Highway Chile wrote
MIKA the better one wrote
I cant account for bands before my time in SA such as Rabbit, I can only assume that there was a better time for music. But for the time I saw it... it was not good.
No you have nailed it. It never was good. There were REALLY good bands like Freedom's, Scratby Hud, Time To Suck, Hawk and a few other bands here and there......but mostly the bands that got signed and that had regular radio rotation were so Pop it was just awful. Putrid fucking songs like Sonbrilitjies. But compared to the English and US bands, no comparison whatsoever.
I disagree. In the late 70s, much of the 80s there were a lot of good bands around. And there was radio play even TV exposure. I was in the army in '76/'77 and the soundtrack to those 12 months was Rabbitt (I remember the single they did with Margaret Singana, and that one about was it "Dingley's Bookstore"). When I went down to Durban on weekend pass it was obligatory (for me) to go up to the Berea and take in some the live music happening there. Mostly Finch & Henson (who had a contract with Warners), but sometimes Luis Ribeiro's Palm Boat Band (Mike Slavin on guitar, Denis Lalouette on bass) or the Silver Creek Mountain Band (who had a recording contract).
A couple of years later I was in Jo'burg. The Radio Rats (from Springs) had recently astonished all and sundry by getting to number 2 on the Springbok charts with ZX-Dan. Now remember that's Rabbit, Finch & Henson, Silver Creek Mountain Band and the Radio Rats who had all caught the interest of local labels and got signed. There were others, these are the guys I remember.
In the townships it was different as the talent there was largely local and there were a lot of fine acts on that scene. You didn't hear them on "white" stations like Radio 5 or Springbok, though Margaret Singana (who had been involved in the stage show Ipi Tombi) started crossing over (she had a big - in local terms - hit "I Never Loved A Man" with Trevor Rabin playing the guitar).
SABC then set up a "battle of the bands" on TV with a recording deal for the winners. The winners were Baxtop, but I can remember the delicate listeners of the SABC having their eyes and ears shocked by the Lancaster Band from Cape Town - sort of new wave meets AC/DC with the lead singer prancing around in a school boy uniform. McCully Workshop down in Cape Town had some big hits with elaborate productions. Piet Botha (son of Pik) was in that battle of the bands show as well, playing bass in Raven (hard rock). They got signed to David Mark's 3rd ear label.
Round about '78 there was a string of shows at His Majesty's Theatre in down town Johannesurg. I guess the idea was to showcase the diversity of South African pop and rock music. They even had ? black bands in the lineup, though I don't recall the audiences being multi-racial. I can't remember everybody I saw there, but it was a very eclectic series. Stingray (who'd just had a big hit with "Better The Devil You Know", kwela act Abafana Besishingishane (hope I spelled that right), Wild Youth (Durban's answer to the sex pistols), The Radio Rats, Baxtop, Harari (Sipho "Hotstix" Mabuse's band), Rene Arnell...
But at the same time something else was happening... the live scene, especially the club scene, got filled with disco cover bands. There was lots of disco and funk on the air waves and that's what people wanted to dance to.
The government was clamping down on local acts who started writing about what was going on in the country. In particular Roger Lucey's career got comprehensively wrecked by the security police (far fetched? The operative who was given the task of infiltrating Lucey's circle testified before the TRC). The SABC set up a committee to monitor lyrics.
In '79 The Asylum Kids signed with Warners and went into the studio to record. They had agreed that they'd do one blatantly commercial song to try for a break through on SABC. I used to hang with their manager, Bob Anderson. One day I went over to Bob's and Robbi Robb (guitarist, main songwiter) was also there. The SABC were coming to talk to Robbi about the lyrics because there were some they didn't understand. Robbi thought they wanted to speak about the actual single "Schoolboy" which sent a then fashionable anti-school message. No. They were interested in the flip side, a less commercial song "Upside Down". That had a line about "too many Hitlers" and that's what they wanted to quiz Robbi about.
This then escalated. The SABC would tell the labels that they should send tapes to them for approval or comment before printing the records. Several labels cut to the chase and installed their own internal censors to ease the passage of things from the pressing plant to the SABC.
However things kept on changing and there were successes. Nobody really knew what to do about Juluka who were massive in the townships and hooked into the increasingly vocal unions. They made a whole album of songs about working men. The Universities would host live music when they could - I remember seeing Wild Youth at the Wits Theatre, also a triple bill of Baxtop, Radio Rats and Edi Niederlander.
Edi Niederlander had a big hit with "Ancient Dust of Africa" from the Jock of the Bushveld movie.
A big problem for most of these acts was breaking out of SA. That's why many of them didn't last the distance. Often they couldn't make significant money here (in the townships you could, and bands like Stimela, Spirits Rejoice and Harari did well) but for a white punky rocker like Robbi Robb it was much harder. Albums were sent overseas, people over there were interested, but major markets remained closed because of difficulties with unions and increasing sanctions.
Johnny Clegg was born in the UK and was a member of the BMU. When he took his new band Savuka to the UK in '83 there were problems. Yes he was a BMU member and yes his band was multi-racial and the SA government didn't like them. BUT the BMU supported the cultural boycott and by the way if Clegg kept on playing in SA they would expel him. Eventually the tour went ahead but all the proceeds went to the Anti Apartheid Movement and Clegg never got a bean. He was luckier in France where the boycott was less strictly observed and where they were crazy about African rhythms.
Several countries were no go areas for South African bands of any colour. This made it harder for things to make financial sense (it wasn't only musicians that had this problem - a generation of very good cricketers, knowing that they could never get to the top and make a good living out of the game - played as semi-pros in SA and became accountants or estate agents).
By the mid 80s the "official" local scene was dire, but surprises kept on coming. Bright Blue somehow got to number 1 with a song, "Weeping" that deal allegorically with PW Botha and the situation in SA, that was pressed privately by the band as they couldn't get a record deal (or a renewal - they'd been signed, recorded one album and then got dropped), and which blatantly quoted the banned Nkosi Sikele i'Afrika. How did the SABC censors miss that? Nobody knows, but they did, and Bright Blue were the first SA act to get to number 1 on the radio 5 charts.
Lloyd Ross's Shifty Records kept on going. They basically would sign anything that the SABC didn't want and the establishment labels wouldn't touch with a bargepole. So you got James Phillips in his various guises, Jennifer Ferguson (who then got signed up by WEA who had no idea how to market her), Koos Kombuis, the Genuines (a dynamite live band with jazz chops, malay rhythms and punk energy) etc etc.
Tim Parr's band Ella Mental got a deal and had a biggish hit with "Clowns". I remember seeing them at the Market Theatre. Tim Parr is some player, and the band were very tight and delivered a good show.
Look I can go on. I don't know the whole scene and I can't tell the whole story, but the story I can tell is a very different one. There is no doubt that there was lots of MOR nonsense dominating the airwaves (why should SA be different from everywhere else) and there's no doubt that the government had a big finger in the pie and were trying to dictate what got played, who played where and so on... but all the time there was a vibrant music scene.
Oddly I don't sense the same sort of scene now - maybe because I'm older, married, pillar of the community etc with dogs and a 9 to 5. I think economics have a lot to do with it. Back in the early 80s the Asylum Kids and The Cherry Faced Lurchers could survive because the cost of living was a lot cheaper - especially accommodation. It wasn't that secure then, but it could be done and it was easier to survive purely as a performing musician than it is now.
A big problem was this wierd snobbery we had in SA. We thought our cricketers and our rugby players were the best, but our musicians? No man.... they were just copies of what was happening overseas (Well.... yes, if you thought that the SA rock scene was the Plumb Crazy in Jeppe Street). For those who knew better there was plenty to see and do - and the scene was less ridden with arbitrary divisions than it is now, you could see the Malay-punk Genuines, the gothic No Friends of Harry and the township influenced Bright Blue all on the same bill.
