by Kfir Luzzatto

(Translated from the print version of "Koteret", February 2005 issue)

“You have to hear this, Dad,” my daughter Michal said. Every now and then she takes it into her head to improve my musical education by playing new stuff to me, and sometimes she even manages to get my attention. But this was different. This time all it took to make me realize that I was listening to an altogether different brand of music were a few seconds of Fisher’s enchanted ballad “I Will Love You”.

Fisher is a duo consisting of Kathy Fisher and Ron Wasserman. Kathy writes the lyrics and sings, and Ron composes the music and records the arrangements. This dry description, however, doesn’t even start to do justice to the duo (who is also a couple). An unknown critic very aptly described Kathy’s voice as “a hot rock wrapped in velvet”; and when Ron Wasserman composes a melody for one of Kathy’s lyrics, he creates it only for her, for her very special voice, and that is perhaps the secret of the magical music that the band makes.

The uncommon qualities of the duo rode the tide of the Internet revolution when, without the backing of a record company, Ron and Kathy decided in 2000 to try their luck and place songs on MP3’s website. The surprise was great when, in a short time, over two million downloads of “I Will Love You” were recorded (with about three million downloads of Fisher’s songs overall) – an unprecedented achievement that has not been repeated by another band.

A San Diego radio station DJ downloaded “I Will Love You”, and one afternoon decided to play it. The reaction was immediate; as in a SF movie, in which a mysterious ray is projected onto earth from outer space and makes people behave like alien puppets, drivers who were tuned to that station pulled off the side of the road in droves, and the switchboard of the radio station was flooded with phone calls from people, often in tears, demanding to know who was singing that song.

Indeed, Fisher’s singing evokes the Sirens who, according to Greek mythology, sang such a wonderful, intoxicating song that no sailor could resist the impulse to steer his boat towards them, even though it meant being doomed to crash on the rocks from which the melody came. To complete the metaphor, however, we should add that Fisher is a “Nostalgic Siren”; many of Kathy’s lyrics touch tender spots of our consciousness, pull out the longings that we keep hidden under lighter and nicer memories, and bring them to the surface. They do so with the help of a melody that fits the words like a glove. The mixture is then shot straight into the center of our senses with the power of Kathy’s voice and the strength of her sweeping performance, backed by Ron’s uncompromising professionalism. It is our duty to warn the reader: just like any other habit-forming drug, as soon as Fisher penetrates our senses and receptors for her music show up in our brain, the addiction becomes unavoidable and irreversible. Any reader who worries about the consequences should avoid going to “Koteret’s” website to sample the song of the Siren.

Since the number of Fisher’s fans increases constantly, it is not surprising to find teenagers chatting with fans in their forties and fifties at the band’s website. Ron Wasserman has a reasonable explanation to offer for the phenomenon: he thinks that it has a lot to do with the combination of Kathy’s introspective lyrics and his own pop-friendly melodies, which permit different age groups to enjoy the same songs. But Fisher’s hard-core fans know that this is merely a smoke screen put up by Ron, to cover up the use that the band makes of the mysterious ray from outer space, to capture its audience.