Suzy Bell
Woodstockian and music collector Dave Marks may be from the wild flower-child generation, but he’s no Durban Poison whingeing hippie. He’s the dynamic managing director of Third Ear Music and he has kept meticulous archives of live recorded music over the past 30 years. Now it is starting to be released through an original concept called the Hidden Years.
Marks is determined the alternative music scene (rock and folk) from the late 1950s to 1970s will be heard in the 1990s and beyond. The young ‘uns in South Africa today may know who the cult British and American performers of yesteryear were, but there’s a massive chunk of an audience that has absolutely no idea who our historical cult musos are. “Just because certain music didn’t make it into the record stores didn’t mean nobody heard it,” says Marks.
Marks, with photographer Tony Campbell, devised the Free People’s concerts that became regular annual festivals on South African campuses in the 1970s. The first Free People’s concert was on the beach in Durban and they had to find ways of circumventing the laws against mixed bands. “This was a Nusas/Third Ear Music concert. I remember seeing a newspaper banner with the headline: `White boy leads Zulu warriors’, which referred to Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu’s band and dance group, WaMadlebe.”
It was a time when many musicians were hounded by the security establishment and Marks says they tended to target white English-singing musicians more than Afrikaners, while large numbers of talented black musicians, at that time, went into exile.
Third Ear Music was initially established as a music publisher in 1969 by Ben Segal and publisher Audrey Friend-Smith and became the first “alternative” independent record company. It became known as “the house that Master Jack built” because consummate singer and guitarist Marks – who started his career writing songs in the gold mines of Welkom and later toured the United States, working with greats like The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix – was the composer of the hit 1960s song Master Jack.
The whole idea of the Hidden Years project started because, since Marks started recording in the 1960s, he has believed the music they collected was powerful stuff. “At the campus concerts we attracted crowds of 10 000 people.”
Over the next five years Third Ear Music plans to produce a series of CDs and CD- Roms with a series of syndicated radio programmes from its vast collection of original local music taped in pubs, clubs, musicians’ homes, small recording studios and concerts. The Hidden Years band played at the Woodstock reunion last year in the US and Marks says the songs were well-received.
Marks is emphatic that the project is not about trying to recreate the past or “an exercise in nostalgia”, but about looking forward. He reasons that musicians also contributed to the changes in South Africa and “obviously, their contribution was not life or death”, but now The Hidden Years project reflects a foundation of experience and talent on which to build, so that the music and musicians are not forgotten. And it is a crude jab for anyone to think that a bunch of has-been musos want to make some bucks. “It is about celebrating the rich talent of our musicians, who are still active, performing, writing and producing.”
Third Ear Music has licensed some of the legendary Hidden Years rock bands and folk groups of the 1960s and 1970s from major labels and has an impressive collection of indigenous, maskandi, jazz and township sounds.” Its archive tapes include live concerts from Soweto to Umlazi, Hout Bay to Harare, Cape Town to Blantyre, folk festivals in Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Westville prison, in Hillbrow clubs and Daveyton shebeens, from the Market Theatre to almost every city hall and township stadium in the country.
According to Marks, nowhere else in the history of popular music has there been a situation quite like the South African “alternative” music scene during that era. It is quite surprising that, as yet, no television producer has snapped up the concept for a documentary. But, Marks says, there is great international interest, which is a pity because we should be telling our own stories.
With committed sponsors, Marks envisages the Hidden Years generating a self-funding viable, commercial and cultural venture with many spin-offs.
Third Ear Music has an impressive record to do so. They have years of production and networking experience, and they co-produced the annual Splashy Fen Music festival in the Drakensburg for 8 years and the first Rustlers Valley festival in the Free State, Guitars for Africa at the Opera, and initiated many City Folk & Township Jazz tours since the 70’s and 80’s. They have also been involved in promoting international concert tours – they co-sponsored the phenomenal Richie Havens last year and promoted and produced the Crosby Stills & Nash tour of SA in 1996, all in a bid to raise funds for the Hidden Years project.