Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
I can laugh now, but the mid '80s were a desolate place filled mostly with synth pop bands like that and the occasional bit 'o hair metal. The worst was the only gigs were top 20 cover gigs. A few good moments in retrospect (the occasional good pop band and a lot of great rock albums that, while you didn't hear on the radio, but were still available in the good record shops), but overall not something I'd want to live through again.
I'd agree with much of that, but I thought it was actually a pretty good decade for local music (maybe we were a few years behind the times). I recall the Lurchers, the Genuines, Bright Blue, Jennifer Ferguson, Tananas, Tighthead Fourie and the Loose Forwards, Morocco, the whole Voelvry movement, Robin Auld, the Kalahari Sufers, Falling Mirror, Ella Mental, The Asylum Kids... production values were often as cheesy as they were in the rest of the world, but there were a lot of good bands around SA at the time.
And a lot of those bands were good live bands.... I went to some great live shows back in those days. I remember a terrific gig by Bright Blue at Wits, and a whole load by the Genuines. Jennifer Ferguson did great shows at the Market Theatre (band included Ian Herman, Nippy Cripwell and Jamie Scholfield). The Asylum Kids had a big, and well deserved, reputation as a live act. After the Kids broke up Robbi Robb put together Tribe After Tribe. I saw them in some hotel in Rosebank one night and they were cooking.
I don't look back with fondness at a lot of what I heard on the radio, but live gigs around Jo'burg... well that was another business entirely. There were some great lineups at the Wits Free People's Festivals.
