Tony Mochama And Robert Gicheru
26 October 2007
"Summer has come and gone, the innocent can never last, wake me up, when September ends!" -The rockers, Green Day.
DJ Edu, who left for the UK in the year 2000 after winning Vybestar Hotel's deejaying competition, was open-mouthed, jaw agape, on his DJ's loft at the Carnivore last Saturday at the Heineken-sponsored 'Rocktoberfest.'
"I have never seen anything like this in my life, outside of a rock concert," he confessed, literally rubbing his eyes in disbelief.
"Not even in the UK?" I prodded, amused.
"Not even in the UK," DJ Edu said emphatically.
DJ Edu on the wheels of steel, Fret Wire band spices the night as rockers club the night away
"Man, I didn't know Kenyans can rock like this," he said, looking at the mass of heaving, sweating, shouting, ecstatic twenty-somethings who were grooving, gyrating, head-banging on the dance floor, stamping their feet and playing imaginary guitars ('air-guitar,' as the art of 'playing' invisible guitars is called, now even has an international talent competition show in the USA, complete with cash and trophies).
When DJ Edu left Kenya for the UK in the year 2000, the few rockers on the scene still thought of rock as a 1995-1999 thing, the same way house music was a 1988-1991 phenomenon before it mysteriously and sadly - like a kidnapped toi - disappeared.
"The Kenyan rockers of 2007 are as up-to-date as their counterparts in the UK," DJ Edu, who has taken akina Wyre, Nonini and Nameless to play the British scene in the past, beams proudly.
But according to him, Kenyan rockers are one step ahead of their UK counterparts. "In Kenya," DJ Edu says, "These kid rockers can actually dance to pure rock the whole night through.
In the UK, clubs usually play a mix of music. But here !"
Edu seems glad that DJ Ben is now the main rock man at Carnivore. "Akina DJ Babs had a 1990s mentality ati you must play a mix of music, even when you have advertised a night as, say, a 'soul night' or a 'rock night.' That's not fair."
On radio, he says the best rock deejay is Capital FM's Deejay Zoom. A good thing too, that he is on The Fuse because Kerry, right now, without the electrifying Esther, gets a little too eclectic in her rock mix and sometimes gets lost into other genres.
In the cool night air of the Carnivore, on a stage where 'the bushes' used to be when rock was young, the Kenyan rock band Fret Wire are taking revellers to the wire with their songs like Down the Road, Crawling For Love, Angels and Is it Safe Outside?
Their Crawling will never come to within an inch of infinity of Linkin' Park's eerily bawling Crawling. Fret Wire's lead-singer Su may look like an angel, one frets, but Fret Wire is a little too safe for a rock group. Calabash may be a cover band (although Hot Rod is hotter) but they certainly know how to liven up an outdoors rock bash.
Capital FM 1997; Linda Holt, Phil Mathews . The likes of Fareed Khimani coming over from New York to fire up this crazy genre so that by the time DJ CK bought the station in 2004, and threatened to stop "this Karen house-wives' music," Pulsers, and the Pulse team rose up in arms to 'save the rock.'
When Elvis Presley stormed the scene
Folks imagine that rock began when Elvis Presley stormed into the scene in 1956, but the first two true rockers were blacks - Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
But in the segregated 1950s, many radio stations would not play their songs (just watch 'Dream-Gals' this weekend to catch the drift)
So that when white boy Elvis with his duck-a** hairdo and blue suede shoes rolled into the scene, the white World of Radio christened him the "first rock star" and handed over the airwaves to his guitar.
That is sort of like Marshall Mathers (Eminem) being declared the "first rap star," with men like 2-Pac and the Notorious BIG's roles totally ignored. Travesty, if not outright tragedy.
So the next time you hear a heavy rocker like Marilyn Manson screeching with passion like a man whose mansion is on fire, and raging against "gods who don't exist," don't just say white folks are nuts.
Back to the sixties, the British Beatles ran with a new branch of rock called "pop rock" and mesmerized the planet.
The Doors, led by singer Jim Morrison described in the Steven Davis biography as a "seer, an adept, a bard and a drunk" opened up the doors to rock as we know it today, although this millennium, rock has become a lot more sanitised (albeit with a few potty-heads like Amy Winehouse, although she isn't really a rocker).
In the 1960s, according to Guitar magazine, rock tours were "primitive and disorganised." The pretty groupies gave you herpes and the clap. The drugs and alcohol turned you into a crazy imbecile.
Not all Blacks had turned the R&B and soul route after Elvis stole the lyrics from their rock boat. In the 1960s, the greatest rock guitarist was Jimi Hendrix, an original rock and roll rebel with an afro and outrageous tricks like burning a guitar live on stage after humping the amplifier. Of course he died young. At 28! But his antics and genius inspired other rocker guitarists, from the great Eric Clapton to the priceless artiste we know as Prince.
In the early 1970s, rock was all about sex and excess, with groups like Led Zepellin taking the lead. From 1975 to 1980, the anarchists of the punk rebel movement ruled and wrecked the rock scene, with groups like Sex Pistols (whose Sid Vicious viciously stabbed his girl to death, then later killed himself in 1979) raging: "God save the Queen, and her Fascist Regime!"
Virgin Records boss rose to fame
It was at this time that music entrepreneur Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Records, and punk rock promoter, rose to fame and fortune. In the 1980s, with Aids on the scene, the "sex and excess" of the 1970s went - and in came the wild long-haired rockers in leather, jeans and boots. Van Halen, Bon Jovi, U2 (whose Bono is now an African aid activist and philanthropist) stomped the stage, with more art than rage.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, a New Rock Order, started by the Stone Temple Pilots, would rule the world for four years.
It was called "grunge" rock - and required the ripped-jeans, anorexic, bony, wasted and nihilistic look. Its anthem was "Smells Like Teen Spirit" but grunge died in the garage that rocker Kurt Cobain shot himself in, when the pain of existence overwhelmed his head.
"And today, I'm so happy, that's because I have kissed God!" Alternative rock, led by the likes of Canadian genius Alanis Morrisette and the bad boys of Britain, Oasis, would in the mid-1990s, ironically bring the champagne back to the rock and rock revolution.
Today, super-bands like Green Day, The Creed, Linkin' Park and Fall-Out Boyz straddle the globe - rock colossi whose gigantic incomes make the kings of crunk look like paupers outside the All Saints' Cathedral. The whole point of rock is wildness.
First, rock isn't meant to relax you and your date. You are meant to go psycho on the dance floor. So, maintain the expression of a serial killer who's catching up with their intended victim the next time you groove to rock.
To the DJs, take that popcorn music you call 'rock' to alley-cat hell. You must play loud stuff as if you were playing to a bunch of deaf devils, so more metal!
For the boys, when dancing, punch the air wildly as if celebrating a Didier Drogba' goal. The girls must writher about as if in excruciating pain. Softness won't do.
The DJs must blow heads off with the speaker music (did I mention that?) so that the guitar chords vibrate in your belly and punch you hard in the tummy like you're going a round with Vladimir Klitschenko, the Ukranian boxing heavy-weight world champion.
Manic dancing like this is called 'moshing,' and you haven't 'moshed' until your stray elbow has whacked someone as you jump up and down like a manic chimp.
Shirt or blouse drenched with sweat
After a good 'mosh-session,' your shirt or blouse ideally ought to be more drenched with sweat (perspiration, for the ladies) than a rain forest in the Amazon. You will not smell so hot (pun) but you will have had exhilarating fun!
Listening to Dolores O'Reardon of The Cranberries crooning - on CD - about "1916" last Saturday at the Carnivore as Kenya's rockers clutched their heads dramatically and moaned: "It's in your head, in your head " I had a sense of dÈj‡ vu. All the way back to 1997, when rock was still new.
Kweli, rock imetoka mbali, Kenya! At 5.30am, Sunday morning, Kenyans are still rocking Carnivore's floor and Ibra and Vincent's security detail who haven't had a damn incident the whole night (rockers are very peaceful people, albeit psychos on the dance floor), start asking folk to leave. They do so, reluctantly.
At 6am, I am with the Capital crew and Dan Odhiambo of Events' Factory who organised the whole 'Rocktoberfest' shebang.
"Next year," he vows, "Rocktoberfest will be held out of town."
"Yeah," I enthuse, "You can take the event to, say, Crayfish Camp."
"And we do a 'Rocktoberfest' weekend," Dan concludes, sipping his Heineken.
Okay, then. Till October '08. Keep on rocking. Until next September ends.
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