A band full of near misses...

Isometimes play in a band called The Near Misses, aka The Worst Band In Joburg. It’s catchy to call yourself that; to kind of trade off how bad you are, but it isn’t just irony. We really are pretty terrible.

We’re on hiatus at the moment, but we play a style of garage rock inspired by ’60s lo-fi, ’80s pop, township jive, The Beach Boys and classic rock – but without any of the actual talent required.

When we started, we were also inexperienced, under-practised and overconfident, with no qualms whatsoever about embarrassing ourselves in public. A recipe for spectacular disaster ...

In the early days, gigs were hard to come by, so we jumped at the chance to play an event just outside Pretoria – the Zwartkops Raceway Battle Of The Bands!

This is not a particularly prestigious musical happening, but we didn’t deserve better. It was like the Idols of Messy Garage Rock! The Z-Factor! Pretoria West’s Got Talent. Or no talent in our case.

We always had a healthy sense of our own ridiculousness, but we were not quite prepared for how ridiculous this was going to be.

The event was part of a track day at the famous Zwartkops motor racing venue. So the place was crawling with petrolheads who had almost no interest in music.

We eventually found the stage, where we were scheduled just after an impressively tight Christian band with a polished routine.

We played a messy, rushed set of songs we hadn’t quite learned yet. We were out of key, out of time and we missed most of our cues.

The results were announced. Winners: That Christian band. Last place: The Near Misses.

To help us improve, we were provided with the judging sheets. We had come last by miles and we had the paperwork to prove it. It’s hard to come back from that.

But come back we did. Because we integrated that failure into our name, so that even today, you can never mention The Near Misses without acknowledging the fact that we are the Worst Band In Joburg.

We have played some incredibly fun, often ludicrous, but super entertaining gigs.

There is maybe a lesson in there: you don’t have to be good to be awesome!