A new tune. Fresh out the back room. I'm performing again at Jawfest, at the Bohemian, 9 August. Somewhere in the mid-afternoon... Check it! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=228385123858527
This one's about being from somewhere and not somewhere else, xenophobia, a defunct restaurant called 8, shoes, a gangster, some BEE guys and integrity sleeping so deep. Deep as sleeping lovers breathe their lovers in, so deeeeeep!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Home of the blessed
They’ve been letters from home, but not stayed the same. Then they became letters for
home. Home of Garth Wright, Springbok of legend, who scored that runaway try down
the grandstand touchline at the Boet in the Currie Cup semifinal.
Home of Athol Fugard, the bard of the Bay, who knew our people, spoke as we
do and told our stories. Told human stories with courage, touched the world, inspired,
revealed. We helped him tell it through us. He helped us know our selves.
Here in the home of the underachievers, the launching point of champions,
breeding ground of quality people for export. Of quiet heroes, shy champions. Gavin
Cowley, Peter Pote, Keith Butler Wheelhouse, Anton Calitz, the tortured, guitar-wielding
wordsmith on his one-man crusade for self-expression.
Turtle Morris, Richard Rath, Vincent Barnes, Mush Hide… the watermen who
passed down the wisdom from the days when there was still a wall at the Pipe, when you
could play sticks at the Summies Hotel, even before you could get pissed at Lillies and
laid on the bowling green behind Faces, while the ballies queued round the corner for
Irish coffees at Angelo’s and you had to have a meal to drink on a Sunday, at El Cid, at
the Ranch, Blackbeard’s Tavern, The Bell, De Kelder. You had to tuck in your shirt to jol
at Cassidy’s, Daytoga’s was illegal and you queued your arse off if you weren’t mates
with big Gord at Indigo’s.
Here in the home of big, mellow, Joe van der Linden, Gino Fabbri, Steve Schultz,
Worm, Wang and the ones that made it. Made it out, made it back, made it big. Black
Coffee live tonight at Pizza Palace, Sticky Fingers at the Festival. “If you enjoyed
yourself, my name is Craig Mischief. If you had a kak time, my name is Barry Hilton.”
Things to see and things to do. Places to go, minds to blow. But just not so often,
you know? Paul Simon at St Georges, Indecent Obsession at the Westbourne Oval in
the rain while Kiss Me was number one for 27 weeks. Van Coke at Pool City, Nude
Girls at Einsteins, Napalm Death at the Dungeon, Kerkorrel at the Tech. With Gary
Hemmings, impresario of Bar None festivals. Centrestage when it was still at the harbour.
The harbour when you could go raving there. When you could still go raving, when
Munro, Shane, Vimo, Karmi and them played till 8am and we stopped jolling at Cadillac
Jacks and only went to Barneys on a Sunday afternoon for a draught or two or three and
to bump into Bruce and Colleen and to stay for a last one even though we had a 4pm
subbing shift at the Herald with Bobby Cheetham on the night desk and Bob Kernohan
chief-subbing and Sue Ramsay copy tasting and a Mike Holmes pic for the front page
and Rick Wilson said we’d lead with the Cape Town pipe bomb and Fredlin and Deon
were meeting us at the R-Bar when we got off shift and the Red Bull girls were doing a
promo and it was good and we were going to the Shine-I later. And then maybe watch the
sun come up on the couch on the pavement outside Jules and Mia’s house there by Peas
and Carrots.
Home of the brave, home of the hesitant, home of the beautiful that don’t know it
yet. Barbara Robertson making sure they find out. Nicole Marais, Jane Simpson, Lauren
Harper, Taryn Miller, Kim Danoher, Danelle Bhana, Reeva Steenkamp, Zipho
Zokhufa… at the Feather Market Centre in the same suit you went to court in, with
Mandela Mazibuko saying, “Thanks for the support,“ to the well-wishers as we get set
for our winning weekend in Sun City, or the Fish, or Plett or The Halyards, or just a day at Seals with no wind and the beginning of a west swell and Duncan Scott in the water
doing head-dips at the outside peak on the low tide, while Big Red checks the waves
before work and Brad and Darren tune up in the parking lot for an acoustic set at
Legends, while Gerry van Wyk plays the ladies’ bar of the Cape St Francis hotel, where
Thulani was the king, when he wasn’t playing the Skyroof, or was it the Room at the
Top, or was it the Markham, when there was a passage through to the Herald so the
reporters could squeeze in a extra dop during supper break, till they moved to the
Maritime, where Dave Goldblum played Say Africa at the Four Winds Folk Club while
Gavin Weeks unloaded the amp from his boot outside Tico’s and Gerard had just moved
back from Cape Town, but Matt was on his way there. With Karen and Toni and Trent
and Tani and Gary and Meegs and Smiles and Bean and all the ous, if they didn’t go
further, Joburg and London and LA and Adelaide, where Craig Pottie still gets a wave,
but it still says there on the second line of his Facebook profile, “From Port Elizabeth,
Eastern Cape”.
Home of the blessed, the fortunate, the friendly, the real, the cheap, the priceless,
the not too big, the not too small, the real right regular know-it-alls. When all’s been said
and done it’s the one place we all look back on. It’s where we’re from. Where we did all
the things we’ve done. Where we’re remembered when we’re gone.
home. Home of Garth Wright, Springbok of legend, who scored that runaway try down
the grandstand touchline at the Boet in the Currie Cup semifinal.
Home of Athol Fugard, the bard of the Bay, who knew our people, spoke as we
do and told our stories. Told human stories with courage, touched the world, inspired,
revealed. We helped him tell it through us. He helped us know our selves.
Here in the home of the underachievers, the launching point of champions,
breeding ground of quality people for export. Of quiet heroes, shy champions. Gavin
Cowley, Peter Pote, Keith Butler Wheelhouse, Anton Calitz, the tortured, guitar-wielding
wordsmith on his one-man crusade for self-expression.
Turtle Morris, Richard Rath, Vincent Barnes, Mush Hide… the watermen who
passed down the wisdom from the days when there was still a wall at the Pipe, when you
could play sticks at the Summies Hotel, even before you could get pissed at Lillies and
laid on the bowling green behind Faces, while the ballies queued round the corner for
Irish coffees at Angelo’s and you had to have a meal to drink on a Sunday, at El Cid, at
the Ranch, Blackbeard’s Tavern, The Bell, De Kelder. You had to tuck in your shirt to jol
at Cassidy’s, Daytoga’s was illegal and you queued your arse off if you weren’t mates
with big Gord at Indigo’s.
Here in the home of big, mellow, Joe van der Linden, Gino Fabbri, Steve Schultz,
Worm, Wang and the ones that made it. Made it out, made it back, made it big. Black
Coffee live tonight at Pizza Palace, Sticky Fingers at the Festival. “If you enjoyed
yourself, my name is Craig Mischief. If you had a kak time, my name is Barry Hilton.”
Things to see and things to do. Places to go, minds to blow. But just not so often,
you know? Paul Simon at St Georges, Indecent Obsession at the Westbourne Oval in
the rain while Kiss Me was number one for 27 weeks. Van Coke at Pool City, Nude
Girls at Einsteins, Napalm Death at the Dungeon, Kerkorrel at the Tech. With Gary
Hemmings, impresario of Bar None festivals. Centrestage when it was still at the harbour.
The harbour when you could go raving there. When you could still go raving, when
Munro, Shane, Vimo, Karmi and them played till 8am and we stopped jolling at Cadillac
Jacks and only went to Barneys on a Sunday afternoon for a draught or two or three and
to bump into Bruce and Colleen and to stay for a last one even though we had a 4pm
subbing shift at the Herald with Bobby Cheetham on the night desk and Bob Kernohan
chief-subbing and Sue Ramsay copy tasting and a Mike Holmes pic for the front page
and Rick Wilson said we’d lead with the Cape Town pipe bomb and Fredlin and Deon
were meeting us at the R-Bar when we got off shift and the Red Bull girls were doing a
promo and it was good and we were going to the Shine-I later. And then maybe watch the
sun come up on the couch on the pavement outside Jules and Mia’s house there by Peas
and Carrots.
Home of the brave, home of the hesitant, home of the beautiful that don’t know it
yet. Barbara Robertson making sure they find out. Nicole Marais, Jane Simpson, Lauren
Harper, Taryn Miller, Kim Danoher, Danelle Bhana, Reeva Steenkamp, Zipho
Zokhufa… at the Feather Market Centre in the same suit you went to court in, with
Mandela Mazibuko saying, “Thanks for the support,“ to the well-wishers as we get set
for our winning weekend in Sun City, or the Fish, or Plett or The Halyards, or just a day at Seals with no wind and the beginning of a west swell and Duncan Scott in the water
doing head-dips at the outside peak on the low tide, while Big Red checks the waves
before work and Brad and Darren tune up in the parking lot for an acoustic set at
Legends, while Gerry van Wyk plays the ladies’ bar of the Cape St Francis hotel, where
Thulani was the king, when he wasn’t playing the Skyroof, or was it the Room at the
Top, or was it the Markham, when there was a passage through to the Herald so the
reporters could squeeze in a extra dop during supper break, till they moved to the
Maritime, where Dave Goldblum played Say Africa at the Four Winds Folk Club while
Gavin Weeks unloaded the amp from his boot outside Tico’s and Gerard had just moved
back from Cape Town, but Matt was on his way there. With Karen and Toni and Trent
and Tani and Gary and Meegs and Smiles and Bean and all the ous, if they didn’t go
further, Joburg and London and LA and Adelaide, where Craig Pottie still gets a wave,
but it still says there on the second line of his Facebook profile, “From Port Elizabeth,
Eastern Cape”.
Home of the blessed, the fortunate, the friendly, the real, the cheap, the priceless,
the not too big, the not too small, the real right regular know-it-alls. When all’s been said
and done it’s the one place we all look back on. It’s where we’re from. Where we did all
the things we’ve done. Where we’re remembered when we’re gone.
The shit in Zanzibar
The shit oozes down the walls of the toilet stall. Just to my right,
one globule. If I watch it, it stops, but as I turn my attention back
to the ganja in my lap, it resumes its journey. Like a snail, a black
snail of filthy, dysenteric bowelspawn, shat there like his brothers,
his fellows, by some festering, infected human.
The fuckin’ shit is everywhere, to my left, to my right, on the door,
the cistern. There are diarrhea tracks running down the window. I’m
sitting on shit, anything I touch will be covered, suffused in shit.
The guy must have shat like a sawn-off shotgun blast. Probably that
fuck from the East Rand. He was white as a blank page at dinner this
evening.
More seafood. Crayfish the size of tennis rackets,
lobster like vacuum cleaners, just about disembowelled, some black
brain fluid still visible in the cranial cavity. I can actually
discern the texture of shellfish flesh in the nugget of faeces that
rests on this toilet roll. Caramelised, swallowed and defecated out,
before the Zanzibari waiters have even had time to clear the table.
I must roll these spliffs quick and careful. The ganja
will absorb the stench. So will I. I will emerge from this filthy
fucking shithole reeking of someone else’s bodge. And I will NEED a
fuckin’ smoke after that.
A smoke of this easy-choefing Zanzibari grunge. Ten rand
a stick. All brown paper wrapping like we used to score at the Bunny
Hut in St Francis when the Chokka Run was just starting. Sticks,
fingers.
It's me and Duncan by the palm tree just beyond the
splash of the security light, the guard waiting politely just out of
range. And the mert, the same guy who sold me the stuff, tugging at my
elbow. Blue Face.
“You cheat me. You say hundred rand is ten euro. They
only give me seven. You cheat me. Give me more. I curse you! You hear
me, South Africa? I curse you! I curse your Mandela. I curse
bafanabafana! I curse Big Brodda! Curse Waka Waka!
The weed does taste of shit. Shit and seafood. Seafood
and suntan lotion. Sunblock and insect killer. Spice. Cardamom,
cinnamon, ginger, cloves. Vanilla, saffron, nutmeg, bhangi, all of
which have shared space in my day bag on those trips to Stonetown.
Stonetown. Stonetown! Stoned town! Full of Blue Face's sticky, evil
cursed weed, honing of someone else's shit festering down the concrete
alleys, hopping the sewage.
"Nice saris. I give you good price. Come! Zanzaibar football shirt.
How much you give me?"
No bru, I'm just... I'm high as a kite and I'm cursed. And there's a
mullah in every doorway checking me out. I can't find the sun. I can't
find my way. Every alley seems the same. The sea was supposed to be
this way, but it's not, got it's so fuckin hot. Daranjani fish market
fuck I could kotch. These flies... In the bogs at Mercury's a woman
weeps. I heard her through the wall.
The fever's feeling me too, but the ganja keeps it at bay, even if it
lets the demons in. We're being led to god knows where by no one knows
who. He says he's Black Elvis, but that sounds like a pseudonym, not
him, I don't trust these alleys.
This ready-rolled... I know the ou put a hex on it. I could just... If
these Muslim ous would stop staring, I could just... As long as Black
Elvis isn't out to fuckin'...
Somewhere here there's somewhere kief. I been here, somewhere behind
an ancient door of woodworked finery wifh inlaid brass and farsi
prayers, there's a balcony and a view and a fan and a draught and a
waiter in an off-white fez. What was it called? If I could just... Is
that me that smells of zol? Where's he taking us? I didn't mean to
rip-off Blue Face. I didn't mean to be an outlaw. I thought... How
much is a rand worth anyway? No one knows that shit. If he's cursed me
and I get stabbed, I'll be fuckin acid!
Tripping in this fuckin heat. The sweat's bringing the shit back. I
can smell that oke's skiets and my own sweat and the devil's ganja on
the sub-basement of these waves of cinnamon from those baseball-bat
sized sticks as Black Elvis rounds his last corner and kids tell
kitendawili riddles, while shangaa-adorned brides-to-be undergo
unyango ceremonies, new plans are laid for the busara festival,
somewhere west of Nungwe a fisherman adjusts his sail and the ancient
rhythm of the elements ushers him home and I, I am the one out of
place. I am the cursed one. I am the bringer of the curse; the source,
not the subject. Head spinning, mind twisted, self-obsessed, smelling
of shit, my very body rebelling against this place as I rise to the
skin like a bullet to the sternum fit to burst, my week is up it's
time to bust. I'm not qualified to stay, I only scratch the surface,
my passive aggrression's only fit for cities not this place of
ancients where we all know our place. I can only impose my schizo flow
for so long before it's all gone. I know when I see Blue Face's
cursing face before my face in every alley face it's time to face up
to facts and fade out of Stonetown but I don't even know the
wherewithal. This place's a maze!
Zanzibar will bring me to a pus-faced head and squeeze me out like so
much infected matter, like a foreign object.
And that's what I am. That scrubby, peppery ganja i scammed off Blue
Face... The paranoid squalour, the sewage lapping our feet as we
stumble through these alleys to our doom or salvation. The dysenteric,
flatulent sheetflow of shit spray-painted up and down the walls of
every tourist toilet on Unguja. From jambiani, where barmen tanned the
tone of teak tap the tonsils of pale new blood fresh off the bus.
None of that is real thing. The arrogant, narcissistic self-centered
ignorance that guides me, the hedonistic filter through which me and
my travel mates view this place, as we get our hair cornrowed on the
beach, 13 serengetis in, ready-rolled blazing in the lady's eyes,
board shorts soiled with last night's follow-through. A 12-hour badge
at the bar, A willing market for all that's tacky in their culture,
the economic incentive for total debasement. Bead bracelets, cow horn
necklaces, kente kaftans, a plywood map of Africa with Kilimanjaro on
it, an ebony club encrusted in glass beads, a leather ankle strap,
tied by a Maasai tribesman at the resort variety show, a set of
elephant-shaped bookends haggled down to forty thousand shillings at
the hotel craft market from a man who knows a man who can get us some
bhang. Cheap. And what Mr Tourist wants, Mr Tourist gets, cheap &
cheerful if a little sarcastic but still.
Ja fuck. I am the shit in Zanzibar.
one globule. If I watch it, it stops, but as I turn my attention back
to the ganja in my lap, it resumes its journey. Like a snail, a black
snail of filthy, dysenteric bowelspawn, shat there like his brothers,
his fellows, by some festering, infected human.
The fuckin’ shit is everywhere, to my left, to my right, on the door,
the cistern. There are diarrhea tracks running down the window. I’m
sitting on shit, anything I touch will be covered, suffused in shit.
The guy must have shat like a sawn-off shotgun blast. Probably that
fuck from the East Rand. He was white as a blank page at dinner this
evening.
More seafood. Crayfish the size of tennis rackets,
lobster like vacuum cleaners, just about disembowelled, some black
brain fluid still visible in the cranial cavity. I can actually
discern the texture of shellfish flesh in the nugget of faeces that
rests on this toilet roll. Caramelised, swallowed and defecated out,
before the Zanzibari waiters have even had time to clear the table.
I must roll these spliffs quick and careful. The ganja
will absorb the stench. So will I. I will emerge from this filthy
fucking shithole reeking of someone else’s bodge. And I will NEED a
fuckin’ smoke after that.
A smoke of this easy-choefing Zanzibari grunge. Ten rand
a stick. All brown paper wrapping like we used to score at the Bunny
Hut in St Francis when the Chokka Run was just starting. Sticks,
fingers.
It's me and Duncan by the palm tree just beyond the
splash of the security light, the guard waiting politely just out of
range. And the mert, the same guy who sold me the stuff, tugging at my
elbow. Blue Face.
“You cheat me. You say hundred rand is ten euro. They
only give me seven. You cheat me. Give me more. I curse you! You hear
me, South Africa? I curse you! I curse your Mandela. I curse
bafanabafana! I curse Big Brodda! Curse Waka Waka!
The weed does taste of shit. Shit and seafood. Seafood
and suntan lotion. Sunblock and insect killer. Spice. Cardamom,
cinnamon, ginger, cloves. Vanilla, saffron, nutmeg, bhangi, all of
which have shared space in my day bag on those trips to Stonetown.
Stonetown. Stonetown! Stoned town! Full of Blue Face's sticky, evil
cursed weed, honing of someone else's shit festering down the concrete
alleys, hopping the sewage.
"Nice saris. I give you good price. Come! Zanzaibar football shirt.
How much you give me?"
No bru, I'm just... I'm high as a kite and I'm cursed. And there's a
mullah in every doorway checking me out. I can't find the sun. I can't
find my way. Every alley seems the same. The sea was supposed to be
this way, but it's not, got it's so fuckin hot. Daranjani fish market
fuck I could kotch. These flies... In the bogs at Mercury's a woman
weeps. I heard her through the wall.
The fever's feeling me too, but the ganja keeps it at bay, even if it
lets the demons in. We're being led to god knows where by no one knows
who. He says he's Black Elvis, but that sounds like a pseudonym, not
him, I don't trust these alleys.
This ready-rolled... I know the ou put a hex on it. I could just... If
these Muslim ous would stop staring, I could just... As long as Black
Elvis isn't out to fuckin'...
Somewhere here there's somewhere kief. I been here, somewhere behind
an ancient door of woodworked finery wifh inlaid brass and farsi
prayers, there's a balcony and a view and a fan and a draught and a
waiter in an off-white fez. What was it called? If I could just... Is
that me that smells of zol? Where's he taking us? I didn't mean to
rip-off Blue Face. I didn't mean to be an outlaw. I thought... How
much is a rand worth anyway? No one knows that shit. If he's cursed me
and I get stabbed, I'll be fuckin acid!
Tripping in this fuckin heat. The sweat's bringing the shit back. I
can smell that oke's skiets and my own sweat and the devil's ganja on
the sub-basement of these waves of cinnamon from those baseball-bat
sized sticks as Black Elvis rounds his last corner and kids tell
kitendawili riddles, while shangaa-adorned brides-to-be undergo
unyango ceremonies, new plans are laid for the busara festival,
somewhere west of Nungwe a fisherman adjusts his sail and the ancient
rhythm of the elements ushers him home and I, I am the one out of
place. I am the cursed one. I am the bringer of the curse; the source,
not the subject. Head spinning, mind twisted, self-obsessed, smelling
of shit, my very body rebelling against this place as I rise to the
skin like a bullet to the sternum fit to burst, my week is up it's
time to bust. I'm not qualified to stay, I only scratch the surface,
my passive aggrression's only fit for cities not this place of
ancients where we all know our place. I can only impose my schizo flow
for so long before it's all gone. I know when I see Blue Face's
cursing face before my face in every alley face it's time to face up
to facts and fade out of Stonetown but I don't even know the
wherewithal. This place's a maze!
Zanzibar will bring me to a pus-faced head and squeeze me out like so
much infected matter, like a foreign object.
And that's what I am. That scrubby, peppery ganja i scammed off Blue
Face... The paranoid squalour, the sewage lapping our feet as we
stumble through these alleys to our doom or salvation. The dysenteric,
flatulent sheetflow of shit spray-painted up and down the walls of
every tourist toilet on Unguja. From jambiani, where barmen tanned the
tone of teak tap the tonsils of pale new blood fresh off the bus.
None of that is real thing. The arrogant, narcissistic self-centered
ignorance that guides me, the hedonistic filter through which me and
my travel mates view this place, as we get our hair cornrowed on the
beach, 13 serengetis in, ready-rolled blazing in the lady's eyes,
board shorts soiled with last night's follow-through. A 12-hour badge
at the bar, A willing market for all that's tacky in their culture,
the economic incentive for total debasement. Bead bracelets, cow horn
necklaces, kente kaftans, a plywood map of Africa with Kilimanjaro on
it, an ebony club encrusted in glass beads, a leather ankle strap,
tied by a Maasai tribesman at the resort variety show, a set of
elephant-shaped bookends haggled down to forty thousand shillings at
the hotel craft market from a man who knows a man who can get us some
bhang. Cheap. And what Mr Tourist wants, Mr Tourist gets, cheap &
cheerful if a little sarcastic but still.
Ja fuck. I am the shit in Zanzibar.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Inspector Ras – Cyan
A version of a song called Cyan that I hadn't posted for some reason. I gotta get back into making videos of my songs. This is still with that shocker of an acoustic that I got given by my mate Sacha back in the day. I upgraded to one that you can actually plug in when Gil Hockman hooked me up to support Vusi Mahlasela.
I'm playing the next Jawfest on August 9, so I gotta get playing again.
I'm playing the next Jawfest on August 9, so I gotta get playing again.
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