Matti Caspi - My Second Childhood (NMC 1984)

The album, which started its career with the somewhat awkward name “Matti Caspi CBS 25725”, rapidly earned the nickname “The Blanket” (now we’re allowed to reveal that it’s a “Kitan” company duvet) because of the photograph on the cover. With its release as a record version, someone decided to call it by a new name, “My Second Childhood”, like the name of the song that opens the album’s other side.

In the three years that passed since his last solo album “Twilight”, Caspi has transferred to a newer sound system (for that time) where synthesizers rule. This is Caspi’s only solo album where he doesn’t play guitars at all (!)

To enrich the arrangements, Caspi decided to include in the keyboards playing two other musicians - Haim Kachtan and Rammy Levin. Kachtan has collaborated with Caspi in numerous projects that time, from Oshik Levy’s solo album “Heat Wave Nights” (1981) to Gally Atary’s “Flying in the Wind” where Kachtan was entrusted with the piano. Levin continues to collaborate with Caspi until today in shows and albums like “Another World” (1998) and “You Are My Woman” (2005). The two also play the trio of accordions that opens “A Clean Folk’s Song”. This song and the song “My Second Childhood” were the two big hits from this album and were excitedly welcomed by the wide crowd. Few knew the name of the opening song, but it was hard to miss the chorus “Middle parted, side parted…”. Later Caspi named his production company “Middle Parted”.

The album itself is naturally divided to two: frantic songs like “A Clean Folk Song”, “My Girl”, “I Slept”, and “Because Tomorrow We’ll Die”, and on the opposite side slow and magical ballades like “My Second Childhood” and “A House for Example”.

The lyricists in this album are diverse: Zeev Olman and Dudu Elharar are senior production personnel who have “sinned” once in a while writing poetry. No doubt one of the best lyrics in the album has earned one of Matti’s best composed song - “My Girl” by Nathan Zach, which became a complex and rich piece, full of imaginary and inventive musical arrangement. The composing of this song has taken three years: Caspi composed a part of it and couldn’t continue. After three years he found the rest of it and completed the composition. The song “My Second Childhood” has also been through some rough patches until reaching its final version: at that time Caspi lived next to Yossi Bannai (RIP). He brought him the melody to write the lyrics and after a long while asked to listen to the result. Bannai had only been able to write the first line: “If it’s really true”. Matti asked to have the music back and gave it to Ehud Manor (RIP) because he wanted to include it in the new album. Manor listened to the melody and said it sounded to him like ‘It’s my second childhood’ and immediately wrote the lyrics.

A surprise was added to the record version: another song that was supposed to appear in the album, but wasn’t included, probably out of space issues: “Jealousy” by Danny Robas (lyrics). It’s undoubtedly a song worth a place of honor in the original album.