At his concert in De Waal
Park on Sunday 3 February 2013, Steve Louw reminded us that he (and Rob Nagel
and the late Nico Burger) started All Night Radio 30 years ago. That was food
for thought. The audience in the park was mostly middle-aged with only a
smattering of youngsters who must have been there purely for the entertainments
given that Louw, whether solo or under the Big Sky banner, has not been much of
a presence in the South African musical industry over the past 10 years.
Presumably, like me, the audience consisted of a representative cross-section
of local music lovers who took note of Steve Louw when he started out in the
business and are still kind of interested.
I followed All Night Radio
obsessively over the all too brief period of the band’s active existence,
mostly because of Burger’s excellent guitar playing. Back then the stage sound
was so bad that the vocals were generally inaudible and I could hardly make out
the lyrics except for the choruses and it was not apparent that Steve Louw did
not have a strong set of pipes or anything like passion in his voice and that
the lyrics were pretty banal. It was only when I bought the All Night Radio
debut album, The Heart's The Best Part,
that these weaknesses became apparent. Louw's lyrics were mundane if not crap;
his voice was weak, he had no tunes to speak of and the guitars were buried in
the mix at the expense of the very clear, flat vocals. The same went for the
last album, The Killing Floor,
although the lyrics became more ambitious and improved and the mix was
marginally better.
After the breakup of All
Night Radio Louw formed Big Sky, which was more of a studio project than a
living band. Big Sky attempted wide
screen, big anthem rock with an emphasis on clever arrangements and Louw
gathered the best possible session musicians to play his music. The sad thing
was that his voice still let the side down and the playing was so professionally
slick that any rock and roll guts got left behind.
Needless to say, though Big
Sky sounded like my kind of band on paper, the records once again let me down
and I never played them more than a couple of times. In any event I only bought
two albums. Neither of them encouraged
me to seek out the whole set.
I currently live in lower
Oranjezicht, about 5 minutes’ walk away from De Waal Park, the largest city
bowl community park and a gathering place for dog walkers and people with young
kids. Recently there has been steady progress with upgrading the park and its
facilities. Since late 2011 The Friends of De Waal Park have organised a series
of free summer concerts every second Sunday. For one reason or another I never
attended any of them, sometimes because I wasn’t in Cape Town or because I did
not fancy the act. When I heard that Steve Louw would be performing, I was
quite keen on checking him out. I had not been at any of his gigs since the
demise of All Night Radio.
Sunday 3 February 2013 was a
very windy day in the City Bowl and unfortunately this meant that it was unpleasant
in De Waal Park. Nonetheless, Louw drew good few hundred brave souls. I have no
idea of telling whether this crowd was pretty standard for these shows or
whether it might have been smaller than the expected numbers on a warmer, wind
free day. My overall impression was that
it was an older crowd and not really a young, hip audience. There were many very
young kids and some late teens or early twentysomethings but they were more or
less the exception. Louw himself is in his mid-Fifties, as is the band I
suspect, and his style of American roots inflected rock is not particularly hip
around here.
The set opened with two
bluesy grooves (“The Wind Blows” and “Black Sun”) featuring the astonishingly
able and driving blues harp of Rob Nagel, one of the old gang, and this boded
well for the rest of the 90 minute set. During these opening songs Big Sky
reminded me of the Muddy Waters band of the late Seventies and that was a good
thing. Nagel stepped aside from tune number three and remained on the side
lines for most of the set.
Tedium set in when Louw got
down to performing a series of well-known songs from both All Night Radio and
Big Sky. Most of the songs were at mid-tempo, tastefully arranged and played
with professional ability by a band consisting of Willem Möller on guitar, Doug Steyn on bass, Tim Rankin on drums and
Simon Orange on keyboards. Louw played rhythm guitar throughout. He still has
the Rickenbacker he started playing with All Night Radio.
Unhappily the same old, same
old tempos on the various songs resulted in a lack of drive or excitement. For
the most part the driving rock and roll element was lacking. None of it made
one want to get up and dance, at least not until the last four or five songs of
the set. During mid-set a couple of
songs, like “Kathleen” were elevated by Simon Orange’s surging Hammond B3 style
jams that for a minute or two made one believe that soul rock was alive and
well in De Waal Park.
“Bernadette” from the second
All Night Radio album, The Killing Floor,
was the first up-tempo highlight of the set, mostly because it is based around
the Bo Diddley riff that can hardly fail to excite. The absence of Rob Nagel
from most of the material, given that he was probably never a Big Sky member,
also diluted the excitement.
Nagel stepped back into the
spotlight for “Seaside Love”, the first All Night Radio song to receive airplay
on Radio 5 and to become a minor hit. As was the case back in 1986, the live
rendition of this very slight song made it sound far better than it did on
vinyl. From here on in, anyway, and with
Nagel remaining on stage, the tempo increased and the band started rocking.
“Prisoners of Rock and Roll”, a cliché if I've ever heard one, really kicked
out the jams. When Louw just had to shout in tune, as with “Prisoners of Rock
and Roll,” the performance gained power.
At the end of the main set
the band left the stage and was then rather artificially called back for
another couple of tunes. Mark Haze, South African Idols winner of a couple
years back, and who had performed in a De Waal Park concert late last year,
came on stage and sang on “Pink Cadillac” and “Working on the Highway,” two
Bruce Springsteen songs that had been staples of the All Night Radio set. Both are hugely enjoyable songs and were
performed with the relish and gusto they deserve.
When I first heard All Night
Radio play “Pink Cadillac” I did not know that it was a Springsteen composition
and I was mightily impressed with Louw's song writing ability if he could come
up with this kind of roots rocker. Sadly,
these tunes really just show up Louw's po faced songs that are often serious
yet lack the verve and brio of the Springsteen lyrics and music.
The final song of the day was
a rendition of “John the Revelator” and once again it was a veritable highlight
of storming blues based rock. When Steve Louw does not try to sing sensitively
and with deep meaning, and basically just shouts out the words, he does have
more of a presence and more power as presenter of the tune. There is a fervour
and power that is lacking in the songs that are supposedly more tuneful because
Louw has a colourless voice that can carry a tune but does not convey emotion.
One could buy Big Sky CDs at
the concert. Neither memories or today's
performance induced me to buy more product. Kudos to Steve Louw for his rock vision and
the ambition and drive to realise it. As is the case with Valiant Swart, Louw's
career in rock proves the point that one does not need brilliance or
specifically great talent to achieve one's goals. One simply needs to do the
work, to grind out the necessary moves and to make it happen rather than
dreaming about making it happen.
All Night Radio was probably
more of a band than a project Louw could control and therefore not the most
useful vehicle for his idea of success.
With Big Sky he could call all the shots and could direct the music and
the band the way he saw the vision realised. The vision encompassed high
production values for his recorded songs and unfortunately this high standard
of studio professionalism and audio perfection also killed the spirit of the
songs and the performances. Technical ability does not signify or guarantee
passion. High production values and
tastefulness signifies a higher degree of achievement to some people.
Sophistication has its place, but give me primitive passion and exuberance
every time. Primitivism does not equate to “bad” in the same way that technical
ability does not equate to “viscerally exciting.”
Steve Louw is a journeyman, a
craftsman. He writes workmanlike songs and performs them in a workmanlike
fashion. There is no spark of genius here. Just hard graft and attention to
detail. I guess that means success in music. It just does not mean that I can have
an emotional bond with his music.
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