Joubert Malherbe
GIVEN the current situation, I don’t quite know why the song I thought of in the small hours the other night was one by The Who.
With 2021 still in its infancy, maybe it’s not surprising that I recalled a song from Tommy, entitled Got A Feeling ’21 Is Gonna Be A Good Year. Tommy was a so-called “rock opera”, a la Jesus Christ Superstar, and was the handiwork of Who guitarist, Pete Townshend, which was later turned into a film with a stellar cast.
Tommy has a certain special place in my heart as it was one of several albums which we often played during the days of doing compulsory national service, way back in the mists of time.
Another one was the original Woodstock album and, man, the anti-war ethos of that era was what helped get me through those grim days. I completely identified with Richie Haven as he belted out the lyrics of Freedom – be-sandalled foot and all.
Once I had completed my nine months – six of which were in Walvis Bay in Namibia – we had a three-day, or so, train journey back home. I was picked up by a mate at Joburg Railway Station.
One the way to Pretoria, the guy had Tommy playing on his eight-track (remember them?) and the one song which gained special meaning that day was called I’m Free, an uplifting, pretty strident song on which vocalist Roger Daltrey is in full flow. It’s also a pretty pivotal moment in the movie, which stars Daltrey in the title role.
“Yes,” I thought to myself, as Daltrey triumphantly sang the words “I’m free… and I’m waiting for you to follow me”. That, and the line “… and freedom tastes of reality”, became a bit of a credo; it’s one that remains to this day.
Well, to get back to my small hour musings, one can only hope that ’21 (the current one, that is) is indeed going to be a good year, but one has to say that the omens, so far anyway, haven’t been that great.
That front-page report this week about the dire situation at the Pretoria Academic Hospital where people smitten by the coronavirus were lying on beds in the car park was sobering stuff indeed.
I think everyone owes a substantial debt of gratitude to our gallant doctors, nurses and other health workers who have been pulling out all the stops fighting to save lives.
It seems some diehards still don’t regard the pandemic as something which has any bearing on them. A couple of weeks ago, my eldest son, Gabriel, got punched on the nose by this guy he reprimanded for not wearing a mask in a pub full of other youngsters.
What really got his goat was that the other fellow uttered a racial expletive, which prompted a strong rebuke from Gabriel resulting in the fisticuffs.
It is my fervent hope that what this geezer had to say about the prevalence – or non-prevalence as far as he was concerned – of the dreaded virus isn’t common currency around these parts.
To his credit, President Cyril Ramaphosa has been playing a major part in promoting the idea of getting immunised. It is, nonetheless, a shame that the government dragged its feet in the early stages of the pandemic.
Still, happily we will be getting some super-duper vaccines, from India and China, apparently. There was some eerie footage which was shot in Wuhan, where the virus originated, on TV the other night.
So yeah, I guess we’ll have to do our bit to help ensure that 2021 does indeed turn out to be, in Mr Townshend’s words, a good year.
Or, as the other Who song has it; “See me/Feel me…”, indeed.
* RIP musician John Oakley-Smith, who was murdered in Zimbabwe this week. Well-known around the SA folk circuit, I was privileged to see him perform several times, mainly at Wits University, in the 1970s.
Thanks for the beautiful music you bequeathed to the world, John. Go well.