We’re zombies caught in a generic Netflix series

THE BIG YAWN

We’re zombies caught in a generic Netflix series

What has become, asks HERMAN LATEGAN, of the creative disruptors, rioters and troublemakers, people who would rather overturn the table than sit at it with ostentatious appurtenances?

Image: ANGELA TUCK

Singers and clubs showing the finger

THERE were times when nightlife, the music industry and the art world were wild and weird. People took risks and broke away from the mainstream.

Today, The Guardian reports, a wild night out in London is a concert by Taylor Swift (or Ed Sheeran), which will cost you £180 (about R4,100), followed by a good night's sleep. Clubs and alternative venues are going out of business and underground creative places are shutting down.

The days of techno, goth, garage and industrial music are long gone. Nobody under 30 knows who, say, David Bowie was, nor cares. Someone once told me: “Today you're the cock on the catwalk, tomorrow you're a feather duster."

Hedonism, eccentricity and the bohemian are disappearing. In London alone, about 1,200 late-night venues have closed recently. Gone are the days of an experimental yet popular small rock band performing in a dive.

People prefer big stages where they can see their stars dancing, singing and laughing like holograms. Then off to bed without even a tot, alone with your mobile looking on apps for love, which you never find. We live in an emotionless utopia.

A recent headline in The Standard: “Rise in nightclub closures makes a mockery of ‘24-hour London' claims." In my 30s I used to visit London and stay with friends. (The rand was still strong and my friends were rich.)


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The evenings started early: we first went to see a fringe production at a theatre in Soho. Then out for a meal in a small backstreet restaurant where the menu changed every night and the customers were rowdy and rude.

From there to a bar for a few nibbles, then the clubs, one after the other, sometimes three places, until the sun rose. I remember a ride in a big black taxi past South Africa House on Trafalgar Square where I could see people scurrying to work.

Then we had breakfast — poached eggs, with vodka and tomato juice to wash it down. Bedtime was about 10am.

A friend in the music industry in New York tells me that he and his wife (a celebrity in musicals on Broadway) had to pack their bags and move to New Jersey after Covid-19. Most young creative people, such as chefs, artists, actors and musicians, had to chaila.

Overpriced and lacking sparkle

Vice writes that New York is indeed the city that never sleeps — because most people lie awake wondering how they are going to repay their bank loans. The place is now mostly packed with soulless business people in black suits and computer programmers with the personalities of cadavers in the Salt River morgue.

I remember a visit to New York in the days when the Limelight nightclub still existed. It was in a church building and the DJ played his music from the pulpit. The confession booths were full of lovers celebrating their sins.

Limelight in New York was wild and a joy. There was nothing meek about the place.
Limelight in New York was wild and a joy. There was nothing meek about the place.

A trapeze artist dressed as Lucifer performed tricks from the roof of the church. Sometimes the church bells rang.

As many as 15,000 people a night pitched up to dance here. One of the owners reportedly later killed a drug dealer, left him in his bathtub and sprayed him with Calvin Klein CK1 perfume to mask the stench of the decomposing corpse. The club was closed and a documentary film was made about it, so famous and infamous was the place.

In the years when Studio 54 still existed, Bianca Jagger appeared on the dance floor on a white horse. Nina Hagen, with her punk voice and ferocious looks, sang about the mean city of New York and captured the atmosphere perfectly.

Bianca Jagger celebrates her birthday on a white horse in Studio 54 in New York.
Bianca Jagger celebrates her birthday on a white horse in Studio 54 in New York.

Yoko Ono was ahead of her time with music that people didn't understand but that made cognoscenti (the well-informed) and underworld surrealists take notice.

Avant-garde artist Yoko Ono has always been an easy target for the mainstream.
Avant-garde artist Yoko Ono has always been an easy target for the mainstream.

Jan Wolmarans described her style as follows: “Her random ‘shouting' was inspired by the old Japanese Gutai school which promoted dark avant-garde art.

“Her work has never been put in proper perspective and the Western approach to pop music is definitely superficial and fleeting."

Read in The Guardian why Ono does not deserve the hate projected on her. Is there anyone like her today?

One can only say that in these vanilla times we live in, Klaus Nomi will not be appreciated either, let alone the talented Laurie Anderson.

At one point in Cape Town there were more than 15 clubs (that I knew of). Supermodels Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell were regulars at Club 55 in Green Point. Also the fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier.

Nobody went home before 6am. These days, a Sunday soirée in a nursery shop in Kenilworth with cake and tea is among the most exciting events.

Artists and their stunts

Salvador Dalí was not only famous as an artist, his whole life was like a Dadaist dream bubble. He was a chef and host fit for royals, and his meals and food were extraordinary.

Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí had jumping frogs, monkeys and grasshoppers at his dinners – as guests.
Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí had jumping frogs, monkeys and grasshoppers at his dinners – as guests.

His phone was shaped like a lobster. He loved cauliflower and once packed a 500kg specimen into his Rolls Royce.

Things like “crushed avocado" and “artisanal coffee" would definitely not be served. For dinner there was fish in satin slippers.

He waited on frogs on silver trays as his guests and they began to jump around when he lifted the domes. In his cookbook, Les Diners de Gala, there is a whole chapter on succulent garden snails and croaking frogs.

His guests raved about his lamb brains, ground almonds and tequila, all served on rye bread. He made a “tree" of lobster and bacon-wrapped eel stuffed into a fish.

Baked predator fish with people's dentures in their mouths were displayed on the tables. He and his wife Gala welcomed animals and pet monkeys often ran around at the meals. Also a giant grasshopper, an anteater and a panther named Babou — not your usual dinner guests.

His wife's full name was Helena Deluvina Diakonoff and they got married after she told him: “I want you to kill me."

Dalí had an obsession with a steep staircase down which he wanted to throw himself. Read about his preoccupation with death and cooking here.

Martin Magner is a South African in New York who is trying to shake up the status quo in fashion, photography, art and music.
Martin Magner is a South African in New York who is trying to shake up the status quo in fashion, photography, art and music.

He once asked the art critic Brian Sewell to masturbate in the foetal position in front of a statue of Christ. Again the question: is there still a Salvador Dalí today?

Did he take his groupies for a ride? Who cares? It is better than a monotonous life.

Speaking of food, a friend of mine, the artist Veronique Malherbe, years ago held an exhibition of her own chocolate at a gallery in Cape Town.

Cape Town artist Veronique Malherbe used her own breast milk to make chocolate.
Cape Town artist Veronique Malherbe used her own breast milk to make chocolate.

She had just given birth and made the chocolate from her breast milk, calling it Breastlay. The opening night was a raucous affair where the BBC and other TV channels came to film her treats and snacks.

Another artist who tries to subvert and overturn the everyday is Steven Cohen. Unfortunately, his performance art was not particularly well received here, but in France, where he has lived for some time, he is revered.

However, 10 years ago, a performance there got him into trouble. The Guardian's headline was: “Artist guilty of exhibitionism after dancing with cockerel tied to his penis."

The reporter wrote: “Wearing platform shoes and an outlandish costume including feathers on his fingers and a headdress made of a stuffed pheasant, he danced for 10 minutes with his penis attached to the rooster, before police intervened."

Here he talks about it.

South African artist Steven Cohen got into trouble in Paris after he danced for 10 minutes with a cock attached to his penis.
South African artist Steven Cohen got into trouble in Paris after he danced for 10 minutes with a cock attached to his penis.

Does it all sound too outrageous? Yes and no, but at least it wasn't boring and bland. Come back madness, all is forgiven.

♦ VWB ♦


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