THE FAKAWI

My first band ever (discounting garage jams!) - we took our name from the song Wild West Show and gave it an "Africanized" spelling to take the piss out of the "Afro-ethnic-whitey" bands that were proliferating at the time. Mark van Hoff, a drummer friend with whom I had often jammed, had previously played with the wonderfully named Still Thinking ("So, what do you guys call yourselves?" "I dunno ... still thinking ..."). Stef Cavaleri played bass and I (almost) handled guitar and vocals. We rehearsed in Stef's spacious workshop downtown, where he built props for movie and TV commercial sets and lavished loving attenntion on a Ford Transit he was rebuilding. The combined acoustics of steel roof, steel roller doors and cement floor created the effect of a jackhammer convention inside a metal dustbin. I was delighted. 

Our first gig was at Chango's, in Noord Street, Jo'burg. It was not fantastically attended, but I got an encouraging word from guitar hero-to-be Gary Kerel, so I was relatively enthused. Soon thereafter, we were joined by Petrea Curran, an aspiring actress from Chicago, who took up lead vocals. We played a few more gigs - Jameson's , Dylan's in Rockey Street and a Hennops River farm mini-festival. At the last, I mislaid my girlfriend and my dog, causing no little concern as the farm owner warned me that the leopards in the surrounding hills were partial to dog meat. Anyway, eventually Kalil returned to the party, but my girlfriend had scarpered.

Back in the band, romantic interest between Mark and Petrea was blooming as fast as Stef was losing interest. The final nail in the band's coffin was an aborted gig upstairs at Dirty Mary's Video Cafe - we were kept waiting so long, we left without playing, but not before we were treated to the spectacle of a violent running street brawl from our rooftop garden vantage point. The band broke up soon thereafter.