In memory of birthday parties
FADING OUT: DO MIDDLE-AGED PEOPLE HAVE ENERGY TO TART UP, GO OUT AND HAVE A JOL?
Remembering good times at Presleys in East Rand.
Birthdays are overrated. It’s an annual event that becomes obsolete around your 40th birthday or the appearance of the first fistful of grey hair. Every year, a month before my birthday or so, I contemplate the merits of having a party. But it stays right there, in an imaginary disco with a DJ and some lights and a mirror ball, big hair music and other tunes from an era when musicians knew how to play instruments and producers didn’t simply programme a track.
They flicked some switches and were part of a broader creative process. A process that wasn’t merely transactional, like much of today’s charting tunes, but rather an organic machination of art, musical landscapes and true lyrical storytelling.
Thinking about this stuff is fun. And then I look at where my generation is at now. Middle-aged with a few aches and pains, perhaps. Kids in school or at varsity. Careers. Fatigue. And the stress of having to deal with the realities of living in South Africa. Crime. Load shedding. Potholes. Do we even have the energy to tart up, go out and have a jol?
There was a club on the East Rand that I will never forget. I spent five glorious years of weekends jolling there with friends, strangers and lovers. It was called Presleys. Nobody gave a damn what you looked like.
The bouncers looked like they may have once worked at the legendary Jacquelines in Pretoria, the original Limelight or Joburg’s
Bella Napoli or Masquerade. They were big guys, brush cut rugs on top and more muscle than a Harley Davidson. Here, track-pants and tee was considered dressing up.
But it was an awful lot of fun. The drinks were cheap and the main dance floor played bubblegum interspersed with some lekker Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Breakfast at Tiffanys and adventurous deejays ventured as far as Twisted Sister and Def Leppard.
You didn’t go to Presleys to appreciate music. You went there to dance the night away and give life the “snotklap” (with apologies to John Steenhuisen) that it deserved.
Adjacent to the main dance floor, was another main dance floor. I was always amazed how, in the malaise of a busy night, the first and second dance-parties did not overlap and mash-up into an awful noise. The second dance floor was there to sokkie.
This is where I learnt how to “langarm” to Kurt Darren and a myriad of similar sounding “jy is myne bokkie” Afrikaans pop. Neil Diamond appeared on the playlist every now and then, but the extent of showcasing the crooner’s hit parade was limited to Sweet Caroline. But nobody cared.
Presleys was the kind of jol where you didn’t go to sow your seed. You’d take your partner with you for an unintimidating night. It was the ideal kind of birthday party that never ended. Like a family wedding where you didn’t have to buy a gift.
It’s probably the only boomboom room that anyone middle-aged would still be able to tolerate, as teenyboppers were always nicely balanced out by an older crowd. Hell, I have seen silver foxes and purple-rinse tannies
partying there.
When I think about disco birthday parties, I think Presleys. And then I go into denial about the calendar flipping over yet another 365-day cycle. But those were good times. Great, in fact. And if I ever have a birthday party again, I’ll have it at Presleys, or host a reasonable facsimile of the kind of shindig where everyone can be comfortable, despite a handful of salt and pepper between the ears.