Word: haber
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Many of them gathered for a performance by Scrambled Eggs, four nerdy-cool guys in tight jeans who strangle their guitars and have onstage seizures as if this were Seattle in the 1990s. "I was locked in a cellar, and it became my shelter," sang front man Charbel Haber on See You in Beirut Whatever Happens, one of the band's original songs, which channels the postpunk era of Sonic Youth and the Cure but seems somehow appropriate in the current Beirut setting: a subterranean nightclub called Basement, which coined its slogan, "It's Safer Underground," during last summer...
...foreign visitor might find it strange to discover a rock subculture in the Middle East, but Scrambled Eggs vocalist Haber, a former Catholic schoolboy, sees a similarity between the U.S. in rock's golden age during the 1950s and '60s and the Middle East today--sexually repressed conservative societies dominated by religion and an ideological cold war. "At the end of the day, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll means freedom," he says...
...foreign visitor might find it strange to find a rock subculture in the Middle East, but Haber, a former Catholic schoolboy, sees a similarity between rock's golden age during the 1950s and 1960s in America, and the Middle East today - sexually repressed conservative societies dominated by religion and an ideological cold war. Interviewed last week at the band's studio in Gemmayze, a formerly working-class neighborhood of garages and crumbling townhouses that's become ground zero for Beirut's young and restless, Haber places the Beirut rock scene in a wider Mideast cultural context...
...turned Lebanon into battlefield between regional superpowers. Spurred by last summer's war with Israel and by the current struggle between Iran and the U.S. over Lebanon's government, talented young people have been leaving in droves. "We're not a country that can handle big missions," said Haber. "One side wants us to spread democracy in the Middle East, the other side says that we're the country that's going to bring about the downfall of the Israelis and the Americans. They have been pushing the country into a state of survival, and in a state of survival...
...music of Scrambled Eggs isn't overtly political. But Haber's lyrics, which focus on his "entourage of completely wasted people" reflect what it's like to live in a society fraught with uncertainty and violent change. "We do everything as if the world is going to end tomorrow," he said. "The Syrians might come back, Israel might attack, Hizballah might start another war. In a situation like this, you do a lot of self-destructive things." One recent song, "Let It Go," is both a rousing exhortation to ignore one's mounting problems, but also an elegiac farewell...