Gabriel “Gabi” Abudraham / Charlie Megira
Charlie Megira
Numero Group releases of Charlie Megiras “Tomorrows Gone” and one of it’s “Cabinet of Curiousity” releases “You’re Not from Around Here”.
I first heard Charlie Megira while shopping around a record store-it may have been Barely Brothers in St Paul, MN. They were spinning a Numero Group release of a long lost, previously unreleased soundtrack for a film called “You’re Not from Around Here.” It was some weird noir film from 1964 that was discovered 55 years later in the “Louis Wayne Moody Archive” -The Numero group website describes it best:
“discovered after 55 years in the Louis Wayne Moody archive. A hobo’s bindle full of twangy tremolo, reverb-drenched revenge, and existential echo. Songs of alienation, paranoia, dark alleys, betrayal, prison, prostitution, trains, gun play, feminine betrayal, and the dusty, lonely road of self discovery. A black and white affair trapped under the weight of a post-war technicolor allure, You’re Not From Around Here lives in a universe of moral ambiguity.
Packaged in a replica of the original octagonal film canister, replete with rusted and glimmering varnishes alike, debossed logoture, and 36" x 27" fold out movie poster.”
I don’t know who Louis Wayne Moody is yet-but I do see another Numero “Cabinet of Curiosity” release called “Louis Wayne Moody High” which includes a high school yearbook from 1967, and is a compilation of sad garage surf music. Pretty great of course! I don’t know if you have ever checked out the oddball discoveries of the Numero Group Record Label, I think there is a Rykodisc connection, but I will put a link to their website below-I love them fiercely, and we will have to devote a whole blog post to them at some point and I will do my research.
But anyway, Charlie Megira. The last song on the soundtrack that was spinning at the record store was this weird tremolo and reverb drenched slow surf tune with this muffled incoherent vocal melody. I was transported by it, and it prompted me to buy the funny record in an old film can. I looked at the record to see who sang the last song, it was called “Tomorrows Gone” by an artist named Charlie Megira.
Charlie Megira.
When I got home I googled Charlie Megira and found another Numero Group Release called “Tomorrows gone” and it was a compilation of Charlie’s music, The next day I was in Duluth, MN and stopped into the Electric Fetus Record store there and they had the album! I was a bit amazed they had it in stock! Anyway, it’s a double album and includes music from all his various phases, garage surf music, sun session style rockabilly, 80’s pop and other crazy turns that his music took, and it includes a little booklet telling his tragic story.
Before you read any further, if you are still bothering to read this, watch this video, so you can see what he looks and sounds like-this is the first video I found when I looked him up for the first time. I loved it and found his persona and music fascinating, and loved the bemused expression on his bassists’ face.
Charlie Megira and the Bet She’an Hillbillies playing “turn Around”
His story is so dreamlike that I can’t do it justice here. I will put in links to a couple good biographical sources. He was born in 1972 in Bet She’an, in Northern Israel, about which he said in an interview with The Stranger in 2014 “King Solomon said that if there is a heaven , then Bet She’an is the gate where you will enter it“ and then he said “Actually, though there was something funny at the entrance of the city not too long ago-the sign that said ‘Welcome to Bet She’an’ was covered up by a sign that said ‘Welcome to Texas.’ “ He also said that the “water is sweet there” and that he ‘painted stripes on dogs there when he was a child’.”
His Charlie Megira persona seems like it was based on his love for rockabilly and surf rock-he has a kind of Link Wray look going on in his pictures.
Here is a list of things that stuck with me after reading the booklet that came with the complitation:
-he started out playing in a little artsy club in Tel Aviv called “The Golem” in 1995
-he made a makeshift studio, and started recording his music
-he made 6 records
-he moved to Berlin for a while
-he moved to Asheville, NC in the United States for a while
-he went through a couple band configurations
-he thought he might be able to get a record deal with Casablanca Records but it never panned out
-he had a wife and kid
-he moved back to Berlin and took up painting
-he retired his Charlie Megira persona.
-he ended his own life in 2016
-he battled depression for most of his life and would sometimes not recall who he was or what he was doing.
-he is buried in Berlin in a Jewish Cemetary and below his gravestone is inscibed five words from an interview he did “A Sun Shining Backwards”
I think I will stop here and just point to the Numero website article about him if you want to learn more about his life.
He made interesting, magical and haunted music.