Alternative clubs have always formed the mainstay of Cape Town’s nightlife. Now they’re under threat from more commercial ventures, reports Malu van Leeuwen
For years alternative club The Playground seemed as permanent a fixture in Cape Town as Table Mountain. Having outlasted reports of racism and the inevitable drug raid, it seems ironic that the club’s impending closure is due to lease termination, Nevertheless, its popularity had begun to wane long before rumours of lease problems circulated via the grapevine.
The Playground isn’t the only casualty. Two days before Christmas, The Stage, a fiercely independent hardcore venue, held a benefit gig for itself — for the second consecutive year. It’s doubtful whether its clientele’s festive spirit will extend into the new year to sustain the club through its present financial predicament.
Until recently, club activity was neatly polarised into the “alternative” versus the “commercial”. Indeed, on one side of Cape Town there exists a cluster of alternative venues, on the other an expanding network of upmarket acid jazz and dance-oriented clubs. Initially this arrangement appeared to be quite comfortable. That is, until the latter clubs started to prosper while the alternative venues began to dwindle in number, facing an uncertain future.
To begin with, the explosion of grunge into the mainstream largely collapsed the distinction between alternative and commercial, making clear the paradox that no matter how “alternative” alternative clubs may claim to be, they are business ventures which demand financial returns.
And this means pandering to that volatile, elusive thing called public taste. “People are very particular about what they listen to,” The Stage’s Frank Maritz states. These days “particular” in the alternative vocabulary can mean anything from Gothic, American hardcore, metal, industrial, to Brit-punk, ska and techno. “You’ve got to play it all, if you can,” he advises.
This musical schizophrenia is not peculiar to The Stage. “You have to keep the majority happy,” Patrick Rushforth from The Fringe agrees. His club is consistently full, something Rushforth attributes to being sensitive to “dialectical development”.
“What you’ve got to realise is that everything’s fluid. The old gets replaced with the new and I just keep on going.”
This is a far cry from the 1980s, when Cape Town’s alternative scene thrived on its own marginalisation. Gothic music echoed in the dark interiors of Rita’s and the cavernous, now legendary T-zers, “introspection” and “alienation” being the catchwords for that decade’s Generation X.
It was “intensely morbid and gloomy”, recalls one clubgoer, who now attends techno rave parties instead.
If the commercial venues posed no real threat then, they do now. Kaleidoscope, a commercial dance venue, has absorbed alternative music into its repertoire. The flip side of the coin is that The Playground’s owner, Paul Freebody, admits to having “commercialised” things a bit at his own club in order to survive, albeit temporarily, by playing “Top 20” alternative music.
However commercially slanted alternative clubs may have become, all the owners interviewed for this article pointed out that their clubs receive little media recognition as “real clubs”. Rushforth maintains that tourists are drawn to those venues which can afford big budget advertising — instead of being offered a choice.
Regular patrons aren’t given much option either when it comes to exposure to current alternative music. “We don’t have MTV here and it sucks,” Freebody says. “How do you educate your audience if you have a single radio station (Radio 5) and practically only one show playing all the alternative music in the whole world?”
The management of D’Elyzium has found one possible solution, by streamlining the club’s music to Gothic- industrial, “with exclusive reggae nights”. On the other hand, Freebody says, Gothic expired in the old decade; techno is now and it’s the new alternative. Cyberpunk replaces good old-fashioned punk, its DIY ethic intact. Whether it’s hardcore, jungle or ambient, techno is several steps sideways of reality, with the drugs to match. “Acid isn’t the in-thing any more; E is. E is a dance drug and it’s massive.”
Once closed, The Playground will be transformed into a parking lot. Its management now operates The Purple Turtle, a pub just round the corner, where former partons can seek collective oblivion in liquid form. In the meantime, as the city centre empties itself, so new “alternative” places are sprouting inconspicuously on the periphery. It remains to be seen how they surf the sine wave to commercial success without sacrificing their independent spirit.
“Tech-no for an answer,” as the new saying goes.
SPORT
Pakistan battle will test SA’s fighting spirit
Guts, meaning courage and commitment rather than the more familiar beer paunch, has played a large part in the South African team’s recent successes
CRICKET: Jon Swift
GUTS, so they say, is everything. In this statement there is more than a simple call for celebration in the recent success of Hansie Cronje’s South African cricket side.
It showed up admirably in the 37-run victory over Salim Malik’s Pakistani stars in the first leg of the final of the Mandela Cup. This was a game that looked to have been lost in the collapse of the South African batting as the drawstrings tightened towards the end of their allotted 50 overs.
Cronje and his team gutsed it out. Certainly, bringing Steven Jack back on after the two-over destruction at the hands of Aamir Sohail was not a decision for the faint hearted. Sohail, roundly bad-mouthed by Jack, merely continued the onslaught and then pointed significantly to the boundary he had so liberally peppered off the explosive redhead’s bowling.
That Jack did come back — and bowl so well in the second spell — speaks volumes for the captain, the ethos of the team and the fiery young paceman himself.
It is a spirit which has been building in the side since Cronje took the reins from Kepler Wessels, the initial architect of the resurgence of the game in this country. This spirit showed in the way the South Africans clawed their way back into winning the series against Ken Rutherford’s New Zealanders after going one down in the first Test at the Wanderers.
It could be argued that the Kiwis did everything they could to throw away their chances in the second Test at Kingsmead in Durban. But the continuing collapse of the South African batting could well have handed it back to them.
It would be hard to single out one player as being extra special, but several have shown the qualities which must, by means of the talent available, carry the flag for this country. And surely Dave Richardson must rate high on this list even if he had not deservedly been awarded the man of the series prize after the victory at Newlands.
So often he has been called on to stem the tide low in the batting order. That he finally managed his maiden Test century in Cape Town batting at number eight is proof of this.
That innings, together with Cronje’s chancy but invaluable 112, eventually won the game for South Africa by putting the runs on the board for our bowlers to shoot at.
Here one must hand some plaudits to Richardson’s main back- up at Newlands. Clive Eksteen batted manfully for only a handful of runs, enduring the sledging of the crowd as he did so. It was a fine innings from the perspective that it finally gave Richardson his chance. It was an embodiment of just the fighting spirit now evident.
This spirit is evident in the improvement in opener Gary Kirsten and the manner in which both John Commins and Rudi Steyn have grasped the opportunities offered them.
Kirsten, without the jitters caused by the top of the order shakiness due to Andrew Hudson’s tragic loss of form, looked far more secure and willing to take the attack to the opposition rather than fight a rearguard action.
There is a new solidity about the opening pair, and even if Steyn never scores a cascade of runs, he did a fine job in his debut outing at Newlands.
Add to this Steyn’ s superb fielding abilities — even if the Newlands run-out of Adam Parore did come from a throw to the wrong end — and the diminutive Free Stater should be around for a while.
This new solidity will also doubtless help Commins establish himself as the man to come in once the first wicket has fallen. A smooth strokeplayer, his inclusion allows Cronje to drop down a spot in the order and hopefully be that much more effective when he does come in.
There are signs too that Daryll Cullinan is on the verge of producing the really big innings he is capable of but has yet to achieve at Test level. One hopes that the spirit which surrounds him will come into play in the tough test ahead against the Pakistanis at the Wanderers.
Against the murderous attack of Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram every run will count in the one-off encounter.
Which leads to our bowling and the man with the biggest heart in the South African side. Fanie de Villiers is something of a phenomenon. He loves work and brings a special sunshine to the game.
He has been boosted by the inclusion of Jack — how well he has bowled in his first two tests — with the new ball. At heart not a true strike bowler, De Villiers has shouldered the burden and produced some seam bowling of cerebral majesty.
De Villiers has bust a gut. Indeed this is probably true of all the South African bowlers … literally for Craig Matthews who strained a stomach muscle with his efforts.
The reintroduction of Brian McMillan — how could he ever have been sidelined? — only serves to underscore the new determination and coming so close to his first Test “fivever” is ample proof that the big man is a vital cog in our slowly evolving machine.
With our seam attack — the mainspring of this country’s cricket for so long — limited by the unavailability of Alan Donald, it is also heartening to see the selectors at long last giving the tweakers a valid chance of making the Test side.
The oft mouthed “horses for courses” phrase which has become a stock selectorial platitude, can now be trotted out with real conviction. And in truth we ne need every conceivable edge we can get.
Again, against Pakistan, it will all count. For the men from the Indian sub-continent have a batting line-up on paper that most international selectors can only dream about.
But one thing above all else came through at Kingsmead and Newlands. It won’t be for lack of trying that the Test is won or lost.