From January 1984 to the end of 1994 I attended just about every rock gig I could get to in venues in and around Cape Town and most of those bands never released any recordings that I knew of. They weren’t signed to record labels and back then bands seemed not to have the money or opportunity for recording in a studio setting and to press records, or make cassette tapes, for selling at gigs. No-one ever mentioned any merchandise or recordings for sale from some band girlfriend at the back of the venue.
I always suspected that most bands would’ve recorded themselves either at rehearsals or from the sound board at live gigs, but only for themselves and not for commercial exploitation. Pity. One could make a monster compilation album from those pre-1995 “SA Rock Explosion” bands, even of only one track each.
The Flaming Firestones was one such band that I followed until its demise and whose music was not available to me other than attending the gigs. At least one of their final run of shows, before breaking up, at the Café Royal Hotel in Church Street, Cape Town, was recorded on video, and as far as I know, is not in the public domain at all.
In fact, if you search “Flaming Firestones” on YouTube you get links to fire making apparatus, cooking and some music, but not the band of this name. The only connection is an upload of a cassette album, digitally transferred, of a gig at the Smokehouse Blues Club in Cape Town on 16 August 1991, by an ensemble called The Blue Stones, featuring Clayton Frick, Dave Ferguson (The Mavericks), Rufus Winstain (several alternative bands), Alistair Musson (Have no idea who he is/was) and Russell Weston (once drummer for All Night Radio.) The set list comprises some of the tunes played by the Flaming Firestones, and some by the Blues Broers, and is a mixture of blues standards and Clayton Frick compositions.
In the early ‘90s Clayton Frick led a different blues band in Cape Town but eventually left the country and pursued other ventures. As far as I know, he still plays regularly but presumably not as a day job. His younger brother, John, was a founder member of the Blues Broers (still going) but also eventually left the country to go to the Netherlands were he’s been leading the John Frick Band for many years, with at least 4 albums to his credit, the latest one of which is simply credited to John Frick.
The other day Clayton Frick posted a brief video on Facebook, of himself doing two songs at a Blues Broers gig in the old drydock at Cape Town harbour in 1992. After I commented on this video, he sent me copies of the Flaming Firestones’ demo recordings from August 1986.
The tracks are mostly standards of many a blues set list and very familiar to anyone who’s got a yen for the genre and has a good, representative collection.
They cover ZZ Top’s “Fool For Your Stockings” and my guess is that their version of “Fever” is influenced by Otis Waygood Blues Band’s take on it on their debut album. “Lowdown Woman” is from The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ second album.
Then you have the oldies but goodies like “My Babe,” “Wang Dang Doodle,” “Smokestack Lightning,” “Killing Floor,” “Walking by Myself,” “Diving Duck” and “Sloppy Drunk” (usually a Rob Nagel vocal and harp feature), and more.
The originals “Hey Mr Coolstuff,” “Got No Love,” “Ain’t Too Late” and “Baby Done Gone” are of a piece with the blues standards and there is a seamless transition from the one to the other.
The recordings present a band that’s instrumentally adept but almost too respectful of the source material yet the rhythm sections swings nicely and never plods. Rob Nagel’s fiery blues harp playing is the most impressive, virtuoso solo instrumental voice. The slight disappointment is that the vocals are foo low down in the mix to make much of an impact, though, if the vocalist is Mervyn Woolf, he already has the promise of being the great bluesman he sounded like live.
When I first wrote about The Flaming Firestones, in 1997, I mentioned that my recollection of Clayton Frick’s forceful live guitar style was that it leaned towards blues rock, but here he’s definitely more sedate and proper blues, quite lyrical in fact, perhaps because of the slightly sterile studio situation but none the less very affecting. There’s no bombast about the performances and the respect and love for the source material Is evident.
The Flaming Firestones play these blues pretty straight up, without putting much of an individual, quirky stamp on the tunes, but the collection is an impressive representation of a serious band with serious intent on bringing us their take on a beloved genre, that had seen some bounce back in the early ‘80s, but was still probably highly unfashionable in this era of “alternative” rock bands who, try as they might, could not make music as much fun as the rollicking, roistering live sets of the Firestones did. For me there is something incredibly satisfying about a backbeat, a wailing blues harp and a sharp, deep blues guitar solo; generally, it‘s got a good beat and you can dance to it.
The Blue Stones was possibly a short lived project, perhaps for a few gigs only, and by this time the musicians had been around for a while and, if they were ever amateurish, were highly proficient. Clayton obviously knew the tunes inside out. What you get is a professional set of blues tunes played in the atmosphere of a smoky, crowded room at a time when the Smokehouse was probably the only venue for live music in Cape Town and therefore quite well supported. I can’t recall whether I was at this gig but I was at the Smokehouse pretty much each night it was open, so I might have been. Sounds like a lot of fun, anyhow.
Sadly, I was not sussed enough to make contemporaneous notes of the bands I saw and my opinion of them and now I’m left with fond memories diluted over time and with no more than a general impression of the nights and the music. One of the strongest memories is of how much cigarette smoke hung in the air, so much so that at some point I was forced to hang out at an open window at the central air shaft to get some clean, cool air in my lungs. The other memory is of how large the venue was, with different areas where the punters hung out, drinking, playing pool or watching the bands, depending on their predilection. The music has become just a blur.
I guess I can say much the same of The Flaming Firestones gigs, where my only specific memories are of the gigs at the Three Arts Theatre in Diep River and the final gigs at the Café Royal. This is one reason why it’s such a boon to hear these demos from 1986 as a reminder of those halcyon days; they don’t jog my mind much but they’re an assertion that those things did happen: the band did play and I was usually there.
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