Illegal Gathering

https://illegalgathering.bandcamp.com

Illegal GatheringIn 6 weeks,during the Cape Town summer of 1985, Illegal Gathering wrote most of these songs, rehearsed them, performed them, recorded them (onto a TEAC 4track Portastudio) and narrowly escaped arrest for smoking zol at the Glass Theatre.The Voice of Nooit was a by product of this gathering. It was adapted from a poem originally submitted to the Palladium fanzine by JamesVoice of Nooit, released 25 July 20131. Johnny Cool2. Addicted To You3. Take Me Away4. The Voice Of Nooit5. Holiday Roundabout6. Windup Lollipop7. Rock & Roll8. Hou My Vas Korporaal9. Willie Smit10. Button Your Lip11. Changing My World12. National HeroOriginally released as the 'Voice of Nooit' cassette back to back with Corporal PunishmentIn 6 weeks, during the Cape Town summer of 1985, Illegal Gathering wrote most of these songs, rehearsed them, performed them, recorded them (onto a TEAC 4track Portastudio) and narrowly escaped arrest for smoking zol at the Glass Theatre.The 'Voice of Nooit' was a by-product of this gathering. It was adapted from a poem originally submitted to the Palladium fanzine by James Phillips.________________________________________Illegal Gathering wasKarl Helgard - guitar/vocalsJames Phillips - guitar and vocalsDavid Ledbetter - bass / guitar / vocalsWayne Raath- drumsall songs were written by James and /or CarlIN LOVING MEMORY OF HENDRIX PET RUSGOTTHART JANSEN (1957 - 1982)______________________________________________________October 1981. Three o’clock in the morning and there's some bastard in the street strolling past my house playing rock ’n roll on an acoustic guitar with inflammatory disregard for everything that normally happens at three o’ clock in the morning. But I can hear there’s something special in the music out there. I find myself shrugging off the embrace of Morpheus and before the next quiet tic of my alarm clock; I’m at the front door. It’s opening and outside on the stoep is my old pal, James Phillips. I’d thought that after the nuclear disarmament of Corporal Punishment, I’d never see him again. But there he is, very early on a damp Cape Town morning, raindrops slipping off his Yamaha nylon string guitar, a soggy joint clamped between his lips. Smiling!“Want a hit?” Of course I want a hit. I know James. He knows me, we both want a hit, but neither of us will ever have one. And, we haven’t really spoken since I stupidly took the few recordings Corporal Punishment had produced to those idiot record company exec types in Johannesburg and tried to interest them in the stuff. I don’t know what I was thinking. Corporal Punishment didn’t so much as break up as disintegrate. James went to Grahamstown, I fled to Cape Town, Herbie Parkin and Henry Jantzen stayed in Springs and Mark Bennett … well, someone dressed in a Taliban turban at the Salt Rock Country Club Christmas ball spilled beer all over Mark’s keyboard. The cost of the repairs ended Mark’s career as the Corporal Punishment keyboard player. Later, Herbie emigrated to Sweden and Henry managed to get himself killed in a mining incident. So things were a little splintered. But here’s James in my lounge now and one ‘ting turns to another and three o’ clock turns to four o’ clock and five o’ clock goes, etc. Suddenly its morning, I’m feeling ill and I have to phone the shipping company I’m working for and tell them so. They’re sweet and rusting like their ships, so they tell me to come back to work when I’m feeling better which makes me feel better already. So, feeling better, James and I decide on a trip to the local purveyor of fine whisky – six bucks a bottle - and only one per customer.We’re out of our trees! We’re smashed like cars at the Goodwood drag strip! We find ourselves at the Grand Parade. James buys a “J&B Met” style fashionista hat from a Chinese stall and, realising our lack of the wherewithal, we head off to Gympie Street to see what we can score. Gympie Street is one thing on a Friday night, but it’s totally another jol on a clear crystallised Friday morning. When this guy who’s got POES tattooed on his forehead scrapes himself over to my Combi and tells James that he likes the hat, we hand it over without an argument. We score. We run for home. We smoke. Life’s looking good. We take turns sharing our new songs. I show him mine and he shows me his. I suggest we start a band and play a gig at the weekend. A light flashes in his eyes. I know temptation when I see it! ‘The Illegal Gathering’ is gazetted. All we need is a couple more people and we’ll be constitutionally declared undesirable! I get hold of my friends. Brett Murray, a part time bass guitarist who, years later is to become the Standard Bank young artist of the year - though not for his bass playing, thank God - and Brian Rath, a drummer, world renown for his prodigious experimentation with mood altering substances, are keen. We set up some practice time but for the life of me I can’t remember any of those rehearsals. We must have had one or two because six days later, we play an utterly uproarious gig at ‘The 1886’. Thirty-six hours later James is thumbs-out back on the road to Grahamstown and I’m behind my desk tapping a desultory rhythm on my adding machine at Co-Op Shipping. But the seeds were sown, and even though we both knew this wasn’t going to be a long-term thing, we decided to give it another go later that year. December and James Phillips arrived simultaneously in Cape Town. The only problem was that Brian Rath and Brett Murray had had enough. The fame was too much for them, I supposeAs it happened, one of our old Springs chinas was in town. James was a bit skeptical when I suggested we phone Dave ‘Mr Jazz’ Ledbetter. But when Dave agreed to eschew soloing of any sort and play nothing but the bass guitar, there was no dispute. I can’t remember if we found Wayne Raath (no relation to Brian) or he found us, but he somehow became our drummer.And we found ourselves a practice room somewhere in the middle of memory lapse and started rehearsals. The Argus agreed to do an interview and a photo session and our publicity machine sprang into action. John Yeld was the photographer and he took the one and only picture of ’The Illegal Gathering’. The band lasted for six weeks and played about the same amount of gigs. Venues like The 1886, Scratch, The Pepper Street Theatre, The Space and The Roundhouse in Kommetjie spring to mind, but for the life of me apart from the odd arrangements of songs, everything about these gigs escapes me. In the new year we went in to a studio to record what we had written. A pal of mine had somehow talked his way in to running the place. He had no idea about sound recording, but he was a wide boy and never let understanding cloud his vision. The studio was located in the Broadway building in the Foreshore, two floors below what was the American Embassy. It was a very bemused bunch of security guards who watched us traipsing in on that first day with our instruments and bottles of wine.The studio was a pretty cool place with about a 100 sq metre live area and a separate isolated control room about a quarter that size. The heart of the studio was a 16 track mixing desk, which only had two outputs. Whoever had been running the place before us had removed the actual tape machine but that wasn’t a problem because I had a ‘Portastudio’, a four track cassette recorder that we plugged the desk’s two outputs into. We had no plans to go commercial with our rocking horse shit so this was good enough for us. The previous tenants had left their collection of sound effects records. So, to start off, we decided to do a couple of skits, mainly because we needed to learn how to operate the bits and pieces of equipment, but also because we were fucking stoned at the time and we thought it was all very funny.I’d written three bits, one a rip off of a Kelly Tyres advert – Kelly Tyres Are Tough! Remember that? Then there was a piece on the standoff between PW Botha and Andries Treurnicht in the race for supremacy in the Transvaal, and the Willie Smit thing. But we decided

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