Arthur Goldstuck
Music tunes in to the Web
Last weekend saw the climax of 1997’s biggest, noisiest and most fascinating South African music event, the third Oppikoppi Festival of Rock held in the bushveld beyond Sun City. What started as a University of Pretoria Graphic Design school project is now the keynote event in the live music calendar.
In honour of the event, which is spotlighted via a quirky Web page (http://mail.icon.co.za/~oppikoppi/), this week’s column is devoted to the explosion of South African music across the Internet. Even the smallest of bands take to a medium that should be their natural home, considering its ease of access and the incredibly improved exposure it offers them.
Ironically, it has been the bands and artists who have led the South African music industry onto the Web, showing up an archaic industry that has difficulty coming to grips with new technology, despite operating in an environment where technology, along with music, is almost the air they breathe. Unfortunately for many of the garage bands hoping to bypass the straitjacket of the established industry, their Web sites tend to reflect the garage attitude, and are often cobbled together from templates found in some Web scrapyard for page designs that crashed years ago.
Almost every band site boasts a guestbook – even those that pass themselves off as mean, ugly and angry. Bands that pride themselves on breaking the musical envelope employ the most astonishingly pedestrian approaches to their Web presences.
All is not lost, however, and it can be said that the bands are taking control of their own international destinies.
The following is merely a listing of some of the more prominent South African acts on the Web. Niche acts, garage bands and newcomers run to more than a hundred, and these are faithfully being catalogued on sites run by the passionate few.
Battery 9 (http://fridge.co.za/battery9), one of the most complete South African band sites.
The Blues Broers (http://www.bluesbroers.org.za/) is South Africa’s oldest surviving Blues band.
Cinema
(http://www.samusic.org.za/sabands/cinema.h
tml) has in-depth information on a band the critics love to hate.
Koos Kombuis (http://www.lia.net/agrobler/Bomskok.htm)
for Bomskok Babbelaas.
Live Jimi Presley (http://www.icon.co.za/~rededge/ljp/), a manic junkyard.
Lithium
(http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/4482/
lithium.htm) includes a link to susbscribe to the South African Moshpit mailing list.
Springbok Nude Girls (http://www.nudegirls.co.za/) official page.
Squeal
(http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9046/squeal.
htm) with a rare sighting: guitar tabs.
Qkumba Zoo (http://www.spinneret.co.za/qkumba/)
These sites are listed, along with a more extensive band listing, at the online version of this column at http://www.mg.co.za/mg/pc/pcreview.htm