I'm back

The Hardblog Cafe is officially back online! The wife and I just returned from a trip to Israel and South Africa, and it was completely amazing. It'd be a long story to sum up just how wonderful it was (perhaps in a future post when I have more time), but I'd recommend those places to anyone. The mainstream US media portrays life in both countries as far worse than it actually is, but in reality both are highly thriving, the scope of which doesn't really hit you until you set foot there.

Here is a picture of Tracey and me in an Israeli snack shop. Yeah, I know it's not the most scenic pic, but it's one of the few close-ups where I wasn't wearing a hat that cast a shadow across my face. (Plus I wanted to try out Blogger's new photo function.)



Anyway, on a music-related note, as per the chosen subject of this blog, I bought two CDs at a Tel Aviv record store of a phenomenal Israeli band called Rockfour. I already owned a couple of their English-language albums, and they're both completely amazing, so you can definitely bet I jumped when I saw some of their original Hebrew-only albums (which are hard to find outside of Israel)! I also picked up an excellent CD of a 1973 release by a group called Kaveret. (They have great classic rock in Israel too!)

More to come on those as well, but as I mentioned in my previous post, it's time to tackle the Beach Boys next.