London had the Batcave. Manchester had the Hacienda. Tel Aviv had a converted wedding hall in a basement on Yehuda Halevi Street, and almost none of the music made there ever left the country.
The Penguin (HaPinguin) opened in 1982 at 43 Yehuda Halevi Street, Tel Aviv. It was a basement, its walls covered in mirrors, and before the club moved in it had been a wedding hall.
It started as a discotheque. The musician and artist Doron Eyal, who performed as "Schultz HaAyom", suggested to the owner that the room should have a stage instead. Within months the Penguin was the place where Israeli new wave happened.
Bands that played there in the early years: HaClick, Jean Conflict, Chromosome, Minimal Compact, Siam, Rami Fortis, and Mashina, which began its career on that stage. Established artists came too: Corinne Allal, Riki Gal, Si Heyman.
So did foreign acts. Bauhaus played the Penguin. So did Siouxsie and the Banshees.
In 1986 the businessman Itzik Avneri bought the club, and it opened every night of the week. The second half of the decade brought a younger set of bands: Poliana Frank, Nosei HaMigbaat, Duralex Sedlex, Doppler Effect, DXM, Zkenei Tzfat and Tatu, whose live album was recorded in the room.
The Penguin faded in the early 1990s and closed.
Basement, mirrored walls, formerly a wedding hall. The center of Israeli new wave.
Started in a basement on Lincoln Street, then moved to the Ophir cinema on Gruzenberg. Nina Hagen played there.
A cinema that doubled as a concert hall. Part of the same club circuit.
Built in an abandoned industrial zone. Named after the Polish port city, in tribute to Lech Walesa and the Solidarity shipyard workers.
Minimal Compact is the Israeli band that made it out. It was formed in Amsterdam, in 1980, by Malka Spigel on bass and vocals, Samy Birnbach on vocals, and Berry Sakharof on guitar and keyboards.
They built a cult following across Europe with dark, hypnotic post-punk, and they played the Penguin when they came home. Sakharof went on to become one of the central figures in Israeli rock.
Pages we have written. The ones without links are documented in the Hebrew archive, and are on the list.
Rolling Stone did not write about the Penguin. NME did not cover it. In English, this scene is close to invisible.
In Hebrew it is not lost at all. There is a 2014 photography book by Ariel Semmel, who tended bar at the club and photographed it for years. There is Avi Pitchon's 2014 book on the counterculture of the late 1980s. There was an exhibition of Miri Davidovitz's photographs at Eretz Israel Museum.
What is missing is the English record. This archive is an attempt at one. Every claim on this page is sourced, and where the sources contradict each other we print both.
Reading Hebrew? The Hebrew archive goes much deeper. If you know something we do not, we want to hear it.
More in English: the legendary clubs, the Tel Aviv club archive, the 90s scene, and Tel Aviv vs Berlin.