Clean, Athletic & Talented play Stellenbosch, 1980

When the guys in Clean, Athletic & Talented looked out over the interior of the Stellenbosch Town Hall they would have seen perhaps 11 people (including me), most of whom drove out from Cape Town to see them and were mostly supporters of the support band The Boulaines, and they must’ve wondered why, in a university town like Stellenbosch, the room wasn’t buzzing with excited students. It was a school night but, even so, the paltry attendance was shocking.

Whoever had the bright idea to book the Town Hall and not, for example, De Akker, must’ve been highly optimistic, not to mention deluded. Perhaps the students would’ve come out to the cosy atmosphere of De Akker where they could drink rahter to the cold (literally), sterile atmosphere of the larger venue.

Frankly, until this gig, I’d never heard of Clean, Athletic & Talented and my guess is that this ignorance applied to all the students at the university of Stellenbosch.

Clean, Athletic & Talented was never a world conquering rock juggernaut and probably ceased existence within 5 years after playing Stellenbosch but this band has the distinction of being the first international rock band I ever saw live.

This gig took place in 1980 (I think; because I was still riding my Sparta Buddy moped then) when I was in my second last year of a 5-year course at the University of Stellenbosch, and a lonely lad in a student town I felt no part of. Reading the NME was my weekly escapism, a window on the world of punk, New Wave and post New Wave music elsewhere in the world than in my home town. My horizons were very narrow and did not expand beyond Stellenbosch as I only learned to drive after my father died in May 1980 and I only drove around in the town itself.

I knew nothing of the rock scene in Cape Town not to mention Stellenbosch. I did not frequent the local watering holes, such as De Akker, where there was a live scene at least form the mid-Eighties, though it might have existed in 1980 too, and therefore had no idea what was happening regarding live music.

In the Seventies there had been a regular annual rock concert in support of the university rag celebrations. By 1977, when I started my BA degree course, there was no longer a rock concert at rag. I think it had something to do with either the people who ran the university or the city fathers, or both, who had decided that tock concerts are just dens of iniquity where drink, drugs and sex were the order of the day and that young innocent students had to be protected against such terrible things.

Somewhere between 1979 and 1981 there was a kind of folk concert on the Hofmeyr Square behind the Carnegie Library and the main admin building. The opening act was a kind of blues jam by a duo (a guitarist and a conga player), the second act was singer / songwriter and pianist Lesley Rae Dowling and David Kramer was the headliner. I left after Dowling finished her set and before Kramer performed, because it was getting cold and I was bored, and always regretted not experiencing the Kramer vibe before he got famous. In contrast to his later folksy image, Kramer wore a sharp suit and black T-shirt, with slicked back hair, very Miami Vice.

Anyhow, as far as live rock shows went, Stellenbosch was in the stone age.

Therefore, I was incredibly astonished and gobsmacked to read the announcement in a local paper that the American band Clean, Athletic & Talented were coming to my hometown to play an actual rock concert in the Town Hall. I’d never heard of this band. This was way before the internet or Google and if the NME didn’t cover a band, I didn’t know about it.

Apparently, CAT (as they referred to themselves) was touring the country to promote their current album Women & Sports and they even managed to get a review of the record in Scope magazine. The reviewer identified the music as belonging to the skinny tie post New Wave pop that was then kind of sweeping the US of A.  

CAT was from California and the name came from their proud boast that they were healthy outdoors types, who took no drugs and obviously had oodles of talent.

One must understand the context. I cannot remember whether the so-called cultural boycott had kicked in yet, but it was certainly true that not many hip and happening international tock acts toured South Africa. The ones who did touch down on our shores were generally deemed to be somewhat past their sell by date and came here only because there was a big pay day from an audience who would not really care if the international artist was a has been back home. These bands also tended to play at Sun City in the then Bophutatswana “homeland” or other large venues, rather than at local dives in small towns like Stellenbosch.

 

Why on earth CAT elected to come to South Africa to promote their album was beyond me, unless it was just a holiday they hoped to pay for by gigging. I understood even less why they would come to Stellenbosch, which was repressed, dull and absolutely nothing like the college towns CAT must’ve had experience of in the States. My guess was that they booked the gig in Stellenbosch because they reasoned that a student audience was their target market and that the students of Stellenbosch would be just like all students in the USA.

It was also weird that they elected to play the Town Hall, which was by no means a small venue. Perhaps the university authorities would not allow CAT to perform anywhere on the campus itself (unlike UCT where there were regular gigs at the Student Union) though one of the function rooms at the Langenhoven Student Centre would have been ideal and perhaps there were no bar live music venues yet, or they thought a huge hall would be just the ticket to contain the multitudes who’d throng to the gig.

I was quite excited by the prospect of a rock event in Stellenbosch and was determined to go to it. If memory serves it was a Thursday night, which was also peculiar, as one would Havre thought they could expect a larger audience over the weekend. However, even a school night would usually not put off any students from going out.

It was cold enough that I wore my anorak when I rode into town on my moped. Underneath the anorak I wore my standard sloppy outfit of grey shirt and brown pants. I was never Mr Hip or Mr Cool & Stylish at varsity and I deliberately wore scruffy, non-fashionable clothes. I also had a beard to hide my bad skin.  I fondly thought of myself as looking freakier than the actual freaks around me who were dressed in their best studiedly hip gear.

I think the gig was advertised to start at 20h00 with the doors opening at 19h00. I was there at 19h00, just in case there was a huge crowd. There was no sign of activity and no queue at the door. The event looked kind of non-happening. I walked around town for a bit, wondering whether I should not blow it off. I had this feat of being the only person in the audience, or one of only a few, and I didn’t like this idea. It would be so embarrassing for the band and if they focussed on the small audience, I may attract more attention than I wanted to.

By 20h00 I made up my mind to return to the Town Hall. A young woman seated at a trestle table at the door took my money (I don’t recall what the entrance fee was) and stamped my wrist. When I stepped into the main hall my worst fears were realised. The spacious room was lined with chairs.

Someone must’ve spent a couple of hours removing the chairs form the wings of the building where they were normally stored, carrying them into the all and setting them up in neat rows to prepare for an anticipated substantial audience, I’ve no idea how many people the hall can accommodate but it must be vastly more than those present on this night.

The only people in the hall were maybe 10 young men and women right in front of the stage. They all looked like the cool rock groupies and entourage from Cape Town, dressed in the way I would’ve imagined rock 'n roll people would dress. They were very young, very skinny and the boys wore in jeans and leather and the girls, satin and tat.  It was almost comically outrageous.

A tape of what I thought must be contemporary tock was playing over the PA. I hardly recognised any of it. Here and there I recognised the words in   a chorus that suggested a band of which I'd read in the NME but hadn’t heard om local radio. The paltry audience was dancing a little, some at their seats, some in the aisle.

I sat down on an aisle chair, about ten rows from the stage, well behind the little group of supporters. It seemed to me that I may well be the only paying attendee and the only local one. The young woman at the door must’ve have been quite surprised to see me.

A small person with black, shoulder length, ratty hair and in very tight jeans with a big biker leather jacket kept walking up and down the aisle, from the front to the rear and back. Obviously agitated. At first, I thought it was a very small, thin guy, then I thought it was a girl, because of the very long hair, then quite unfashionable if you were a hip young man, and slight facial features. Then I thought, no, it must be a guy; oh no, I’m mistaken, it’s a 14-year lesbian because she sure looked like a very small guy; and so on. I just couldn’t make up my mind.

At about 20h30 a couple of people shuffled into sight on the stage where the band instruments had already been set up.  I guessed they’d been waiting to see whether an audience would turn up and had run out of patience, or realised they’d be waiting a long time if they wanted a full house.  

First there was a buxom young woman, with long, straight hair and an ankle length dress, very much the hippie chick. She was followed by a young guy with what’s called an unruly mop of blonde curls, quite a pretty boy, and lastly, the small person with the biker jacket and long black hair.

The trio started a close harmony, acapella version of a reggae tune called “96˚ In the Shade,” by, I think, Third World, yet another song I’d read of in NME and hadn’t heard before. This rendition was, for me, over long, and eventually tedious and seemed to be a time-wasting exercise while waiting for more audience to arrive.

After about 10 minutes of this unaccompanied singing, the three were joined by a guy who settled in behind the drum kit. The blonde guy picked up a bass, the small, dark haired person strapped on a Fender Stratocaster and the girl handled a tambourine.

The group started up a power pop type of song and played it energetically. The small person and the girl were pretty much stationery and the bassist bounced around.

It seemed that the blond guy was the leader of the band, or at least the spokesperson, as the others hardly spoke. He had a lot to say and kept making deprecating references to Bishop's Court, as if one could not have real punk credentials if you were from the upper middle class (and my guess was that all them, and him in particular, were nice, well brought middle class kids from the southern suburbs of Cape Town) and eventually told the audience, most of whom probably knew this already, that they were The Boulaines from Cape Town. I had never heard of them before this evening and never heard of them again.  If memory serves, he also introduced the band and called the guitarist Kevin Shirley, which resolved the gender mystery for me.

I have always wondered if I’d heard correctly and whether this guy was indeed the same Keven “Caveman” Shirley who later led a hard rock band called The Council and left for Australia in the mid-Eighties to pursue a career as record producer.

I don't remember much of the set The Boulaines played, except that they did another version of “96˚ In the Shade,” with instruments, and played mostly covers interspersed with their own compositions. The style of music was, as I’ve mentioned, what I thought of as power pop, with a smidgen   of reggae. I didn’t make notes when I went home, and no song stood out above the others. As I knew absolutely nothing about The Boulaines I had no idea of their status in Cape Town music circles and of what happened to them subsequently.

The Boulaines played for about 40 minutes, followed by a long break while the stage was being set up for the main attraction.  The Boulaines’ equipment was removed in its entirety. A huge keyboard stack was positioned front and centre and a large drum kit was assembled at the rear of the stage.

Almost 30 minutes after The Boulaines had played their last note, the guys from Clean, Athletic & Talented ambled onto the stage. I don’t recall what the other three looked like, but I do remember that the leader, vocalist and keyboard player was very blonde, tanned and had a neatly trimmed, short   beard.  He could’ve taken his facial hair cue from the contemporary look of  Mike Love from the Beach Boys, without the hats Love regularly sported.

These guys did not look like punks, or even New Wave. They looked like a soft rock band from the mid-Seventies, with currently fashionable haircuts and currently trendy clothes, instead of the long hair and satin and tat of the glam rock period.

The second thing that was very noticeable, in contrast to The Boulaines, was that the sound was a lot louder and stronger. CAT obviously had a much better sound system and sound guy. Where The Boulaines had sounded a tad amateurish and quite local, CAT definitely sounded like an international touring band.  It was a great pity they were playing to a virtually empty hall.

The frontman was very cheerful, very vocal and with a very American gung ho attitude, so pleased to be in our happy land and in this beautiful town. If he was experiencing a deep disappointment at the lack of audience, he wasn’t going to let it get him down. He played to the audience as if he were at an overcrowded Shea Stadium.

The sound was pretty much a keyboard heavy muscular rock of a type that became the norm a few years later, and the songs were forgettable. In fact, the only song I remember, was their version of The Kinks’ “Tired of Waiting for You” (if memory serves), which they performed twice.  It was probably the best song in their set that relied on power and arrangements, and technical proficiency, rather than tunes and decent hooks.

The best thing one could say about the CAT set was that it was loud, had a solid beat and that the group at least pretended to have a great deal of fun. It was a prime example of that rock cliché, or adage, that you play any room, regardless of the size of the audience, as if you were playing to a large, adoring audience.

I left when CAT started up the second rendition of “Tired of Waiting for You,” as I wasn’t keen on hearing their rendition again, had had enough and wasn’t expecting the gig to improve radically. I’d enjoyed The Boulaines more, for all their ramshackle local stomp, and thought that CAT was far too slick and contrived.

With hindsight, I suppose that CAT was simply professional in a way all American bands of a certain standard were expected to be if they wanted to get ahead and to impress an audience. The thing that pissed me off was that the group sounded so loud and impressive, were obviously very professional, yet couldn’t write songs that stuck in the mind. The set list consisted of songs off the Women & Sports album, and we were encouraged to buy a copy from the young woman at the entrance when we left the hall.  I didn’t bother.

The whole experience left me quite unimpressed. I thought it was quite stupid of whoever promoted the gig to have it on a week night and to have booked such an inappropriate venue. Even so, I was almost shocked that, so few locals bothered to attend. After all, there were lots of students in Stellenbosch and it shouldn’t have been difficult to attract at least a hundred, if not more, who were into this kind of rock.

As far as I know, nobody else was dumb enough to rent the Town Hall for a rock concert ever again. The scene, such as it was, remained at places like Die Akker. the Langenhoven Student Centre, the Drie Gewels Hotel outside Stellenbosch and at various with liquor licenses on farms around the town.

The next two rock gigs I attended in Stellenbosch, in respectively 1982 and 1983, were at De Akker, which became my local band venue from January 1984 when I returned home after my 2-year stint of National Service.  The next international band I ever saw, was Crowded House at the Good Hope Centre in Cape Town in 1993.

CAT appeared in Stellenbosch like aliens from outer space and returned to their home planet, causing no ripple in the local musical pond.  They’d have caused more excitement if they’d really been aliens; as it was, their gig was no more than a weird anomaly in the dead-as-disco university town that  Stellenbosch was in 1980 and I doubt that anyone, but me, who was a student at the time ever heard of the gig or, if they’d heard, will recall it. It does seem like a dream.