and what I really want is The Smiths, but in Arabic, so I could listen to them over and over again like I do the Smiths, and then I will rock in Arabic. Or at least, in self-pitying and ironic Arabic.

At the end, B Flat did do a hilarious medly of Black Eyed Peas, Usher, and yes, Tupac's "California Love" with "Compton" changed to "Damascus". Of course, there was more Evanescense and even "Zombie." People fucking love Zombie but no one actually seems to knows it's about Northern Ireland specifically or against ongoing, seemingly intractable disputes generally. Hmm.