Taking frisbee to the cutting edge...

...where it belongs! Yeah man! The outrageously chinned Ronn Moss, aka Ridge Forrester from the Bold & The Beautiful makes a rare feature movie appearance here in the timeless Eighties classic Hard Ticket To Hawaii. Check out the greatest frisbee scene in a movie. Ronn stars as undercover drug operative Rowdy Abilene. Fist-pump that shit,  Rowdy, because it is awesome!

"This is for the Molokai cop!"

The Spear: Straight Outta The Art Ghetto

In my mind, Brett Murray's painting, The Spear, is art in its most powerful form. It has challenged people's values, spoken truth to power, caused controversy, stimulated national debate and transcended the elitist ghetto where this kind of art traditionally resides.

That it has done so largely because of the coverage given to the piece by City Press is apt. In these hyper-mediated times, just about everything can be amplified out of its original context to become a national debate.

Witness model-racist Jessica Leandra's career-immolating twitter firestorm the other week. In the years before social media, her k-bomb would've been a throwaway comment to her like-minded friends and it would never have emerged from Bedfordview, or wherever people like her reside.

Likewise, Brett Murray's painting – despite being artistically conceived – could easily have been a throwaway K-bomb of its own type.

Doubtlessly made to outrage society as much as critique our president's priapic personal life, it could easily have elicited little more than chuckles over canapes on the exhibition-opening scene.

Thanks to its mediation by City Press and its subsequent adoption as topic of the week by the social media set, it broke out of those confines and began to do what the best art often does. Challenge the audience.

Unfortunately, a lot of that audience were unwilling to be the audience. They'd not gone to an art gallery, they'd simply bought a City Press, or logged onto Facebook and now they were confronted with the (artistically) corrupted derivation of a Soviet propaganda poster originally depicting a heroic Lenin. But this one showing the president with his penis out.

It was likely a comment on President Zuma's numerous children in and out of wedlock, perhaps questioning the implications of that for our national culture in the time of HIV.

The unprepared audience was outraged. Cries of racism were quick to come and inevitable. Interdicts were brought by the ANC to force the Goodman gallery to take down the painting. "Rights go with responsibility," quoth ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe. "If you don't respect the responsibilities, you are going to destroy those rights."

Conspiracy theories have emerged on Twitter, some even implicating Murray himself in a performance-art defacing of his own art work.

But what this latest fiasco reflects is the breaking down of the walls that have kept our various cultures separate and bringing them into starker relief. The comfortable, privileged white enclave's opportunities to be quietly racist among themselves are fewer. Likewise the demurely outspoken art scene's chance of outraging patrons in a titillating, stylish manner, but remaining out of the way of blue-collar society with its less refined take on what constitutes art.

Swedish Culture minister Lena Adelson Liljeroth and "blackface cake" creator Makode Linde might agree.

We are finding it harder and harder to live past each other. The ubiquity of social media, and the fact that some media – notably City Press – are transcending their traditional audience demographics means we are increasingly being exposed to each other. (Pun, upon reflection, intended).

More and more, we are sharing the same mediated space. This offers great opportunities for artists hoping to make an impact and a social comment. It offers fewer opportunities for racists.

It also offers a greater space for debate, support or universal condemnation as the culture deems appropriate. And yes, there is a racial component to art. What some deem provocative, to others is an insult to the nation. But the cultural and media boundaries that kept our art out of each other's way lest we offend each other are no more.

We're going to have to deal with each other and our means of expression. White people can no longer ignore "dubul' ibhunu", we need to engage with it and formulate opinions. Understand what our countrymen are saying. Are they trying to offend us? Or are we usually so firmly separate from each other, culturally and linguistically, that it's not usually been an issue. The courts must rule on whether a derivative image of the presidents cock violates the president's dignity and mocks his office. And if it does, does it still have a right to be displayed?

Is that judicial call any different from pronouncing on an image of a massive, presidential phallus in a cartoon by Zapiro on the Times's comment page? Will the ANC's next call be for an Arts Tribunal to make our country's artists more accountable?

The Big Brothering of our creative industries is an ominous prospect. But a greater awareness of each other's cultural attitudes might make for different art that appeals to more people and can open more minds with a more culturally inclusive visual language. So in that sense, the debate that The Spear has stimulated is welcome.

It's all the media's fault that we're having to deal with this, with each other and our different cultures. With our different forms of self-expression. But it's about time we did.

Inspector Ras – "Cyan1"

A produced version of a song I do on acoustic. Just about works, I reckon. "My conscience will be clear, and my children will be yellow". Ha!

You'll probably hate The Buckfever Underground!

This band is so beyond the purview of conventional entertainment that anyone with mainstream expectations of what an artist should deliver is bound to be disappointed. If not disappointed, then quite possibly angered. Pissed off. "What shit is this?" is not an unheard of complaint at a Buckfever Underground show.

Thing is, the Buckfevers do a style of music fusing poetry, spoken-word, rock, funk, psychedelia and free-form jazz experimentalism that defies categorisation. So it's hard to even say, "If you like this, you'll probably like the Buckfevers." That's why it's easier to say you'll hate them! Anyone with a commercial taste in music will certainly find them difficult to digest.

They are about as far from the mainstream as it's possible to get. Despite that, they've flirted with actual success. They've won awards for the albums, played Oppikoppi, got their vids on MK. But if, for instance you prefer your frontman actually singing, you'll hate Buckfever Underground. If like hip-hop, you'll hate Buckfever Underground. If you prefer short, concise songs with a verse, chorus, bridge and a planned ending, you will despise The Buckfever Underground.

But if you're in the market for a creative take on musical expression, experimental songs in English and Afrikaans that push the limits of stage convention,  and offer visceral reflections of and on South African culture, then we might be in business. If you're open to musical poetry, free-form improvs, jam-band freestyles, an underground, anti-supergroup, and a unique bunch of artists who are on track to become a South African institution, you want to see Buckfever Underground.

The band is fronted by bilingual poetic genius and award-winning journalist Toast Coetzer, often carrying screeds of notes, which he recites over the Grateful Dead-style jams of his collaborators. These include Stephen Timm on drums, another writer and also creating futuristic electro music in bands like Myric Ambre and Polstar. Bassist Gil Hockman is a solo artist in his own right, a neo-folk troubadour who last year was possibly the giggingest performer in the country. Buckfevers guitarist Righard Kapp's style is close to the more out-there efforts of ex-Chili Pepper John Frusciante – during the heroin phase – and he has also produced some super-bizarre solo stuff, including sweet recent album Strung Like A Compound Eye. Pop genius John Savage, erstwhile of Cassette, and Samas musical director, completes the line-up, as he has done intermittently since they were established in Grahamstown in the Nineties.

It's almost like a surrealist Wu-Tang clan, if you think about it. The Buckfevers have been going about 15 years already. They go into hibernation as members refocus on personal projects, then reconvene to put out another album, a video, a tour. It's low-key, DIY in a punk style, and untainted by  commercialism. That said, you can buy their six albums at thebuckfeverunderground.com, or download tracks at Rhythm Records, or you can go see them live. Cos they're in a reconvening phase, the okes. A new album is approaching completion and that should mean a few Buckfevers appearances.

They're also visually literate to say the least, which makes their videos sweet watching and their actual albums collectable artefacts.

Without many people noticing, save their passionate fans, these guys have crafted a career worthy of great respect. They do what they do, on their own terms, in a style unlike anyone else. They might not get rich off this, but whatever happens, they'll be doing it with integrity intact.

No comment

Pride, and whiteness, means never having to say you’re sorry

The recent utterances of those now iconic spokespeople for South African whiteness, Jessica Leandra and FW de Klerk have filled me with shame to the point of wanting to hand in my Weber.

If these two fools – for now the international face of my ignominious tribe – still find themselves unable to put together a sincere apology for the incontrovertible harm done by their own racism, how can we ever expect to be taken seriously as partners in our nation-building project!

As former leader of apartheid South African and the National Party, Mr De Klerk has always tempered his apologies for apartheid with protestations that he had never condoned human rights violations and they happened without leaders' knowledge – for instance during his TRC testimony in 1997.

His recent interview with CNN suggests he still believes apartheid could have worked – it was just the implementation that was a bit off.  He says of apartheid's bantustan policy, “…saying that ethnic unity with one culture with one language everyone can be happy and can fulfil their democratic aspirations in an own state, that is not repugnant.”

This overlooks the fact that bantustans were created to disenfranchise black people within South Africa, thereby denying their most basic human rights. From this flowed forced removals, pass laws and the need for a massive security apparatus to suppress the movements expressing the people's opposition to the policy, which the apartheid government was determined to ignore.

As a former leader of white South Africa, De Klerk is in a position to own the fact that apartheid was a crime against humanity and that as supreme leader he bore ultimate responsibility for all its evils. Having done so, he can offer a sincere apology. The apologies he does offer generally take the form of, "of course I'm sorry, but…".

Also exhibiting the sin of pride, if not the gift of comprehensible communication, is model racist Jessica Leandra. Her telling twitter rants betrayed a deep-seated racism and an almost offensive bemusement that people could be insulted by it.

When it became clear that this was quite serious, and that what might fly at a whites-only braai in Bedfordview is actually a human-rights offence in the real world, she posted that, "I do apologize to those that have taken offense to my use of language."

And later, to would-be nemesis and fellow twitter bigot Tshidi Thamana at DA spokesman Mmusi Maimane's reconciliation breakfast, "Tshidi, I do apologise if the word I used offended you. It wasn’t intended to cover the entire black race, but rather at a certain individual that offended me in public.”

Another semi-apology! "I'm sorry if you were offended by what I said" is a nuance away from blaming the victim for being offended. The subtext is, "How was I to know everyone would kick up such a stink? I was just racially abusing this one person behind their back to my thousands of followers for disrespecting me."

For someone so insistent on respect, Ms Leandra shows little appreciation of its reciprocal nature.

The "Together we shall achieve" sign-off of her press release accepting Mr Maimane's offer jars in a letter that should be a groveling apology more than a proud clarion call to nation-building.

In these cases and in others, pride seems to be at the root of many white people's refusal to own their role in the historic and ongoing systematic oppression and exploitation of our black countrymen.

We demand respect, but refuse to engage. We apologize generally, but don't take personal responsibility. The truth is, we exist in this country thanks to the most generous settlement terms imaginable following three centuries of systematic oppression. Our economic control of the country has continued uninterrupted.

Gratitude is one attitude we should exhibit, respect for our fellow South Africans another. We can also no longer afford to hide in our enclaves and mutter darkly about the place going to the dogs.

Pride, arrogance and self-regard were at the heart of our bloody, oppressive tenure as SA's political leaders. Now that we are reduced to economic power alone, humility would serve us well in trying to heal the still festering wounds of the past and trying to build a more equitable dispensation as well as a non-racist, non-sexist, free and democratic society.

Joan As Police Woman – The Ride

We were turned on to this in the artist sampler of a recent issue of Mojo. In that context it was meant to be part of Paul Weller's mod movement. Quite what it has in common with that dude, we don't quite see. However it has served to represent for the female kind on our playlist, where things do tend to get a bit blokey.