Cape Town – A cult jazz-rock band from the Cape Flats, Pacific Express, who defied apartheid, are to be honoured at the weekend.
Initially known as The Pacifics, from the coloured community, they were groundbreakers in both the musical and political fields and performed from the early 1970s until 1980.
Swingers in Wetton is hosting a tribute to the band on Sunday.
On several occasions the group fell foul of apartheid laws and discrimination by the state broadcaster, the SABC.
They were asked to leave the stage of an international tour by Australian act John Paul Young because the law forbade racially mixed performers on the same stage.
The promoters, band manager Paddy Lee-Thorp and the members refused to bow to the warnings from the police, who in the end backed down despite the law, partly because the incident made the Australian newspapers.
Somewhat ironically they scored their biggest success with a soul ballad penned by Chris Schilder and sung by the group's lead vocalist, Zayn Adams, called Give a Little Love, which gave them a countrywide fan base outside their real love and mission as jazz-rockers.
The video clip of their hit song was removed from the TV airwaves after the SABC realised that the group was “local”, and of mixed race, which was against the rules for so-called local artists in public performance at the time.
The founder members included Paul Abrahams (bass), Jack Momple (drums) and Issy Ariefdien (guitar). Others were Schilder, Adams, Vic Higgins, and later Jonathan Butler and Tony Cedras. The brass section included Robbie Jansen, Basil Coetzee, Stompie Manana and Barney Rachabane.
After several years' success at the Sherwood Lounge in Manenberg the group split, with Schilder and Ariefdien forming a new band and taking over the Sherwood gig.
The remaining members continued the band, now with Butler and Cedras, and were resident at the Goldfinger Lounge in Athlone. It was this new line-up that recorded their third LP.
Their second LP was pirated extensively in Ghana and Nigeria, where it was legally available though not properly commercially distributed in many of the stores in the region.
The name of the group was well known in the region, based on the piracy. The album On Time was released in France and later in Japan in the 1970s.
Many years later, around 2000, two CDs under the titles Pacific Express Anthology Part 1 and Part 2 were issued from tapes restored from mono and stereo backup 1/4-inch masters of the group’s recordings. Some tracks could sadly not be restored, so the CDs are not a complete anthology.
In 2017 their debut release, Black Fire, was reissued as a limited-edition collector's vinyl LP. The group’s management also announced plans to re-issue the second album on vinyl in the same year.
The group recorded three albums (Black Fire, On Time and Expressions) and a compilation LP, initially released by EMI South Africa on music cassette and LP, and the subsequently issued CDs were on Mountain Records.
Swingers is at 1 Wetwyn Road in Wetton, 0217622443. Doors open at 7pm. For reservations contact Kevin: 0832365165 or Linda: 0795160998.