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shermaramaMy current main reading material is a book called The State of Africa by Martin Meredith, and it's a fascinating and fairly readable book about the history of Africa in the time of independence, passing through the complicated phases of government of countries as they formed for the last sixty years or so; socialism, foreign interference, military coups, single-party systems, rigged elections, dictators, corruption, bribery, civil war, propaganda, patronage and poverty and all the rest. I'd recommend it.
Not to belittle that continent-wide experience, but on Sunday night I felt I was part of a microcosmic study of how these things get started. A system where you get votes in return for buying drinks is quite equitable, actually, because if you've got lots of votes then you've probably been in all evening and will have at least heard all the bands. However it led to drunk band members and drunk fans getting up to all sorts of hijinks with the voting system (Jodie's main line of attack was through the bar staff that controlled access to the vote box and also distribution of the voting tokens; there was at least one barkeep who had particularly liked us) and so I'm pretty sure the end results were in large part made up. Which was a shame, as it left the plainly best band out in the cold and out of the next round. Very energetic punk-pop three piece, in a hat-wearing, piss-taking, intelligently shouty vocals and angular, angular guitars kind of way. They were called Girls Girls Girls and while the songs may have been a little weak, I'd pay money to see 'em again, no bother. Meanwhile the other band to get through apart from us were the worst blues band ever. All you've got to shine with when you're a blues band is how tight you are, how much it sounds like the standard blues song is playing you rather than the other way round, and this band fell flat on their face in that department. It was like they'd never ever met before, never mind played together. Still, not a lot to be done, and we're notionally through to the next round.
Not to belittle that continent-wide experience, but on Sunday night I felt I was part of a microcosmic study of how these things get started. A system where you get votes in return for buying drinks is quite equitable, actually, because if you've got lots of votes then you've probably been in all evening and will have at least heard all the bands. However it led to drunk band members and drunk fans getting up to all sorts of hijinks with the voting system (Jodie's main line of attack was through the bar staff that controlled access to the vote box and also distribution of the voting tokens; there was at least one barkeep who had particularly liked us) and so I'm pretty sure the end results were in large part made up. Which was a shame, as it left the plainly best band out in the cold and out of the next round. Very energetic punk-pop three piece, in a hat-wearing, piss-taking, intelligently shouty vocals and angular, angular guitars kind of way. They were called Girls Girls Girls and while the songs may have been a little weak, I'd pay money to see 'em again, no bother. Meanwhile the other band to get through apart from us were the worst blues band ever. All you've got to shine with when you're a blues band is how tight you are, how much it sounds like the standard blues song is playing you rather than the other way round, and this band fell flat on their face in that department. It was like they'd never ever met before, never mind played together. Still, not a lot to be done, and we're notionally through to the next round.