For What It's Worth

_{I recently completed a bundle of blogs on my one hundred and one favorite albums of the 1980s. There was the usual plethora of British bands, plus a motley crew of Australian, New Zealand, and American groups. Purposefully, I left out all South African artists. There quite simply wasn’t space, and felt it best that I (for now) ignore these home-brewed treasures of our youth. Here I make up for that with fifteen of my favorite (and some of the best) LPs produced in that same decade by our very own local talent. So, in no particular order, let’s get started.}

We start with this slightly obscure, lost classic by a group calling themselves The Softies. They were in demand for only a short time – mainly with lefty students, a few cool kids, nerds, and misfits like myself. But hey! They even got played on the old wireless back in those long-gone days.

Slim, Humps, Punk, me, myself, and I would have made the long haul into Jozi to watch them play. Most often at the King of Clubs, a cozy venue they seemed to like performing in. It was a great spot, and we loved going there. Us Alberton * yobbos felt at home here – not so much later in the night when we drifted upstairs to the decidedly alternative Decodance. Here the hicks from the sticks probably stood out like, well, hicks from the sticks

We probably also saw them play at Jameson’s a few times – however my memories of the evenings spent at that place are decidedly fuzzy. No doubt due to those R 1.20 Castles or Black labels! We had no fricking idea what bloody craft beer was in those days. 😂

_{[* Alberton is a city situated on the southern part of the East Rand of Johannesburg and it is situated very close -about 20km – to the major urban center of Johannesburg, in the Gauteng province of South Africa.]}

^{I couldn’t find a picture of King of Clubs but it was just below LeClub/Decodance which is kind of pictured above.}

The Softies only made one long-playing record – this one (pictured below) which they called ‘An Evening With …‘ It has 11 fabulous tunes on it, and about three (I think?) of those were released as singles. Their star shone brightly, but only fleetingly like most South African bands. They then dissolved and were basically no more. A real pity which meant the Softies also eventually disappeared from my memory banks. I never had a physical copy of this album – only on a cassette, I recorded from someone (Humps maybe? Or Street records?). But, I cannot be certain of how I got my hands on it.

I can tell you for sure that I played the tape I had of their only LP often and loved it completely. Then when the dear old cassette tape disappeared from our lives – so did my recollection of this album and the band that made it – proving just how crucial physical copies of music are. Even those darn cassettes had a place and if I’m honest I kind of miss them. Well, I still have some of them but can’t play them. 😂

I probably haven’t thought of this group for well over two decades. Recently I asked Neil what his favorite South African albums were. In amongst his great list was The Softies, and the memories slowly drifted back. They were warm and fuzzy ones, I can tell you. Apple Music had the album on their platform, so I immediately gave the thing a few happy listens. I see it has since disappeared from that site. However, I found it on Bandcamp and didn’t hesitate to buy it. A small amount of money well spent. Nice to have the high-quality downloads but I’d still give my left nut for a physical copy on vinyl though.

_{An Evening With The Softies (1985)}

A potted history of South African music & the Softies

While trying to find out more about this band I stumbled upon an old video on YouTube.

Andrew Murchie

_{[Andrew posted the video mentioned above, and had the following to say]}

‘South African 80’s band The Softies’ official music video for their single “Mission to Cairo“. Apart from the fact that my band Days Before played with The Softies several times at King of Clubs in Johannesburg, there’s not much more I know about them. I think the singer was previously involved with Corporal Punishment* but perhaps someone else could supply more detailed info.

_{[* Corporal Punishment – band from Springs** featuring James Phillips, Mark Bennett, Carl Raubenheimer, Henry Jansen & Herbie Parkin. Many of the lyrics of their songs passed scathing commentary about the social issues that plagued South Africa at that time. Instead of adopting fake American or British accents, Corporal Punishment insisted on singing in their flat South African accents. According to Phillips, people would say “What a nice band, but they sound too South African”.]}

_{[** Springs is a former independent city, now part of the City of Ekurhuleni based in the east of Johannesburg in Gauteng province of South Africa. It lies 50 km east of Johannesburg and 72 km southeast of Pretoria]}

_{To which}

Kevin Phoenix

_replied

‘Hi! Thanks for posting this video. Yes, The Softies was led by ex-Corporal Punishment member Mark Bennett. Others in the Softies were sax-player Winston Nyaunda (previously in The Dynamics, then formed his own band, Winston’s Jive Mix-Up), drummer Steve Howells (ex-Asylum Kids and The Dynamics, afterward to the Cherry Faced Lurchers**), bassist Van, trombonist Jannie van Tonder (who resurfaced in the 90s in the Blues Broers and now has the Biggish Band) and keys by Mark Bennett’s wife Tracy. I think.’

_{[** Cherry Faced Lurchers was a band from Springs featuring James Phillips (guitar, vocals), Lee Edwards (bass), and Michael de la Hunt (drums) (later replaced by Richard Frost). They played songs like “Do the Lurch” or “That’s my Shirt” and “I Want it Back“. The band gained popularity when they had a residency at the then-unknown Jameson’s.]}

_{and then some dude calling himself}

‘Goldensilvercrow’

_{chipped in …}

‘and Leon van der Merve‘

So there we maybe have it? I think. I hope. Oh well, close enough 😅

Here’s the rare video of the Softies that Andrew uploaded.

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_{Bandcamp is an internet music company founded in 2008 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt, and Neal Tucker, with headquarters in Oakland, California, US. Artists and labels upload music to Bandcamp and control how they sell it, setting their own prices, and offering users the option to pay more, or sometimes less! You can purchase your favorite albums on vinyl, CDs, downloads, and also snap up some cool band merchandise.}

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Fans have paid artists and independent labels $903 million using Bandcamp, and $16.6 million in the last 30 days alone. To learn more about our Fair Trade Music Policy click here. And thank you for being a part of a fair, sustainable music economy!

_{Back to … “an evening with”}

The following is extracted from the Bandcamp liner notes for the album An Evening With the Softies. I thought why not let a proper softy tell his own story for this blog.

The Story of the Softies

by

Mark Bennett

[who sang, wrote most of the songs and played guitar in the group. That’s him in the specs below]

All that follows is subject to the vagaries of old age and of course a very blurry 1980s

Mark Bennett

This is our story …

After the Corporals* finally broke up (1981), Herbie, Henry, and I started jamming a few of Herbie’s songs. We both had this plan to write clever pop, we were listening to a lot of brit-pop ous at the time, (Haircut 100, ABC, Dexy’s, The Jam, etc). “Don’t Turn out the Lights” was one of them, we used to play it at like dance floor tempo.

_{[* Corporal Punishment]}

We did a couple of gigs in Springs as a 3 piece, I remember a wild garage party with Hogs Norton that ended in tears. Then Shorty Coetzee pulled in with a baritone sax (baggy 1950’s big band suits, mustache, sunglasses, and fedora), he was in The Light Horse Band, and he brought Hanepoot and Leon (also in The Light Horse) with him one afternoon.

Shorty also played bass for one of Jonathan’s pre-Radio Rats’** bands, called Slither. He always had a car full of ladies, which was a bit of a mystery to the rest of us. Anyhow then we had this brass thing going. Jannie looked about 12, Leon looked like James Dean, and Shorty looked like he probably had a machine gun in his horn case.

_{[** The Radio Rats was a South African rock group formed in 1977 in Springs (yes, another one! The place was a South African music hotbed of talent in the 80s) by Jonathan Handley (lead guitar and background vocals), Dave Davies on lead vocals, and Herbie Parkin on bass, with various drummers. Leonard Dixon is remembered as the group’s drummer during its most famous period. “The Rats”, as they are known colloquially, are notable for their 1979 hit “ZX Dan“]}

Then around this time, Henry was killed at the mines, fuck it was awful. So it all ground to a halt for a bit. Herbie started seeing the Swedish Viking Princess Anne (Herbie also left quite a long trail of broken hearts behind him) and was going off to Sweden. Then Herbie and I recorded “Mission to Cairo” and “Rope without Slack” and a few others, just the two of us and Lloyd’s drum machine.

And then he fucked off to Sweden.

💥

Middle Eight

I asked a herd of music fan friends what was their favorite

local South African music of

The 80s

Starting with the main man…

Brilliant list Neil, very listenable classics all! Personally, and just off the top of my head … I would have found space for the Psycho Reptiles “Have Beans Will Travel”, James Phillips’ “Wie is Bernoldus Niemand?”, Mango Groove’s “Home Talk” & e-Void’s debut album of the same name.

YEBO, I AM A FADGET!

Albin Wagner

Here’s a video of one of Neil’s choices, the incredible Asylum Kids. This is an experimental 2d to 3d conversion of Fight it with Your Mind. Grab your 3d specs and see what you think (by DeepVision Studios)

Neil Johnson had a segment on his show on Music radio 702 back in the early 80s called “HOMEBREW.” Here he played only “local” tunes. I asked him about it recently.

‘It started out on a Sunday night from 23h00 to 00h00 … Then the powers that be let me move it to 22h00 – 23h00 every Monday night. When I left 702 in 1985 Alex Jay laid claim to it and called it “Son of Homebrew“‘

_{Local is Lekker}

💥Mark Bennett continues his Softies short story…

So, then I started The Softies again with Paul Strachan (drums) and Van (bass) from The Worst Blues Band in The World and my then-wife Tracey (keys) and Leon on tenor and Jannie on the bone. We did a few residencies at The King of Clubs and other lefty spots in Yeoville, toured Cape Town. James Phillips came along on that tour.

We’d been booked by Travis, the chef at Jameson’s, to play at the Port St Johns hotel on the way down, but Mapantsula beat us to it. There’s a pic of us floating around on Facebook smoking a monster spliff on the lawn at Justin’s place just up the coast, where we finished up for a few days. We really weren’t very good. Van was so tone-deaf, he played music in the same way that he approached maths.

[Here’s a snippet of The Softies from some show on the good old ‘S … A … U … K’ (SABC)]

I miss Van big time. James was kind of between (the bands) James the Boptist and The Lurchers at the time. He used to get up and play quite often with us, play guitar, and sing harmonies, cos none of the other ous [guys] in the band could sing. I’ve got a pic of James and me at a festival at Kontermans Kloof from that tour somewhere, it was one of our better sets.

Robbie Robb (The Asylum Kids/Tribe After Tribe) came up to me afterward and said “You skiem [think] you James Brown or what?” – wasn’t quite sure if it was complimentary? Around this time we also recorded “Whitey” for the Forces Favourites compilation.

In 1985 we recorded ‘An Evening with the Softies’ which was more or less the two sets we were playing at the time. About half of it was still Herbie’s songs, the other half was mine. By now we were playing “Don’t Turn out the Lights” as a slow kind of cheek-to-cheek affair. Leon and Paul Strachan had left us, Chris Lehman replaced Paul on drums, we had Winston Nyaunda ex-The Dynamics on sax, and Jannie still playing bone. Playing “lights“at the slower tempo made for a great sing-along chorus, a bit of a crowd-pleaser, especially at Jamesons.

On the recording, the backing vox are Roger Lucey, me and James, Ian Herman on drums. Lloyd had to replace quite a few of Van’s bass tracks as I recall! Shifty put it out on cassette only to begin with and then the vinyl EP came out a bit later. “Slipping away” did fairly well on 5FM for a bit.

The Softies live

On that tour, I used to get up and do a couple of tunes with The Lurchers on keys, and James would join us for a few tunes as well. Shortly afterward I joined The Lurchers full time, and that was the end of The Softies.

💥

Postscript

Herbie and I got to play “Don’t Turn Out the Lights” and “She’s Not My Baby” a couple more times when he came out here with one of his Swedish mix-ups, called Tuckers Lille Kapel. The Hips and Tuckers tour – Joburg and Cape Town – 2014? Another riotous assembly. Finished up with Dave Davies (The Radio Rats) meeting up with us at that club with the wooden bowling alley in Cape Town. Riotous versions of ZX Dan, Lights, She’s Not My Baby, Law, and Order … Jannie pulled in … it was a jol.

Going to miss Herbie a lot. And Van. And James. And Henry. And Winston.

So many lost… 😥

Mark Bennett

of The Softies

💥

credits

(P) (C) 1984 & 1985 Shifty Music (ZA)

license

all rights reserved

Buy the album here:

https://shiftyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/an-evening-with-the-softies

PPS

What became of Mark Bennett I hear you ask? Well, sometime in the 90s he started a band called The Hip Replacements. On their FaceBook page, the group describes themselves as “The original Joburg and western, alternative country, soul ‘n rock ‘n roll outfit. We’ve been at it since 1999. Accept no substitutes.”

They go on to say …

“The Hip Replacements started with a lurch back in the mid-90s, when Mark Bennett, he of The Cherry Faced Lurchers, Corporal Punishment and Softies, hooked up with Andrew Donaldson, journalist, and writer, and started messing around with a few tunes over a couple of cold beers. Joined by Allan “Scottie” Lusk of No Exit and Spectres fame, The Hips became real, playing their first gig at The Mixer in Melville in 2005, with the now-deceased Denis Platt, Young Dumb and Violent guitarist, on lead, and Willem Moller on drums.“

To be continued …

Covid and all its Lockdowns & Rules seem to have stopped the band (like so many others) in their tracks. Hopefully, at some point, they shall return to the stage. Look out for them!

Here’s Mark Bennett joining Allan Lusk, Gary Rathbone, (all of the Spectres), and Richard Frost (drummer for the Cherry Faced Lurchers and Spectres) for one of their lockdown tunes.

The Outro

Local was Lekker Playlist

CAPITAL RADIO 604

_{South African songs that missed the TOP 40 charts – listen below 😎😎}

_{By MixTapesZa}

_{[These include tracks by Bright Blue, Dog, eVoid, Jennifer Ferguson, Harari, Koos Kombuis, Mapantsula, Simba Morri, Edi Niederlander, No Friends Of Harry, Nude Red, Colin Shamley, and Savuka. We like the Nude Red album so much that we decided to include two songs here, thus breaking our rule at the last opportunity! In addition, we have included Dudu Pukwana and The Softies because they ought to have been included, to begin with, but they weren’t]}

Nyabonga

To you for reading my blog on An Evening With … the Softies & so much more. Part 1 of my 15 favorite SA albums of the 80s series. To Neil Johnson for his valued input. To Mark Bennett for his story (I hope you don’t mind dude) and of course Shifty Records for the music and much of the info.

Shala🙋‍♂️botse

☮&💙

_{Spikeysongs © 2022}