Lark and Stardust

If a meteorite had landed on that pub, at the gig I was at somewhere in Pretoria a couple of months ago, I would not have cared or even noticed. For two whole hours and a bit I didn’t have a single thought about carbon sharks, nuclear waste, marketing or any other type of rape, pillage and plunder. Lark, live, did it. They’re great on CD too, but this band is at its best live. Having somehow survived Oppikoppi, they’ll be back in GP at Carfax on the 24th of this month. My elder daughter is their Number One Fan, so luckily I’ll be able to take her with me as a buffer, or a Buffy, ‘cos Carfax isn’t exactly home away from home for me. I get psychedelic when I can’t quite identify the species around the watering hole, so psychedelic that I start identifying with unidentifiables and then all hell breaks loose because I get sudden urges to do things like start wearing black lipstick or death-metal hoodies, or pierce my eyebrow, or say “dude”. It’s alarming and just won’t do anymore. I’ll be forty in less than half a year and I really don’t want to do any more metamorphasising. I know this is heresy but I think comfort zones are a good thing and I want to be a proper old lady like my gran one day, with sensible shoes, silver hair in a bun and a mauve twinset.
The Radium’s got Soaks and Estate Agents and Okes and things, no alarms and no surprises you know? Nothing to aspire to. Very comfy. The worst that can happen at the Radium is that I’ll sing. But Carfax? Elder daughter’s a drummer, see, so if anything sidles up persuasively in a death-metal hoody (or whatever they wear there) and says, “Dude…”, then she can fend it off. She’s taller than me, which helps, and her drumsticks can double as stakes. Ha ha.
Lark is demanding and very loud and schitzophrenic, and brilliant. Lark is not warm and fuzzy (although a quarter of it is actually Fuzzy, on bass, sometimes double bass nogal), not comfortable, and doesn’t invite you to put your feet up and have coffee. It might be a portal of some sort, it sounds like a hall of mirror doors, and the diva from The 5th Element lives behind one of them.

Stardust the movie is coming soon to a theatre near you, but read the book first if you can. The blurb says something about it being a fairytale for grownups, and I suppose maybe it is but I resent that description although my brain’s too tired at the moment to explain why. Some of the main bookshops have it in stock, and all of the comic shops do, so it’s pretty easy to get hold of. There are Big Names in the movie, does that mean it’ll be a good movie though? It’s bound to piss a few rabid fans off as these things do, but on the whole I’m almost prepared to bet the farm that it’ll be a great escape.

The Raven Loonies

At the Radium last night, Isadora, Gina, Bella and I decided to stop talking about our Band, and start practicing instead. Our name was going to be The Red Hot Flushes but Isadora says it sounds a bit desperate, and she’s the leader so we’re going to be The Raven Loonies instead. Like those Robert Palmer shoowop girls with the red lipstick, but a bit more modest and animated. Not nun-modest, mind, because it’s a sin to let genuine god-given cleavage go to waist, and not Red Hot Chilli Peppers-animated because that’s just not dignified for ladies of our quality.

We spent most of the evening practicing in the cage-like entrance (because, suddenly, there’s no smoking at the Radium. Incredible but true. This is just a fad I’m sure) watching cop-cars scream past, fending off glue sniffers and encouraging besotted fans who wanted our autographs but were too shy to ask. There was even an estate agent among them. I honestly did not know that estate agents listened to Blues but there he was, pinned happily to the bars. “All I want is a room somewhere,” we sang, “Far away from the cold night air…” and he listened, captive, wide-eyed.

Jacky Bond and Wayne Coughlan didn’t mind too much although Jacky said if we were going to be a band we’d need to look up harmony in the dictionary. We think he might just be feeling a little threatened, though, and we won’t hold it against him. He’s also a bit peeved that we know all the words to Summertime and have to write them down for him on serviettes when someone requests it. He’ll come round. He has to, because we’re going to recruit them on a temporary basis for the instrument stuff, which we don’t do yet.

One charitable aim (there are others) of The Raven Loonies is to visit old age homes and bring succour to the frail and the forgotten. Rock Chik Rox says anybody wanting to do away with a cantankerous and incontinent elder will be glad to hear it. We don’t much like her tone, and she’s sixteen so how can she even know what incontinent means?

Anyhow, next time you see a crowd outside the Radium, it won’t be because The Raven Loonies are playing there, it’ll be because there’s still no smoking allowed inside the Radium. But if you see a crowd outside the Rus ‘n Bietjie Sentrum Vir Bejaardes or any similar establishment, you’ll know it’s The Raven Loonies. Come in, give generously, and get autographs ok?