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Jerusalem's Mellow Submarine By Barry Davis

Atcha Bar has got to be something of a visionary, pioneer or, at the very least, a hard-nosed single-minded achiever. Why else would someone, in their right mind, consider establishing a new independent record label in the middle of one of the most serious slumps the local entertainment industry has ever experienced?

Not content with running Jerusalem's Yellow Submarine music venue - a singular entertainment vehicle in this country - two years ago, Bar decided to set up a facility for capturing the creative efforts of local musicians on CD. Today, the Yellow Submarine record label boasts a discography of seven titles with the most recent release, by rock band Hamishpakha (The Family), hitting record stores just last month.

Bar freely admits to harboring idealistic intent as well as an almost all-consuming passion for music, in all forms, and getting the message "out there". "The label is meant to be a platform for Jerusalem musicians," he says. "There are lots of artists who have something to say artistically and, if they don't get a chance to express themselves, are just going go off into musical oblivion. I hope the label will give them the encouragement and impetus they need to say what they want to say, and to come back a second time to record something else."

If you're going be producing musicians' work it helps to be one yourself. As a child, Bar studied classical guitar and, by all accounts, was a budding talent to be reckoned with. "I did very well," he states simply. "I won all sorts of grants and played a lot of concerts." Later he gravitated to jazz but when, as a teenager, he attended a rock concert with Arik Einstein and Shalom Hanokh, he changed tack again. "When I heard their music I suddenly realized I'd hit on something I really wanted to do. I also listened to a lot of Genesis, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd." Several years of playing rock music followed until, in the mid-1980s, he went to another gig which was to push him back to jazz. "I went to see [U.S. jazz pianist] Chick Corea play with his Elektric Band at the Sultan's Pool. I remember being overawed by [guitarist] Scott Henderson. I thought: "That's what I want to do'."

Page Two Yellow Submarine