The wild days of yore
PARTY ANIMALS: A WONDER PEOPLE SURVIVED SOME CRAZY ADVENTURES
The parties, cheap booze and dammit-good-times marked every weekend.
There was a time when wildness was inevitable, when rockstars trashed hotel rooms and pop stars showed off their infants by dangling them over balconies. Big-haired rockers tossed mini-bars out of penthouses and made everyone even remotely related to the music industry feel that partying hard is okay.
Reckless play was inevitable in an industry where turning it up loud and getting lost in a riff or a driving rhythm piece with a bottle of Jack and an illicit substance or two was a lifestyle. And even here, in Mzansi, there was quite a lot of it. Sometimes it’s a wonder that people survived some crazy adventures.
There were the mad midnight dashes to find booze for raucous house parties where moving violations were the norm, not the exception. Where party animals were driving around town, stereo blaring, the dashboard a surface replacement for a few lines of coke.
It was the days of the Roxy Rhythm Bar in Melville. When pay was low and the wages of a good time forced Sunday sleepins. But there was a stage, a DJ booth playing real music and a whole lot of long hair.
The Diamond Dogs, Highway Jam and the Nude Girls rocked the place. Squeal, Amersham and even Little Sister. It was when being a groupie was cool, and when being a music journalist meant something. Because there were loads of great music to write about.
Wings Beat Bar in Braamfontein was another landmark for exceptional live music.
But it was the parties, the cheap booze and the dammit-good-times that marked every weekend. And some weekdays.
Thankfully, the only injury I ever sustained in my handful of reckless years was a dry piece of palm tree that went right through my leg, piercing both ends. I ran into the branch while doing some irresponsible garden theatrics. The palm tree branch attacked me out of nowhere.
I will also never forget being rushed to Helen Joseph Hospital, not quite sobered up by the pain, and only being seen to after a wait that felt like an eternity. Some student-doctor took tool, gouged it into my leg and somewhat botched it, only getting rid of the ends poking out of my skin but leaving a good piece of wood behind in my shin.
It was only a week later that a GP managed to squeeze out most of the remainder of the piece of palm. The rest, he said at the time, would disintegrate inside my leg over a few months or so.
There was always this feeling of being naughty, of being a rebel and that motivating partying even harder.
I was lucky enough to tour with a sprinkle of international artists many years ago, and I will also never forget some backstage moments where unlimited alcohol, mountains of illicit substances and other indulgences were freely available.
There was another band, while performing in Cape Town, that commandeered a combi after the show and invited me to join them trolling the streets, looking for, preferably, a party of attractive one-night stands.
Looking back, those were the days. But what’s always stuck with me is that decades later, we’re all partied out. I have been privileged to marry the love of my life, with the two kids and a dog package.
Former partners in party-crime have also segued into picket-fence life. Some have become high-ranking executives, others in the middle-management space, but everyone holds down respectable jobs while raising families.
I often wonder whether partying radically hard in your early 20s has a substantial influence in future stability as an adult, doing grown up things, and raising children. And I think it does. It’s made me more conservative and more liberal at the same time. While it’s a dichotomy of sorts, the journey feels like it’s had a destination.
And I still have the scar on my leg where the palm tree attacked me.