Where exactly do you come from?

Jane: Collectively, we come from all over South Africa. But at the moment we live in Johannesburg, which is one of the biggest cities the.

Jon: On a small island called Africa… no, it’s not small at all (laughter)

Jane: It’s a point of contention. Jo-burg is a very difficult and interesting place to live in.

Jon: The people in the band have a love-hate relationship with Johannesburg.

Jane: Andrew loves it; he thinks it’s a very cosmopolitan, laxative energetic and vibrant city in South Africa, in terms of mixture of races. People go there if they want to further their careers. That’s the only place in South Africa really where stuff gets done.

Jon: It’s the New York of Africa. It’s the real South Africa. South Africa is so diverse. Cape Town still is very old school and very white, whereas Jo-burg is very mixed. The new businesses are all happening there. But living there, you also pay the price of living there. I think it’s a very high price but most of the people who live there are willing it to pay this price. That’s the secret about it.


In what way is it dangerous to live in Johannesburg?

Jon: There are electric fences!

Jane: The danger is very real. You don’t need to meet a certain person; it doesn’t have to be someone who holds you up at gunpoint. Either you are lucky and your car is just stolen, or everything in your house is cleared out. If you are not lucky, well, there are guns and that’s why people get shot and killed very easily.

Jon: We are not trying to tell kind of like cruel stories. We live there. And the more we travel the rest of the world; it highlights what has happened to me. I’m from Cape Town originally.

Jane: People always ask us about crime. Crime is a very serious thing, but there are also a lot of wonderful things.

Jon: Let’s try to do Jo-burg. It’s a really difficult place to live. The crime there is out of control in the sense that the people, who commit the crimes, and this what makes it very difficult, have no regard for life. It’s whatever it is; poverty or part of it is race-related hatred. But when you get held up or if you get robbed, you don’t know what’s gonna happen. There are no rules. You can close your eyes, hand over your wallet and your car keys and you still can die or – anything. It sounds terrible… …it’s a completely built up urban, business driving, metropolitan city where you live and function. What's unique about it? It isn’t chaos. It's a normal city and it has this massive imbalance.  You come there and for the first two weeks you are scared out of your wits because of what everyone’s saying and because of where you’re going and what’s happening. After that, you put a little box around your heart, you stick it there and you just go on with life and you deal with it. It’s just a part of… and there are no rules. There would be enough police; there is plenty of everything…

Jane: On the surface the thing looks good. It’s just if you are at the wrong place at the wrong time, more then everywhere in the world. You wouldn’t go anywhere and not lock your doors like…

Jon: The people in Jo-Burg love it with a passion. It’s their favourite city in the world. They want to live there. It’s also unfair to talk to us, to people who haven’t had the greatest experiences in terms of living there, but the other guys would swear about it. They would say: Shut up and don’t worry about it… but it does happen to anybody you know, to friends, your family, they have either been robbed or gun-pointed or had something horrific happened to them.

When I first moved to Jo-Burg, people told me stories, everyone knows someone who’s been shot or at least hold a gunpoint and we didn’t believe it, but it’s true!

Did anything really bad ever happen to you?  8:12

Jon: We all had experiences. We’ve been held at gunpoint where they shot the owner of the shop. Her four-year-old son was sleeping in front of the shop!


And still the whole music business is going on in Johannesburg?

Jon: Cooking! Totally cooking! If you wanna start a business, if you wanna start a career, it’s all happening in Jo-burg. But that’s why the criminals are there as well. That’s where all the money is. Cape Town is where the rich businessmen retire. It’s like a holiday resort in a way. It’s difficult to run a business there. I tried that, years ago. It was very hard because it’s very exhausting.


I have heard that there are a lot of really rich black people out there now, driving in huge SUV cars, not taking care of their poor ‘brothers’. Is it really like that?

Jon/Jane: That’s everybody…

Jane: It’s everywhere. The thing is that the extremes are so huge. You have people who have so much money and then you go to townships where people have nothing! Because it’s so extreme, that makes it so volatile.

Jon: That’s where the embryo of the crime begins. People have nothing, so they go to the white suburbs and work at a white person’s house, or what seems like a white person’s house, during the day. The extremes are radical. That’s also why so many people are doing such amazing things, trying to help people. It’s a melting pot of interesting things and people, an interesting place to live.


So the major reason why you moved to Jo-Burg was your career?

Jane: That’s correct.

Jon: The record company said, if you want to start a career, come to Jo-Burg.

Jane: So we just did it. We didn’t even think about it.

Jon: The rest of the band is from Jo-Burg. We came in a car and found the rest of the band there.


What has changed in your lives since you've been living live there?

Jon: So much!

Jane: Everything has changed, I suppose!

When did the two of you start with music?

Jane: Jon and I knew each other from university days. And then we sort of just played in and out.

Jon: We had a half-hearted band back then at university…

Jane: …at Rose University in Grahamstown. It’s a small student town in the middle of nowhere in South Africa. Then one summer we decided to go up to Jo-Burg for some demos. We had a long and nice relationship with the head of BMG South Africa. So we went up where we had been a couple of times before and we recorded a couple of songs, and then the point came when Whinny said to us, if you want to take it seriously, you have to move to Jo-Burg…

Jon: … and we literally got in the car and went there. That was 2½ years ago, maybe a little bit longer… At the beginning it was just a relationship between us and BMG. What we would do: every Tuesday we went to BMG and showed them the new songs we had written. When we had enough songs we started looking for a band. Two members of the band, Marc and Nathan, were in my favourite South African band back in the 90s. I thought they were gonna be the biggest band in the world. When we were looking for a band, total long shot after that, I called up Nathan and asked him if he was interested and he said OK.

Jane: What do you mean? He totally loved it! He moved from Scotland back to Jo-Burg!

Jon: Yeah! And then the drummer was the friend of a friend. He had been in a successful band, but he hadn’t played the drums for ten years. And he was very reluctant… as soon as he got into the music he never looked back. Now he is probably the most dedicated member in the band.


May I ask how old you are?

Jon: How old are you, Jane?

Jane: 27

Jon: I’m 29, then it goes up from 33, 33 and then 36. The oldest is the guitar player. And he’s been in bands since he was 17, he’s just rolled from band to band.


In Germany we hardly hear about South African pop music. We hear a lot about world music artists. How come?

Jane: That’s what we get all the time!


What is the pop and rock music scene like there?

Jon: It’s a thriving music scene in many places and there is so much happening. We have so many music scenes and the interesting part of it is when we collaborate – something that we have done before. Our last single we did with the legendary township jazz band, who basically invented township jazz, the people that inspired Johnny Clegg to even be a musician. They're old grannies now but they still perform. We've done many collaborations with world music people… the reason you haven’t heard of the rock and pop scene is because it’s such a fractured market, with so many radio stations, different types of music. And also the rock market is only a small piece of the pie. You don’t sell enough albums to be able to afford to come to the rest of the world, unless you belong to the top. There are only a handful of bands who are able to do these tours.


But you have been nominated for prizes in South Africa. Wasn’t this the key to come to Europe and to other countries?

Jane: I think the more you do it, the more you realize that’s just one small part of it. Like winning that award was amazing for us in South Africa. But it’s really hard to come over here. It takes a lot of money; it’s not just about the music. We worked for months trying to get sponsorships to come over here. And even now we are here, it’s very difficult for us because we have to start building up contacts from nowhere. Just to find people you can rely on is really hard. You have to rely on people who you think might know the industry here, but you don’t know.

Jon: South Africa is not on the touring map. Nobody comes to South Africa. The touring bands from Europe and the US are on a certain touring circuit and South Africa isn't on it. So those popular bands from here never come to South Africa and South African bands struggle to get onto the tour circuit. So the infrastructure is very limited.

Jane: Either that or we don’t know the right people.

Jon: The only bands that come to South Africa are major stars like Bon Jovi, and most of them are old school. Def Leopard’s come.

Jane: Yeah man, you’ve really back in the time! There are many more! Pink was there, the Black Eyed Peas, Robbie Williams…

Jon: But it’s only the A-A-game pop stars who come and they don’t bring their whole show, they bring a stripped down version of it. They come because they wanna see South Africa, not because it’s a market that’s viable.


Did you ever think of moving to Europe?

Jane: Absolutely!

Jon: The only South African bands who have ever actually really made it into the realms of the pop rock market are bands that have emigrated. It’s very difficult for us because we try not to emigrate.
I was talking to Chris Letcher the other day. He lives in London and seems to be doing very well, maybe also because of his film music?

Jon: I think Chris didn’t have a choice. He's obviously a musical genius, I think. He couldn’t sell ten albums in South Africa. He was the most respected artist in South Africa and couldn’t sell anything. Really! I listen to his albums and it blows me away!


So what is on the radio then in South Africa? What do people listen to?

Jane: We should talk about the structures of the music industry then. Can we do this?

Jon: Go ahead!

Jane: The thing is, when you are a young band like us, no record company of the few ones that are there, are willing to take a chance on a South African band.

Jon: Ok, be more careful, on a white, English-speaking rock band. That’s a small market.

Jane: The genres of music that sell in South Africa are Kwaito, which is sort of like African hip hop, jazz, gospel, and the African market is huge, African singers do very well. But the industry would never put money into a band like this. The reason why is, as you said, there is only a small number of bands that do very well. It’s so hard. We had to finance ourselves, the album and the tour. That’s why it’s such a huge thing, because you have to generate so much money to actually get going.

Jon: There are a handful of South African rock bands who have been around for eight or ten years. But we are a new generation of rock band. The old ones have a big track record and their record company supports them. For example, The Nude Girls, Watershed, who made the song “Indigo Girl”. There's no infrastructure, which is why you have to be very aggressive if you want to make it with your band. We're probably more of an adventure than a band (laughing)


Where did you find the courage to come to Europe?

Jon: We really believe in what we're doing and in our music. And we knew there are two sides to it. We started the band and wanted to do it seriously and make it as a band or we're not gonna bother even trying. From the first day on, we had a design on international market, and from there we realized that the market in South Africa is limited. So we had to start to make it. So at the beginning of 2007 the first thing we said was that we’re touring this year. This is our second international tour…

Jane: Our album is gonna be released in 31 countries in Europe, then we're planning on Japan early next year.

Jon: It’s a very large output. Because we don’t really have what you would call record company support. The way that we’re working is all investment for us. We're going to Japan not because our record company is sending us. We're going to Japan, because there is a market and we looked at it as a market… we found the money to get us there. It’s all output, this tour we are paying for. The next tour will pay for it.

Do you manage the band yourself?

Jon: We have a management and we sort of tried to build the right structures around us. This is a very headstrong band and everything comes from within.

Jane: You have to be very actively involved otherwise…

Jon: That’s what Jane and I said earlier, what we found is, our base is in South Africa, from where we book a tour through all the avenues we have; through our management company, through the people here. We're on the other side of the universe. We're not even on earth in terms of the music market, but we’ll get here: “Welcome back to Earth”! That’s part of the title, it really is! But there are many reasons why we called the album that….  23:00
It’s an interesting game, the music industry coming from where we are coming from. But it does make us more determined… it took us so much to get here, to play this gig, when you see us, you’ll see everything, and we bare the soul of the band. Whereas, I think it’s very easy for a band touring Europe to take it for granted. 24:00


Tell me more about the artwork of this album!

Jane: It’s one of the titles I was sitting on the fridge for.

Jon: I really think it came from what we went through to create that album. We were originally offered this deal by BMG. But when the merger happened between Sony and BMG, it happened right at the time when we were meant to record. We had to let the deal go because they said we can’t help you at the moment. That was fallowed by private investors, who guaranteed us the money for our album, and then pulled out at the very last moment for personal reasons. Plus we had a producer who we’d settled on and started doing pre-production with. At the time we were meant to record our album, the biggest-selling rock artist in South Africa said to him, we want to record our album with you. We were completely unknown still; we just got kind of swept under the rug. We had to find another producer and we eventually went into the studio with no money. We had the top producer and the top studio but we weren’t sure how we were gonna pay for it. But we just decided if we don’t do it, it’s never gonna happen. I never forget, when we first went into that studio we were in tears because we’d gone through so much to get to that point and we were finally in that studio to record that album. It was massively an emotional thing for us. So for me, a lot of that title comes from the fact that we went to the end of the world and back, just to create that CD. 29:00

What are the songs on the album about? What is “A.I.” about?

Jon: I always feel emotional when I sing that song, “A.I.”, because actually it’s a song about the South African music industry and struggling to get through that stuff. It’s about just getting kicked in the teeth and getting up and carrying on.

Jane: The album is a mixture. There are songs about love and friendship and all of that. And then we, we are not a political band but we are not immune to the world that we live in, so “All Of The World” and “Get In The Ring” are politically inspired songs.

Jon: We're singing about what’s happening around us …

Jane: … but we also love songs like “Tracy”, which is a silly song. That’s what you take out of punk rock and that’s what it was inspired by…

Jon: “Get In The Ring” is all about Zimbabwe and its political situation. It’s so hectic, it really is and it gets worse and it’s very close to us. We have 5,000 refugees a day coming through the border to South Africa. Something that’s in your face a lot, something that is on the news all the time, and you know people from Zimbabwe and you’re meeting people from there…


So it seems like you are a political band then?!

Jon: You know what the difference is; a political band has a political standpoint!


Are you proud to be from South Africa?

Jon: Definitely!

Jane: I feel kind of frustrated because South Africa is our home and we love it. But for me it’s a conscious choice of putting my life in danger. When you start building on things and looking to the future… – I’d say we’re deeply patient and we love our country but it would be interesting if you asked Nathan the same question, because he is starting his family…

Nathan: My opinion on the country? Well, I was born there and it’s the place I will always love and have an affinity for. The situation, which I suppose is the question… what’s it about, …


So do you tell your audience that you come from South Africa?

Jon: Absolutely! Especially when I sing the son “Get In The Ring” because it needs some explanation. And all the interviews that we’ve done in Germany are probably more about the situation and politics in South Africa than about our music.

Nathan: We don’t have any political solutions. From that perspective we are not a political band, like we’ve got ideas, like we can change things. But what we do is, we feel the emotion because of that love and anger and react through music and in music, I suppose. (…)

Angie Black