The Campaign to Bring Pearl Jam to Israel

There is a running joke in American pop culture about how difficult it is to get into a Pearl Jam concert. The Seattle-based 90s grunge rock band has maintained its popularity over the years and, married with their crusade against Ticketmaster, Pearl Jam remains a tough ticket to get. Nobody tell the Israelis that.


A YouTube video of students from Olam Hamuzika music school in Maccabim-Reut is starting to go viral in Israel and is the latest push in the remarkable Bring Pearl Jam To Israel campaign. In the video, a mixed group of teens is crammed into a small studio where they daringly perform the classic Pearl Jam song Alive on guitars and drums, spurred on by a long-haired conductor in Converse-sneakers.

It’s not the first time young Israeli music students impress with their ability to rock. In fact, this video is inspired by a similar one. The Artik Music School Rock Orchestra from Yehud did a rock rendition of Taylor Swift’s I Knew You Were Trouble, which got close to 1.5 million hits on YouTube last year and prompted Swift to tweet about it and post it on her website. Since then, everyone knows that enthusiastic kids covering popular songs are the way to grab the public’s attention. And Israel’s 88FM Radio presenter Ben Red knows it too.

Red initiated the Bring Pearl Jam to Israel campaign last January, and opened a Facebook group devoted to the cause, in hope of fulfilling his dream of seeing his favorite band perform in the Yarkon Park, which has hosted concerts by some of the biggest international stars, from Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney to Madonna and U2. In the first six days, Red’s page gathered 5000 Likes. Today it has more than 23,500 Likes – an extremely impressive number for Israel.

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