Allow me to distract you for a moment. With some stories.
This is all very amateur, I'm afraid, but what the hell. I've always liked art in its raw forms. I remember the happy astonishment I felt in a bedroom in Yeoville in the 80s when Carl Becker and Michael Rudolf played Sally for me. It was a little Joburg pop song for a band they were thinking of forming. I loved the tune and the lyrics and it made me want to dance. I had been into pop music for quite a few years but I had never, not once, heard a song that was about my world. Songs were about people in England and America, not love among the Joburg mine dumps.
When the Aeroplanes, after minimal practice, got out of the garage and played in public, I was there as an Ur-fan, an Uber-fan, so convinced of the pure lilting genius of what I was hearing through the noise of the desperate musicians, that Michael invited me onto stage with them. He had an instinct that my passionate belief might be communicated to the other bemused listeners.
The Aeroplanes got better, as happens when you play regularly. The songs were good, simple three chord tunes with lyrics written for and about the disaffected pale youth. They made your feet move. I was working as an actor then, meeting Sean Taylor and Nicky Rebelo and Irene Stephanou at the Market Theatre. I did some bridging work, folk like Robert Coleman came on board, and the Aeroplanes turned into a show, a cabaret, a concert in the dark. It was a lot of fun and you ended up writing for performance, testing new material with live audiences. It was a privilege and a joy. And it brings me, finally, to the point.
These little recordings are made in a similar spirit, an urge to test a piece of writing, in which you believe, about which you are serious (but not, hopefully, earnest) on an audience. The first one is bit soft, both are probably better with ear phones. Both are far from perfect, amateur like I said, and sometimes I get led astray by my own rhythms.
You can, if you want, open the book (just to the right of the video, click preview) and read along with me. No pressure.
There are two bits:
Chapter 0 - For Those in the past in the world above.
If, like me, you tend to leave prologues for last, you can skip this and jump straight to the action:
Chapter 1 - The Creed. In which a son is delivered to Jack Delfan.
Well, it's an extract from Chapter 1. I ran out of breath.
When the Aeroplanes, after minimal practice, got out of the garage and played in public, I was there as an Ur-fan, an Uber-fan, so convinced of the pure lilting genius of what I was hearing through the noise of the desperate musicians, that Michael invited me onto stage with them. He had an instinct that my passionate belief might be communicated to the other bemused listeners.
The Aeroplanes got better, as happens when you play regularly. The songs were good, simple three chord tunes with lyrics written for and about the disaffected pale youth. They made your feet move. I was working as an actor then, meeting Sean Taylor and Nicky Rebelo and Irene Stephanou at the Market Theatre. I did some bridging work, folk like Robert Coleman came on board, and the Aeroplanes turned into a show, a cabaret, a concert in the dark. It was a lot of fun and you ended up writing for performance, testing new material with live audiences. It was a privilege and a joy. And it brings me, finally, to the point.
These little recordings are made in a similar spirit, an urge to test a piece of writing, in which you believe, about which you are serious (but not, hopefully, earnest) on an audience. The first one is bit soft, both are probably better with ear phones. Both are far from perfect, amateur like I said, and sometimes I get led astray by my own rhythms.
You can, if you want, open the book (just to the right of the video, click preview) and read along with me. No pressure.
There are two bits:
Chapter 0 - For Those in the past in the world above.
If, like me, you tend to leave prologues for last, you can skip this and jump straight to the action:
Chapter 1 - The Creed. In which a son is delivered to Jack Delfan.
Well, it's an extract from Chapter 1. I ran out of breath.
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