SQUEAL - ROCK'S NEXT PIG THING

Source: Sunday Times magazine, 1 March 1998 (Graeme Klopper) One of the biggest problems with the South African music industry, particularly when it comes to "white" rock, is the Sophomore Syndrome - instead of being allowed to grow, bands are encouraged to rush out an uninspiring debut only to sink without trace after the first wave of hype. While this kind of short-term approach boosts the record companies' bottom lines, it does little for the fans or the groups themselves. Just look at the difference between, say, the Beatles' first album and Sergeant Pepper. A notable exception to this rule is Squeal, whose accomplished debut, Long Pig, even contained a few bona fide hit singles (remember Runners??). Good as it was, the band has progressed so far that the recent follow-up, Man and Woman, leaves it in the dust. Not only that, but the album also contains one of the greatest South African pop singles even in its first release, confusingly also titled Long Pig. So what's with all the Pigs and Squealing? There's no connection, says singer, songwriter and guitarist Dave Birch, Squeal not having any particular relevance beyone being "a cry of terror". The term 'long pig' was given to 18th century missionaries to New Guinea by the local cannibals - their flesh apparently had the same colour, texture and taste as pork. Unlike those ill-fated missionaries, Dave didn't leave his native Britain for South Africa to force an alien culture on others. Instead, he came here on holiday in 1990 with his wife, originally a South African, and ended up staying here. Dave had been a member of punk legends The Vibrators, played with Thomas Dolby and done sessions work for, among others, Trevor Horn on Video Killed The Radio Star. Unlike his brother, the Stereo MC's frontman Rob B, Dave is an unashamed fan of guitars - the louder the better. Unfortunately, in the post-Acid house, pre-Nirvana UK, guitar-driven music was about as cool as leprosy. Dave settled in Durban - where rock never seems to go out of style - and set about starting a new life. Squeal began coming together in 1992 when Dave met bassist Brett Barnes. Six years, a Spinal Tap-like succession of drummers and numerous ups and downs later and the two still form the group's core. In an industry where bands have to play live as much as possible to make a living, the fledgling group knew where the path to success lay. To build a grass-roots following, Squeal hit the road harder than James Brown the "hardest working man in show business", in his heyday, playing 200 gigs in 18 months and travelling an average of 3000km every month. Perspiration is one thing, but it's meaningless without the spark of inspiration, and Squeal proved they had it in buckets with the release of Long Pig in 1995. Two of the album's singles, Runners and Killing The Light, both went to number 1 on 5fm, the band supported Chris Issak at Sun City and even magazines as unlikely as Cosmopolitan started taking an interest - Squeal had begun to surf the tidal wave of hype. While on tour in East London to promote Long Pig, Dave was assaulted after a gig, having his collar bone dislocated in the process. With his right arm in a sling and no other way of making money, a second guitarist was obviously needed for the rest of the live dates - step forward Robbie Boake as a temporary replacement. He fitted into the band so well, they decided to expand Squeal to a four-piece after Dave had recovered. While the raw simplicity of a rock trio is tough to beat on a purely visceral level, the drafting in of a second guitarist added a whole range of exciting new colours to Squeal's palette. Now they could explore a richer, more mature sound in their songs and still be able to crank up the adrenaline-rush factor even further when playing live. With Robbie firmly entrenched and Dave back to full strength again, Squeal set about making Man and Woman. With no money forthcoming from their lable for recording costs, they decided to finance the label themselves, picking up a sponsorship from Martell and some help from Dave's brother. The money was well spent, ironing out the production flaws which bedevilled their debut and allowing Squeal to make the great leap forward to big-league contention. The opening volley from Man and Woman was the single Long Pig, 5 minutes of pure electricity with the catchiest riff since Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit. The track also came with an eye-popping video which won a silver award from the South African Society of Cinematographers last year - no golds were awarded. But no sooner had the Squeal juggernaut began to roll towards major success than setback struck. First, their drummer left - again. Then Robbie announced too that he was leaving behind both Squeal and Durban to concentrate on his own musical projects on his new farm hear Richard's Bay. To have half your band up and quit on you might be a disaster for most frontmen, but Dave is handling it very philosophically, taking the line that nothing bad ever happens - it all happens for a reason. He says "Ja, when shit happens, make fertiliser. But it's not like we didn't know Robbie was going to leave - he was onle ever meant to be a short-term stand-in. We did play brilliantly together and so of course I'll miss that, but we always knew this day would come. I wish him all the best. "This also gives us the opportunity to reassess our future direction. We've already got a new drummer who's incredibly funky, and so we'd like to take our music in more of a 'looser' dancier direction - without losing the raunch factor, of course. Squeal's music needs some hips, and absolutely everything is influenced in one way or another by dance rhythms these days."

CREATING AN IMAGE: BAND NAMES HIT THE RIGHT NOTE

Source: Sunday Times Metro, April 5 1998 (Phylicia Oppelt) When U2 was merely another unknown rock band in Ireland, its members could not decide whether to call themselves Hype or U2 - so lead singer Bono based the decision on the volume of applause from the audience. South African bands have also had agonising "birth pangs" in choosing a name. Rock group Amersham scoured an obscene dictionary and hit on "amersham" - meaning loud but harmonius - and decided this suited their image just fine. When Cape Town group The Usual was founded eight years ago, its members did not want a name that sounded pompous. "We had to find a name quickly as we suddenly found ourselves booked for our first gig and didn't have one," says The Usual's lead singer, James Stewart. "We checked out band names and found most of them outlandish. Somehow, The Usual stuck - but we definately don't think of ourselves as ordinary or usual." What they apparently didn't know was that a popular Durban Band, The Usuals, had pipped them to the name by more than a decade. Princess Leonie, lead singer with Boo of Johannesburg, says he and the band's other two members "were talking about things that had negative associations, like 'Boo!', and decided to go with this name so we could make it positive." Warrick Sony and Brendan Jury decided to express their love for South Africa by calling their new outfit Trans Sky. "Both of us had grown up in Durban, which is close to the Transkei," says Sony. "Also, I have a marimba I bought at a Pondo mission station in Transkei. We liked the idea of using a place name." The name of Jury's previous band, Urban Creep, was associated with Durban. Jury says a land surveyor friend used the term to explain Durban's expansion, which was accelerated by the influx of political refugees from rural areas in the 80s. "We suddenly realised how that term described our own position," says Jury. "We were four white males, in a sense quite dislocated in an African urban environment. But we're no longer locked into a defensive struggle. Since the political changes, we've felt free to engage with ourselves and our identity." Sony says his former group, the Kalahari Surfers, adopted this name after he sent cassette recordings to a friend in Germany. One bore a sticker of a Bushman on a surfboard. The friend thought the sticker signified the band's name - and so Kalahari Surfers was born. "It was a case of taking two opposites in Southern Africa and putting them together - the bushman and the Durban surfers." Lance Stehr, head of independent record company Ghetto Ruff, says Skeem, a popular kwaito group, has a typical Cape Town name. "Skeem (scheme) is self explanatory. It means to plot or plan and the guys have lived up to their name in terms of survival." Then there's Just Jinger, South Africa's most successful rock group. The band members used the expression "just ginger" for when things were "happening" and "cool". They changed the spelling slightly and adopted it as their name. Like most of today's groups, Cape Town band Junglebook Vultures was established before it had a name. "We were watching the animated version of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book and noted that the vultures kept saying 'What do you want to do?'" says manager Chris Walker. "That summed us up pretty much. We were always asking each other what we were going to do. The name is sweet because of the Disney connotations, but the vulture part balances things out. It's also descriptive of our music." East London band Mean Mr Mustard probably heads the stakes for flamboyance. Yvette Cornish, head of marketing for David Gresham Records, says the group took the name from Mean Mr Mustard, the title of the B-side of a Beatles single. But even the simplest of names can be problematic. When Prophets of da City performed at Nelson Mandela's presidential inauguration in May, 1994, the Cape Town rap group was introduced by the master of ceremonies as "Prophets of Doom".

THE 1998 FNB SOUTH AFRICAN MUSIC AWARDS

Source: Sunday Times/Cape Metro, 26 April (Phylicia Oppelt) Cape Town group The Usual were one of the top winners at last night's FNB South African Music Awards ceremony. The four-man band earned two awards, Best Duo/Group and Best Pop Performance, for their album Like A Vision. They were not the only Cape artists who triumphed at the glittering event held at the Civic Theatre in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. Jimmy Dludlu, hailed as one of the country's most talented jazz guitarists, won the Best Newcomer award as well as the Best Contemporary Jazz category for his debut album Echoes Of The Past. Cape Town rappers Prophets of da City took home their second Best Rap award, for Ghetto Code. They previously won in 1995. The other big winner was Mamelodi-born singer Vusi Mahlasela, whose album, Silang Mabele, was acknowledged with three awards after he had been long ignored by the music industry. Mahlasela won the Best Male Solo Vocal award and Best African Pop Performance. Queen of Africa, Yvonne Chaka Chaka was another star who finally won recognition from the industry when she beat other popular entertainers Rebecca Malope and Brenda Fassie for the Best Female Solo Vocal Performance. Malope won the Best African Gospel Award for Angingedwa, as well as the Best Selling South African Release. The Best Popular Dance category was won by M'Du. South Africa's biggest reggae star, Lucky Dube, was awarded the Best Reggae Performance for his album Taxman. He also won the Best Producer Award. Soul Brothers walked off with their fourth consecutive award for Best Mbhaqanga Performance. Best Rock Performance went to Sugardrive while Philip Tubane and Malombo won the Best Single award. Miriam Makeba was also honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

CLOSE-UP ON KWAITO

Source: Sunday Times Metro, April 1998 (Peter Feldman) A vibrant form of music, spawned from the streets of townships, has gripped the new generation. It is called kwaito and has produced it's own body of superstars; Arthur, M'du, Boom Shaka, Trompies, Abashante, Makhendlas, Bongo Maffin and Chafkop to name a few. Journalist Patrick Phosa, who has watched the development closely, describes kwaito music as infecting the South African youth like a contagious desease. In 'The Star Tonight' he sums up the feeling by saying, "if the gusto with which youths have tucked into the dish of kwaito is anything to go by, the future of local music is bedecked by roses." Perhaps the biggest name in the genre is Arthur "Vuvuzela" Mofokate. The man has his own recording studios and with his Midas touch has helped produce a galaxy of artists such as Abashante, Makhendlas, New School and it's lead singer/songwriter Chafkop who has developed a solo force. Arthur is adamant that he did not invent kwaito and adds that be believes Brenda Fassie, Senyaka and Chicco all had elements of kwaito in their sound. His smart move, however, was to popularise the word kwaito as a term for his style of township pop. How did it get it's name? Chicago house music that was played in the townships was called kwaito (an old word for a gangster) because it was "music that belonged to the youth and township ghetto boys". Arthur co-opted the term to refer exclusively to South African "house" and "techno" music, as he believes making music is a process of creatively fusing different parts of music already in existence. Arthur "Vuvuzela" Mofokate was a Shell Road to Fame winner who continued his journey into the heartland of the South African Music world. He first hit the music scene when his six-track EP 'Kaffir' came out in 1995 - and immediately caused controversy. But it helped him sell more than 150 000 copies and he was on his way. A year after the release he put together another album called 'Die Poppe Sal Dans' and it's sold 60 000 copies. A third music offering, 'Oyi Oyi', which returned to the solid, hard-hitting kwaito made famous by 'Kaffir', was the project that launched him into the superstar bracket. Arthur is today the boss of 999, the 70-strong kwaito stable. He oversees the operation, lends a hand in discovering and developing new talent, and also writes, records and performs himself. Abashante, thought essentially a ragga/R&B dance-oriented band, were put together by Arthur for their different talents. They have a core of kwaito within their musical structure - members are Aba, whose ragga chants are supported by the smooth, soulful vocals of Queen, the streetwise rapping of Nestum and the input of dancers Hazel, Lindi and Nzari. They became a popular entity first through their electrifying stage act, and then with the release of their debut album "Girls" in 1996, which hit the platinum (50 000) mark. Abashante crowned their success last year wih the Coca-Cola Ful Blast Award for Best New Artist. The group's latest album, "Settlin' The Score", is a unique blend of kwaito, ragga and R&B. Then there is Oupa Makhendlas Mofokate. He happens to be Arthur's younger brother, a disk jockey who was dragged into the studio by his brother to lend a hand on a dance music project, Dance City Volume 2. He then tackles his first album "Makhendlas" which came out three years ago, and last year released "Jwaleng". His music has a message and in inspired by daily happenings around him and unlike many kwaito artists, Makhendlas is against the use of vulgar language and explicit lyrics. He understands the generation gap between adults and youth, he says, but that does not give them the licence to use explicit lyrics and think it's cool. Book Shaka is a four-strong act who has wielded a great unfluence on youthful music in South Africa. Since their launch four years ago, they have achieved several awards and chart successes. A new EP, "Ain't No Stoppin' (Us Now)" was put out as a prelude to their forthcoming album, "Words of Wisdom", but those in the know feel they will still hold their head high - in spite of some youthful opposition. In the final analysis, however, all this emerging music and the resultant competition can only be good for the South African music industry.