Squonk wrote
All this talk of SA bands from the 90's and there were some great ones I thought I would drift back to my youth circa 1980 -
The Asylum Kids were the Bollocks in the early 80's, they didn't get any airtime on the radio stations, the SABC put a stop to that and yet they were huge.
I knew the Asylum Kids quite well because I was a friend of their manager's. The whole airtime thing is quite interesting. The band had decided that they'd bow to commercial pressures ONCE to get a single onto the air waves. That song was "School Boy" which did get some air play. But before it got that air play there was a censorship process to go through - which was not just applied to the Kids but was general policy.
I was at the manager's flat one morning when he got a call to say that somebody from the SABC would like to come to talk to Robbi about the single - both sides of it. Despite the mild anti-establishment message of "School Boy" they were not too concerned with that. The problem was the flip side, "Upside Down". It had a line about "too many Hitlers" and the SABC were very interested in that line and wanted to know what he meant by it.
This is how it was back then.
Robbi gave them an answer. The guy who was sent for the discussion was clearly a government "suit", but was no fool and they had quite an intelligent conversation about that song. He was on a fact gathering mission and made it clear that he had to report back to his seniors who would make the final decision. "School Boy" made it onto the SABC play list at least for a while, but the flip side did not.
The Asylum Kids were still not a big blip on the radar at this point. Within a few months they were a very hot live act. They'd outgrown the clubs that they'd been playing in Jo'burg and Bob Anderson (manager) started hiring function rooms at the City Hall which allowed them get a lot more paying customers on the night. The band had always been careful with their money and so they had a decent PA and could make the step up to these bigger venues without incurring too much debt (they had to pay in advance for the hall and for a temporary liquor license and stock the bar themselves, but then they got 100% of the door and all the profits from the bar). Their anti-establishment streak and Robbi's inclination towards political statements from the stage got them the wrong kind of attention. But they rolled on, and their strategy of booking venues for themselves paid off because although some clubs were not keen on booking them for various reasons their strategy meant that they didn't need the clubs.
Still there were problems with the attention they were getting from the various secret service departments. For one gig they hired the rotunda at Joubert Park. They pulled a good crowd in and the gig was a good one. Then Robbi made some comment about the government and next thing you know there was tear gas coming out of the air conditioning.
A seriously good live act. If you saw them you'd remember them.
