Jiving and Dying: The Radio Rats Story (CD + DVD)

18 Track CD + Documentary DVD

More than forty years ago, in late-1970s South Africa, there was a song on the radio about a spaceman called ZX Dan. It was by a noisy little band from Springs, near Johannesburg. That song and hundreds more songwriter Jonathan Handley has penned since then remain an important, if sometimes overlooked, part of South Africas musical landscape. The Radio Rats were to influence one fellow resident of Springs, James Phillips (aka Bernoldus Niemand) to form a band and to write songs. It was Phillips who went on to initiate the alternative Afrikaans music scene of the mid-80s, the Voëlvry movement and, indirectly perhaps, the Oppikoppi music festival where a stage still bears his name. Jonathan Handley remains one of the unsung heroes of South African music, a writer who continues to record and archive music relentlessly. His sharply observed characters form the basis for most of his songs and he's funny, he's witty and he's dedicated. He's disarmingly self-deprecating too. Twenty-five years in the making, this film introduces the music of Radio Rats and the words of Jonathan Handley in an attempt to afford them the place they deserve in the history of independent rock n roll in South Africa.

NOT ON LABEL / SELF-RELEASED / Radium Wreckords,

Very good condition

B69