johannesburg

Blue Moons and seven-foot transvestites…

WEDNESDAY 29 JULY, 8.30pm (Business Class Cabin, British Airways Flight 183, Heathrow):
The last time we toured to America, we flew Business Class. It turned out that Tony had a “contact” who was able to pull some strings for us at British Airways (I didn’t ask exactly what this meant – Tony has East End gangster blood in his family and I generally find it’s best not to enquire about his methods) and we had our tickets upgraded. Sadly, this time round, on account of the flight being absolutely packed, we have been condemned to flying World Traveller Plus, which is the next rung above cattle.

As a result we are now having to shuffle ignominiously through the Business Class cabin on our way to inferior seats in a perverse re-enactment of that moment in 1980s game shows when the presenter would excitedly announce: “And here’s what you could have won!” (it was always a speedboat, for some reason). You’d watch the forlorn faces of the unsuccessful contestants, struggling to look gracious whilst a small army of bikini-clad beauties clambered all over the star prize, stroking it lasciviously and batting their eyelids. We are having the upmarket wares of high-society living literally paraded about in front of us. The champagne. The leg-room. The seats-that-are-actually-beds. It’s almost too much. I long to turn away, but cannot. Oh the shame.

And then, unexpectedly, I spot a small boy in one of the seats. He’s sitting next to his very glamorous-looking mother. It’s unusual to see young children in Business Class but he looks somehow at home here, at ease, waiting so well-behaved in his window seat. He’s a beautiful kid, Italian I think, a mop of jet black hair and an innocent, thoughtful expression drifting like gentle waves across his eyes. He is playing quietly with a small wooden model of a fire engine. Our eyes meet momentarily and I glimpse the fleeting intangibility of youth in his handsome young face, the soft, unblinking wonder of boyhood – unaffected, it seems, by the transitory comforts that surround him, and I find myself thinking…

“You little bastard.”

THURSDAY 29 JULY, 2.15am (Merrion Square Bar, Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York USA):
Having somehow survived the flight to New York without even the slightest whiff of fillet steak, we arrived into JFK airport at around 10.30pm local time and were met by Ashley, one of our US tour managers. We immediately took a cab to her apartment on the Upper East Side in the expectation of going straight to bed.

Instead, somehow, we currently find ourselves on our fourth round of Blue Moons (a deliciously fruity local beer) in an almost empty Manhattan bar whilst a Phil Collins live album plays over the PA. Now, without doubt, we are officially “on tour”.

THURSDAY 29 JULY, 6.15pm (Union Square, Manhattan, New York):
This is our second performance in Union Square. Our first was last September, as part of one of the more manic episodes in the history of The Lightyears, in which we succeeded in playing two gigs in two continents, three thousand miles apart, in under twenty hours. This time around it’s all a lot more straightforward. We’ve been in New York for a day already and have begun the process of acclimatising to local culture (i.e. eating more than our own body weights at each meal – this morning for breakfast, for example, I ate a pastrami sandwich that contained so much meat I actually felt like it might have been endangering cows as a species) and developing a tolerance for the intense heat you get in the peak of summer in Manhattan.

This evening’s gig, which is part of a summer-long concert series run by the Union Square partnership, is outdoors. Last week’s concert was rained off during one of the city’s dramatic July thunderstorms, but today we’ve been lucky and the sun is blazing. Jukebox The Ghost, a fantastic Philly band who supported us in London a couple of years ago and were the unfortunate victims of last week’s cancelled performance, have joined us on the bill and are just finishing their highly entertaining and accomplished support slot in front of a rapidly burgeoning crowd. Top band – check them out here. When we jump up onstage and look out across the park, I begin to wonder whether this could turn out to be our biggest audience yet in the States, and it turns out I’m right – by the time we’ve played our first few songs and the passing trade have assembled in front of the stage, the crowd has grown to several thousand. This is brilliant. Summer evening, outdoor concert, Union Square, the British invasion – nothing could be better. I’d go as far as to say that it turns into our best ever show in the States.

We play for around an hour and the set includes songs both old and new – recent tracks such as “Johannesburg” and “Speedway 105” sit alongside songs which we haven’t played since last time we were in the USA such as “Miles Away” and “Brightest Star”. We’re having a whale of a time. I spot some familiar faces out in the plaza – fans from Philly who have travelled into the city to see us, friends from previous tours and even a couple of Lightyears fans from London. I speak to one girl afterwards who tells me: “I was walking through Manhattan and heard some band covering “Sleepless” by The Lightyears. Then I took a closer look and discovered it was you!”.

Afterwards we sign a bunch of autographs and have our photos taken with new fans, which is rather brave of them considering how disgustingly sweaty I am (see some of the pictures here). Follow this we assemble a motley crew and head for Revival where our after-party is being held. At Revival we gorge on pizza and more Blue Moons and at some point in the evening end up dancing with seven-foot transvestites to Michael Jackson tunes in a club that is, apparently, also a beauty parlour.

Today has been probably one of my favourite days ever.

FRIDAY 30 JULY, 6.15pm (WAWA Food Hut, Riverton, Philadelphia):
Today we head for Philadelphia. Which means one thing above all others.

THE WAWA FOOD HUT.

Wawa, as far as I’m aware, does reasonably good business most of the year in the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. It’s a popular brand of roadside supermarket-cum-deli and Americans have responded favourably to its easy level of convenience and innovative touch-screen sandwich-ordering technology.

That said, I don’t think I’d be out of line in ultimately attributing the massive success of the brand to the amount of business it does once-yearly when The Lightyears land in Philadelphia.

We just can’t get enough of Wawa. Sure, we have sandwiches in Britain (we invented them) but the typical deal is two, maybe three fillings, limited to a small number of essentially quite similar combinations. Not so with Wawa. In fact, I’d confidently assert that The Wawa Food Hut is a very effective microcosm for the entire American Dream philosophy – in the USA, you can have exactly what you want, when you want it, and in huge quantities to boot. Just like in Wawa. For example, one of the options at the very beginning of the sandwich-ordering process is “2-foot”… a TWO FOOT SANDWICH! That’s insane. It’s like eating a boa constrictor.

On this particular day, we head into Wawa giddy with expectation. It’s been nearly ten months since our last hoagie and we’re all salivating with the thought. In The Lightyears, we tend to fall prey on tour to what we like to call “competitive eating”. It’s essentially a way of asserting masculinity over other band members by out-eating them, often to disgusting lengths, and I’ll be the first to admit that George is running rings around me on this tour.  I think the heat may have sapped my appetite. Whatever the explanation, I am destined to lose this particular bout.

After you’ve ordered your sandwich, the little computer prints a receipt for you, listing all the ingredients you have chosen to include in your hoagie. Grinning like a Cheshire Cat, George saunters over to me and says: “Look at my receipt”. He unleashes it. It’s about a foot long.

“How long is yours?”

I’m ashamed to produce it. It’s half the length of George’s.

“Are you on a diet?” goads George.

I think about defending myself by telling him it’s not the size of your sandwich but what you do with it that counts, but I know I’d be lying. I’ve failed. Admittedly my Wawa Philly Cheesesteak is no tiddler, and it fills me up, but that’s not really the point. In The Lightyears, unless you’ve eaten until the point of debilitation, you’ve not really eaten.

Once we’re back in the ridiculously massive truck that we’ve hired to get to Spring City, George begins the arduous process of actually ingesting the behemoth sitting in his lap. When he opens the paper wrapping, I actively wince. I swear I can even hear his heart-rate increasing. There are so many fillings in this sandwich that the bread walls have been breached and are hidden beneath a steaming mountain of meat, cheese, vegetables and sauce. It’s less of a sandwich and more of a dreadful pizza. I can immediately read the look on George’s face – “I can’t eat this like a normal sandwich”, he’s thinking, “because I can’t pick it up. There’s only one option.”

And with that, George plunges face-first into his food like a pig in a trough.

Whilst this disgusting process is unfolding beside me, I take the chance to study the receipt. My jaw drops open. Here’s a rough approximation of what it said:

ORDER #78: PHILLY CHICKEN CHEESESTEAK (12″)
Ingredients
– Cheese
– Extra cheese (3)
– Pepper Jack Cheese
– Grated parmesan
– Chicken
– Meat
– Extra meat
– Extra bacon
– A little bit of oil
– Extra oil [this isn’t a joke – you really can order this in America]
– Peppers
– Roasted peppers
– Sweet peppers
– Sweet roasted peppers
– Onions
– Extra onions
– Ranch sauce
– Barbeque sauce
– Horseradish
– Tomato relish
– Mayo
– Garlic mayo
– Honey mustard sauce
– Mustard
– French mustard
– Salt
– Pepper
– Oregano

In some counties in England, it would actually be illegal to eat this.

When he’s done, George is looking distinctly peaky. We are just a few miles outside of Spring City and will need to load our gear into the venue within the half hour.

“Chris…” he begins, struggling even to form words, “Chris… I don’t think I can do the gig. You’ll have to go on without me.”

I turn to face him. He looks like he’s been sat on by a bear.

“George mate, it’s going to be fine. I think you know what to do.”

He nods slowly.

“You’ll have to do the Christmas Walk.”

George invented the Christmas Walk back in the late ’90s. Typically it is used but once a year, on 25 December, at the close of Christmas dinner. In England it is customary on this occasion to eat and drink yourself into a stupor before crashing down in front of the TV to watch Noel Edmonds mince about in a woolly jumper for about five hours. Problem is, George has a habit of eating such a colossal amount of food during dinner that he is unable to straighten his body into a walking position upon leaving the chair, making a normal walk impossible. Necessity being the mother of invention, some years ago he patented the Christmas Walk, an ingenious method of walking whilst remaining in a sitting position. Basically you’re bent over at a sharp right angle, staring at the floor and waddling like an infirm duck. This enables you to muster a brief burst of (albeit limited) movement in spite of your creakingly full stomach. All you need is enough momentum to get you from the dinner table to the armchair. It doesn’t take much. But the Christmas Walk makes it all possible.

And so it was that George found himself Christmas Walking from the parking lot in the quaint town of Spring City, Pennsylvania, to the front door of Chaplin’s Music Cafe, where the second gig of our US tour was taking place. Passers-by regarded him with suspicion. “We’re British,” I explain. “He’s had a little too much cheesesteak. Nothing a quick Christmas Walk won’t sort out.”

FRIDAY 30 JULY, 8.45pm (Chaplin’s Music Cafe, Spring City, Pennsylvania):
Spring City is a small, attractive and incredibly quiet town north-west of Philadelphia. In England, a place like this wouldn’t have a music venue. In England, it wouldn’t even have a post office. But they do things differently in America.

Spring City also has a music store, conveniently situated opposite the venue and coincidentally named George’s Music. Naturally we had to go in there so George could do his “I’m a musician from England and my name’s George” routine. Rather splendidly the chap behind the counter gave us all free t-shirts in recognition of this fact. I left the store and discovered that mine was “Triple XL”. Not altogether useful for me at this stage in my career but I thought about it and concluded that it will come in handy when, after our 11th album has gone platinum and we all harbour such unrelenting and undisguised loathing for each other that we have begun taking separate limos to gigs, and I sit in my keytar-shaped swimming pool all day eating cheeseburgers and Findus crispy pancakes from a bucket and I’m wildly obese and need to be airlifted to gigs, it’ll be just the ticket. Always good to plan for the future, I reckon.

Chaplin’s is a fantastic little venue. The sound system is incredibly crisp and juicy (that’s right – “juicy” is a technical term in sound production) and it’s a great place to see live music. There’s a friendly crowd in tonight and we play, if I may say so myself, a very accomplished and well-balanced one-hour set that moves from the gentle acoustica of “Fine” and “Girl On The Radio” through the sunny upbeat harmonies of “Brightest Star” and “Emily”, closing on the theatrical coda of “The Last Night”. I do a bit of banter about sandwiches, which seems to go down well, and we sample a couple of flagons of the excellent local beer known as “Sly Fox”.

We are supporting a blues/soul act called Brooke Shive and The 45s, who are great fun and sound really superb. They are joined by Andy Goessling of Railroad Earth, who at one point manages to play two saxophones simultaneously. Now THAT’S a trick worth seeing.

Tomorrow – Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

Sunday – Burlington New Jersey.

Keep your eyes peeled for Part Two of my USA Tour Diary 2009 – coming soon!

Chris Lightyear

We are staying in JACK BAUER’S hotel…

TUESDAY 3 MARCH, 3pm (Brass Bell Restaurant, False Bay, South Africa):
I am dressed in shades, boardies and flip-flops. I am starting to look quite tanned, having spent a decent amount of time on the beach over the past few days. I am exhuding an easy, care-free demeanour on account of the sunny weather and the leisurely pace of the Cape Town lifestyle. I am drinking a crisp gin and bitter lemon. The afternoon waves of the Indian Ocean lap hungrily at the walls of the famous Brass Bell restaurant in False Bay, where we’re enjoying a few cocktails and a plate of delicious fried calimari.

Bearing all this in mind, I find it very hard to reconcile the fact that, glancing across the road to a world news poster nailed to a lamp-post, I can read the words “SNOW SHUTS LONDON”.

That’s right – were we at home right now, we’d be building snowmen and perhaps even doing some sly a-wassailing. Yesterday London experienced its most severe snow storms in 18 years. The whole of the capital ground to a halt, which in theory ought not to have affected us all the way out here in South Africa, but as it happened we were waiting for Tony to leave Heathrow and come out to join us in Cape Town. The airport cancelled a staggering 800 flights. Only six actually left the runway and Tony, the jammy rascal, was on the sixth. Which was just as well, as tomorrow night we’re headlining at the Speedway 105 Cafe and we’d been rather relying on Tony’s presence to complete the line-up!

It’s been a wonderful few days. Aside from a few casual, sun-kissed meetings and the odd telephone interview, the business end of the tour hasn’t really started yet. We’ve made the most of our long weekend of freedom with afternoons on the beach and evenings on the town. Yesterday we took a day trip out to Hermanus, a beautiful coastal resort about an hour outside Cape Town, where we walked along the cliffside and Andy cooked us a traditional South African braai, complete with fresh steak, calimari and a dollop of local hospitality.

Yesterday evening I was interviewed by a journalist from The Argus, one of Cape Town’s foremost daily papers (click here to read the article). I conducted the interview strolling along the sand, listening to the ocean and watching the sunset. If only, I thought, I could conduct all my interviews from the beach. What a life that would be…

WEDNESDAY 4 MARCH, 9pm (Speedway 105 Cafe, Cape Town)
Tonight we are playing our first fully-fledged show in South Africa – a headline slot at the Speedway bikers’ bar – and I’m delighted to report that there’s a full house in. What a genuine pleasure it is to visit a new territory, set up camp in a new venue, and watch as the place fills with an audience of complete strangers. I’m excited about performing again and it’s great to have Tony back on the team.

The Scandinavian motorbike club from Saturday night have returned, which I find extremely flattering, since by their own admission they don’t normally listen to anything except Motorhead and AC/DC. Could be an interesting audience. Will we win them over? 

Well, yes, as it turns out. Although for a while it’s looking dicey. We decide to split the evening into two sets, starting with 45 minutes of Lightyears originals and ending with a set of dance numbers. We chuck in “Beat Alive”, “She’s The One”, “Fine”, “Sleepless” and “Emily” too. The crowd respond really well to our songs and the first official airing of “Johannesburg” proves a hit as well. During the break I’m standing at the bar waiting for a beer when the bikers’ ringleader taps me on the shoulder.

“Do you play heavy metal?”

Jings. Should I lie? Mainly we’d been planning Jerry Lee Lewis, Van Morrison and The Monkees for set two. Is there any way in which “I’m A Believer” could be considered metal? Probably not.

“Erm, d’ya know, I’m afraid to say we don’t. It’s not really our ‘thing’.”

“Come on,” he replies, throwing back his big scary Norwegian biker’s head. “Led Zeppelin! You must do some Led Zeppelin! It is the classic of all times.”

I heartily agree with him that, yes, it is the classic of all times – but sadly it’s just not in our repertoire. He’s pretty persistent though and so, by the end of our conversation, I’ve agreed to ‘see what I can do’. I have no idea what I mean by this.

Racking my brains, I remember that last year, when we were on the bill at the launch of State music magazine in Dublin, I played a set of ‘Easy Listening Heavy Metal’ on the grand piano, comprising a whole host of rock classics performed in a lounge style. And one of them was “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin. Was this a good idea? Would the bikers appreciate the irony?

Dash it all, I thought. I have no choice. This is the only thing we do that even vaguely resembles Led Zeppelin. It will have to suffice.

And so it is that, twenty minutes later, to break up the set, I make an announcement. 

“The extremely fine ladies and gentlemen in the corner there have requested some Led Zeppelin, and we’ve never been a band to let people down. So here’s ‘Black Dog’ – Track One, Side One from the classic album Led Zeppelin IV……”

I’m glad to say that the ensuing performance – although perhaps not quite what they were expecting – prompts enthusiastic applause from the petrolheads and I come to the conclusion that we’ve got away with it. This is later confirmed when we encore with “New York, New York” and it brings the house down. Andy’s brother, Dan, confesses to me after the gig that the sight of twenty leather-clad bikers singing their hearts out to Frank Sinatra brought a tear of joy to his eye and was something he would never, ever forget. 

THURSDAY 5 MARCH, 1.30pm (The Table Bay Hotel, Cape Town):
Today we check into the hotel where we’ll be staying for the remainder of the tour. I’ve been looking forward to this moment. By reputation, the Table Bay is the finest hotel in Cape Town and, in fact, one of the top hotels in the country. It’s a glorious day and the sun is beating down as we arrive outside the front entrance and unload our luggage and instruments. Spotting our guitars, the concierge immediately saunters over.

“Hello sir, how are you today?”

“I’m extremely well thank you,” I reply, absolutely meaning it.

“You’re musicans, right?” he points out, astutely.

I nod in agreement and this prompts a barrage of stories about previous musical residents of the Table Bay. “We’ve had all kinds of bands checking into the hotel over the years,” he explains.

“Who was the last musician to stay here then?” I ask, testing the water.

“Snoop Dogg,” he begins, casually. “We’ve had Kanye West too. And Maroon 5 were here last month. Plus we’ve also had Counting Crows, Robbie Williams and Michael Jackson. The Table Bay is the only place Michael will stay when he’s in Cape Town. I’ve met him personally.”

He can see I’m impressed. But he’s not done yet.

“Oh, and Keifer Sutherland. Keifer Sutherland often stays here. Nice fella.”

We are staying in JACK BAUER’S hotel. 

Rock and roll.

THURSDAY 5 MARCH, 7.30pm (The Toad In The Village, Noordhoek, Cape Town):
We are at The Toad In The Village, a bar/restaurant in the rather quaint Noordhoek, owned by legendary former Springbok captain, Bob Skinstad. We’ve been invited along to the launch party for the ‘Noordhoek Vikings’, one of the teams taking part in the Cape Town Tens Rugby Tournament this weekend. This will be our first proper experience of hanging out with large gangs of rugby players.

We turn up early and take our designated seats at a long, wooden dining table by at the far end of the room. The other half of the table is empty. It transpires that we are to be joined shortly by six or seven professional rugby players from the ‘Sports Illustrated Legends’ team, a side headed up by Bob himself, along with Robbie Fleck, another former South African international who is also involved in organising the tournament. The guys are coming along tonight to meet the rest of their team-mates and sink a few* lagers.

We’ve been there for about 15 minutes when a group of enormous blokes appear through the main entrance and head towards our table. As they arrive, I stand up to introduce myself to the guy at the front. The blood drains from his face. 

“Who are….. what is…. erm…?”. He seems shaken. “What position do you play?”

Odd greeting, I think. My next thought concerns how powerful, almost debilitating, his handshake is. He still looks a bit freaked out. Then the penny drops. Blimey. They think we’re on their team. 

“Oh gosh, gosh no. Hah! No. I’m not a rugby player. Golly. No. Imagine that! You’d probably snap me in half. I mean, look at you, you have arms like anacondas.”

Actually, I didn’t say that last bit. But I did think it. Danny later tells me that he was transfixed for the entire evening by the sight of me sitting next to a bloke whose biceps were WIDER THAN MY HEAD. I could have climbed inside his arms and made them my home. “You look so tiny,” Danny kept saying. Yeah, whatever mate. I could play rugby. I just choose not to.

By the time I have finished shaking hands with all seven of them, the bones in my right hand have been ground to a fine powder. I may never play piano again.

FRIDAY 6 MARCH (Hamilton Rugby Club, Cape Town):
Earlier this evening we sat down to a truly delicious dinner on the harbourside near the hotel. Tanned, rested and fully settled into laid-back Cape Town life, we sat round the table beaming at each other, soaking up the warm night air. John summed up the feeling most succinctly when he said: “I can’t ever remember being this happy”.

Despite being so chilled out we could almost have sat there until sunrise, we decide to head over to Hamilton Rugby Club (where the Cape Town Tens are kicking off with an evening of hardcore boozing) to show our faces and generally get a feel for the vibe of the tournament. The matches themselves don’t start until Saturday but, as the recreational side of the event is generally considered equally as important as the sport, we figure it would do us good to get a taster before things kick off for real tomorrow morning.

When we turn up we are greeted by a sobering sight – 600 huge rugby players, standing around, necking pints and challenging each other to violent drinking games. Once again we are suddenly made very aware of how much we stand out. Feeling like Year 7s who have just accidentally wandered into the Year 11 common room and are met for the first time by that bewilderingly unfamiliar cocktail of sweat, Lynx deodorant and Tizer, we head cautiously for the bar, trying our hardest not to make eye contact with anyone. 

We are mere seconds from our destination when the mission fails. We’ve been spotted. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those wildlife programmes where leopards are filmed hunting gazelles, but this is pretty much a human equivalent. Looking back over my shoulder I see young Danny Morriss being picked off from the herd by a man off such terrifying visage that I can actually feel my sphincter tightening. He seems to be trying to engage Danny in conversation, although the sounds coming from his mouth are definitely not words and his only other method of communication is to squish Dan’s immaculately-engineered mohican with his enormous hand until it’s entirely flat on his head. I am genuinely torn between the two conflicting instincts in my gut – one is telling me to stick by my friend and wade in for rescue, the other is telling me to sod Danny and run away screaming like a tiny little girl.

For the first time, I am beginning to feel quite nervous about this weekend’s gigs. These people will be our audience. Will they accept us as their own or will they weed us out as the namby-pamby pretenders we are? And if they do accept us, will we have to drink our own urine through a plastic funnel as part of some kind of dreadful initiation ceremony? At the moment, they’re curious about us because we’re quite demonstrably outsiders – but maybe once we’ve been up onstage, we’ll have more authority.

“Do you think it’ll be better once they know who we are?” I ask George, praying for the answer ‘yes’.

“No mate,” replied George, “it’ll be worse. Because they’ll know who we are.”

***

Will we survive a weekend boozing with rugby players? Will Cape Town rock to the sweet sound of The Lightyears? Stay tuned for Part 3 of my South African tour diary, coming soon to www.TheLightyears.com.

* a “few” to me is approximately three. To a rugby man, it is somewhere in the region of twelve.

The tour has begun…

FRIDAY 30 JANUARY, 2.30am (International Airspace, somewhere over Africa):
This is one of my favourite parts of any tour. I am on the plane, 40,000 feet above the ground, cruising at speeds of 600 mph. I am approximately four gin and tonics into an evening of steady boozing, courtesy of British Airways. Our hot-off-the-press recording of “Johannesburg“, finished only yesterday in Tony’s home studio, is playing in my ears. In a few hours we will land in Cape Town, South Africa, where anything can and will happen on this, the latest instalment in our ongoing International Rock & Roll Juggernaut Tour. Right now, the distinct aroma of possibility hangs expectant in the air. Although come to think of it, that might just be Danny.

The Lightyears are about to land.

FRIDAY 30 JANUARY, 7.30am (Hertz Car Rental, Cape Town, South Africa):
Cape Town is gloriously warm. Emily and Skinny meet us at the airport with glowing tans (they’ve been in South Africa for a month already), a shining example of how we hope to look by the end of our ten days here. Job number one is to sort out the hire car, so George and I saunter over to the Hertz outlet to pick up the keys.

Now, until we’re at the stage where we get to travel around in a double-decker blacked-out nightliner replete with arcade games, plasma TVs, strippers and a ready supply of mind-enhancing hallucinogenics, we are somewhat restrained by having to work to a budget. Luckily, Tony’s dad is in the motor trade and was able to find us a great deal on a nifty little vehicle known as the Volkswagen Chico. For only £11.50 a day we would be licensed to career around Cape Town looking like refugees from Staines in an automobile that can really only be described as a “chavwagon”. In other words, if you’re driving this car and you don’t have So Solid Crew pumping out of the sound system, you’re doing something wrong. 

Standing at the service desk and waiting for the clerk to finish scanning our credit card and checking our details, we begin to share a collective concern that maybe everything isn’t going to go as planned. He keeps giving us funny looks out of the corner of his eye and it suddenly occurs to me that, dressed up in shades and shaggy haircuts and surrounded by guitars, we are very obviously in a band. And would you hire a vehicle to a bunch of foreign reprobates in a rock band? Exactly.

“So…..” the clerk muses, “four guys, eh? Musicians?”

“Erm….” (no sense in lying – I mean, I could say we were ballerinas but unfortunately the evidence to the contrary is damning), “yep. Just in from London”.

“London, eh? Well, thing is, we don’t have any Chicos left”.

Bugger. We’ve been rumbled. Push-bikes it is then.

“Can I interest you in one of these?” he offers with a nod, pointing at an A4 laminate featuring a whole range of cars we couldn’t possibly hope to afford. Before we can utter an objection though, he cuts us short. “Same price,” he says, a twinkle in his eye.

Surely not. The man is indicating an 8-seater VW Transporter – our ideal car.

Throwing each other furtive glances like 12 year-old boys who have just been told it’s OK to shoot at cats with their dad’s rifle, we garble some “thank you”s, grab the keys off the clerk and leave hastily before Ashton Kutcher’s able to turn up and tell us it’s all a big joke. 

I don’t know exactly who that guy was but I can only think he must have been Santa, gripped by an out-of-season rush of altruism. For the car that he has gifted unto us is a shining stallion of wonder. A glorious, pimped-out, brand new, 2.5 litre, 4-motion hunk of beautiful steel. And it’s all ours. Out of respect, we name it “Chico”.

The tour has begun.

(n.b. Tony, who is hiring an alternative car as he’s not flying out for another few days, will almost certainly turn up in Cape Town to pick up his Chico and receive, well, an actual Chico. Which will look puny alongside our behemoth. This thought alone keeps me roundly amused for several days. At times I would even wake up at night, remember it, and chuckle surreptitiously to myself).   

SATURDAY 31 JANUARY, 9pm (Speedway 105 Cafe, Cape Town):
Our main reason for being here in South Africa is to headline at the after-parties for the first-ever Cape Town Tens Rugby Tournament next weekend. However, never a band to rest on our laurels, we have already booked another couple of gigs for the coming week at Speedway 105, a bikers’ bar in the centre of town. Tonight we are performing unplugged on the balcony and on Wednesday (when Tony has arrived) we’ll be playing a full band show inside.

Speedway is run by identical twins Dave and Paul Van Der Spuy, veritable movers ‘n’ shakers on the Cape Town scene. They’re also absolute chaps. They have the banter of Morecambe & Wise and the hospitality of saints. Dave’s wife, Janie, works in PR and is on the case with promoting “Johannesburg” to the local press, and between the three of them they have pretty much made Speedway our home from home in South Africa. The vibe this evening is pretty laid-back, and George and I are sitting on stools on the balcony, knocking out a string of acoustic tunes for a mixed audience of bikers, drinkers, regulars, friends and the rest of The Lightyears’ entourage.

It’s a great opportunity to try out “Johannesburg” on a native audience – and its maiden voyage proves successful. The song is simple and uplifting, I guess, which makes it very accessible, especially here in SA where the significance of the story behind it becomes even clearer (check out my blog “The Story Behind Johannesburg“ for the full tale). Later in the evening, Janie tells me she found it very moving and is confident we can get some good South African press on the band, using the song as our angle.

Liberated by the easy atmosphere and unplugged setting, George and I bust out some old tunes which don’t normally get an airing at LYs gigs – “Snog Song”, for instance, which we wrote years ago with our good friend Ben Scriven. It’s a song about inventing a love potion and getting jiggy with the Queen. Obviously. Try requesting it at a Lightyears gig one day – we’d be duty-bound to play it…

Afterwards things a get bit hectic when a group of Norwegian petrolheads start tearing up the tarmac with their enormous bikes. Danny, who knows a lot more about bikes than I do (not hard), explains that they are “doing burnouts”. When I ask him what a “burnout” is, he says “Wait and see – but there’ll be tons of smoke and a lot of noise”.

FYI, a burnout is essentially the biker’s equivalent of a crop circle – revving one’s engine and spinning the back tyre round in a perfect circle, on the axis of the front wheel, to leave a dark circular imprint on the tarmac. I think this a bit like when cats wee on stuff. It’s an imperial venture, in other words. It says “Me and massive bike have been here and there’s nothing you can do about it”. 

Unless you’re the local law enforcement agency, that is. Sure enough the cops have made an appearance within about twenty minutes, attracted by the noise. Driving in through Speedway’s main gates, they slowly circle the parking lot like a predatory steel shark and, once satisfied that they’ve made their point, disappear back into town.

The bikers, who personally I wouldn’t mess with, wait a cursory eight minutes and then return to the business of decorating the car park. This is brilliant! Will there be a ruckus though, I wonder? Who would you back? Probably the petrolheads. They’re Scandinavian and there are about twenty of them. The cops looked like they were all talk and no trousers. Having said that, when they return shortly afterwards and repeat their shark routine, it proves sufficient to put an end to the burnout competition and everybody retires inside to watch the arm-wrestling. 

There’s always something going on at Speedway. Gotta love the place… 

SUNDAY 1 FEBRUARY, 11.30pm (Cafe Caprice, Cape Town):
We are out clubbing in Cafe Caprice – a place justifiably known as “the jewel in Cape Town’s crown” that represents the centre of the city’s Sunday night social scene. The people in here are ALL beautiful. Big, bronzed Adonises of men and gorgeous, glowing women, pictures of youth and vitality. It’s like actually being in an episode of “The O.C.”. 

Whereas in England we while away God’s day with a back-to-back marathon of Songs Of Praise, The Antiques Roadshow, Last Of The Summer Wine and a toasted crumpet, Sunday is big business in Cape Town. Everybody parties here on a Sunday. We spent the early half of the evening at coastal hangout La Med, where local band Goldfish play a residency to an ample and enthusiastic crowd, week in week out. I mean, I say “local” – actually they are fast becoming one of the country’s hottest acts. Definitely worth a look – imagine Lemon Jelly meets Fatboy Slim. Click here to visit the Goldfish website. 

At La Med we meet Cape Town Tens organiser Ron Rutland, an absolute chap and the man responsible for flying us out to SA. He seems relatively calm on the surface; however, being only five days away from the first ever CT 10s tournament is evidently starting to take its toll on his sanity. There’s a lot riding on this and Ron is the man at the helm…

After a few beers at La Med we hit Caprice, on the advice of the legendary Dan Skinstad (A.K.A. “The Commander”), who seems to be something of a celebrity round these parts. Dan has a natural entourage at Caprice and we join them for a few bevvies to see the week out. Later I learn that, during our time in the club, George ended up in a fairly extended conversation with star cricketer Herschelle Gibbs, a member of the national team. At no point throughout their chat did George have any idea who the guy was. In fact, I believe his closing gambit was “So, tell me – what exactly is it that you do?”. I can’t imagine Herschelle is a man accustomed to being asked that question, what with him being generally considered one of the finest athletes in his country’s history.   

It dawns on me that, for a band who (Tony aside) know very little about sport, we’ve met some top flight sports personalities. Bob Skinstad and Robbie Fleck organise the Cape Town Tens with Ron and both happen to be global sporting legends from their days playing for – and in Bob’s case, captaining – the South African rugby team. Later in the week we will meet more rugby superstars in the guise of former Canadian international Eddie Evans and Italian Number 8 Matt Phillips. A couple of years ago we stayed in the same hotel as the Dutch national football team (in one particularly memorable incident, Tony stood next to Marco Van Basten in a lift and actually used the phrase “Do I know you?”). We have performed for Manchester United and Alex Ferguson, hob-nobbed with Peterborough FC director and all-round sporting hero Barry Fry and now George has failed to recognise one of the world’s most famous cricketers in a club. So all in all we could make a lot of fanatics very jealous, even though as a general rule we don’t know our silly mid-ons from our bogeys.

***

Stay tuned for South Africa Part Two – and find out what happened when we tried playing Frank Sinatra to 30 pissed-up Scandinavian bikers…

Chris Lightyear

South African media praises The Lightyears

Our recent tour to South Africa was one of the highlights of our careers so far. The gigs were superb, the crowds were incredibly receptive and, most importantly, the food blew my mind. 😉

Due to the interest surrounding our release of the song “Johannesburg”, as well as our status as INDY Award winners and our previous international touring adventures worldwide, we attracted quite a bit of press attention whilst we were out there. Follow the links below to read more:

“The Lightyears have crafted a moving indie-pop slow song in Johannesburg…” (read more)
THE ARGUS, CAPE TOWN

“Johannesburg, with it’s strummed acoustic guitars and surprisingly uplifting chorus, appears to be hitting the right notes with locals…” (read more)
iAFRICA.COM

“The real stars of day one, though, are English band The Lightyears, who’ve flown in from London to play the tournament, and blow the marquee apart with a roaring display that sees four encores, and has the police sent to check noise levels dancing in the crowd…” (read more)
RUGBY365.COM

“When The Lightyears hit the stage after Saturday’s rugby and played that first song, I thought the roof of the beer tent was going to fly off! It was without doubt the best party I have ever been to in my life…” (read more)
ROBBIE FLECK, FORMER SA INTERNATIONAL, INTERVIEWED AT CAPETOWNTENS.COM 

“The Lightyears are an internationally-renowned pop-rock band…”
PEOPLE’S POST, CAPE TOWN

“The best band in the world!”
BOBBY SKINSTAD, FORMER SPRINGBOK CAPTAIN

Lightyears hit Cape Town!

The day is finally here – we’ve landed in South Africa! We arrived in Cape Town only a few hours ago but I’m already hooked on the place. It’s just incredible here – stunning weather, breathtaking surroundings and really welcoming people. Danny and I are still a bit groggy from the flight having engaged in something of an alcoholic face-off last night (Danny on JD & Coke, me on London Pride) in front of a film called “The Rocker” which, well, let’s just say you needn’t bother watching. Entertaining enough when you’re 50,000 feet in the air and a bit sozzled but otherwise missable.

Anyhow, we reached SA early this morning and the tour started on a high when we picked up our hire car. We’d booked a bottom-of-the-range 4-seater “Chico” (the kind of car driven around Slough town centre by boys in big trousers who think they’re P Diddy) because it was almost frighteningly cheap – but when we rocked up at Hertz this morning, the guy told us he was out of Chicos and instead was giving us the keys to a brand-new 8-seater Volkswagen Transporter! Our ride had OFFICIALLY been pimped!

Twenty minutes later and we were cruising down the freeway in the blazing sunshine, our new song “Johannesburg” playing on the van’s proper phat sound system. I realise it’s a little conceited to listen to one’s own music but I think in this case we had an excuse!  

Since we arrived we’ve already been booked for a couple more gigs over the coming days and have a meeting this evening with some media dudes who are gonna help us get some press whilst we’re here. The tour is well and truly in motion…

For now though, we’re off to the beach!

Chris Lightyear

“He Ain’t Heavy” – The Story Behind Johannesburg

At the tail end of last year, I wrote a song called “Johannesburg”.

Typically, the songs I write are based on my own life experiences, but this one was an exception. There was a news story on the BBC, last September I think, in which a British correspondent interviewed two brothers – neither of them any older than 15 years old – arriving in Johannesburg after a harrowing journey on foot from Zimbabwe.

Their parents had been murdered by government militia. Left on their own at such a young age, at first they had no idea which way to turn, but soon they heard people talking about Johannesburg. Everybody was saying that if you could find a way to get there, you’d be offered food and shelter. The two boys had nothing – literally, nothing – except the faint glimmer of hope provided by a city they knew not one thing about and had no conceivable way of reaching. So they did the only thing they could – they started walking.

By the time they reached the outskirts of the city and the BBC correspondent interviewed them, they had been walking continuously for many days and had been mugged and beaten on the way. Finding nothing of value on them, the muggers had taken their shoes. Against all odds, however, they had made it – weak, starved and emotionally drained – to the city of Johannesburg. 

Even though this story was obviously a million miles away from anything I’ve ever experienced, and told of hardship I couldn’t hope to understand, something about it struck a chord with me. I guess it reminded me of the inspiration behind the Hollies’ song “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”, which also happens to be one of my favourite songs of all time. Apparently “He Ain’t Heavy…” is based on a religious parable of sorts, in which a priest is walking along a dusty country road and sees two young man advancing towards him in the distance. As they get closer he realises that one man is badly injured and the other is carrying him on his back. Discovering that they have walked many miles in the intense heat without food, water or respite, the priest asks the carrier how he is able to withstand such a heavy burden. The man’s response became the title of that song.

Anyhow, I finished “Johannesburg” and we played it to a few people to test the water. We live with a guy who comes from Cape Town and, when he heard the track, he told us we had to find a way to get out to South Africa and make the song heard. So we did. 

And we leave today.

We’ll let you know how it goes!

Chris Lightyear

ps. you can get a free copy of “Johannesburg” by adding your e-mail address to the box on our homepage.

Download new LYs song “Johannesburg” – for free

Ahead of our upcoming tour to South Africa, we’ve just recorded a new song entitled “Johannesburg” – and it can be yours, right now, for free. 

All you need to do is sign up to The Lightyears mailing list and we’ll give you a copy of the song for nothing. Free music! It’s crazy-bonkers!

You can get your free copy by adding your email address to the box on the right.

You know us, we like to make a fuss when we visit a new country and we’re particularly excited about the South African tour. The serendipity of having just written a new song named after the country’s capital seemed too good to ignore and so we knew we had to get into the studio and lay it down as soon as the trip was confirmed. 

Click here to read my blog about the story behind “Johannesburg”.