It must have been on 29 April or thereabouts and I had decided to see what was happening in town with a friend of mine. Thinking that it was dubstep night, I suggested to my friend that we should go to Kitchener’s Carvery Bar in Braamfontein. We arrived there at around 23h00, only to discover that no, it wasn’t dubstep night, but rather live band night. Not to worry, I thought, it would take a really bad band to ruin Kitchener’s on any night.

The band on stage was all quite short and adorned in what looked like Mooks or d-Rail clothing. Sort of like The Dirty Skirts. They were almost done with their set. Now, I’ve been to quite a few small gigs in my time. The best one, in terms of stage presence that I can remember off the top of my head was probably Die Antwoord at Bassline late last year, and Zebra & Giraffe at Rocking the Gardens (The BLK JKS playing a Halloween set at the Bioscope is my favourite live gig – only because it was inconceivably weird). Generally, South African bands fail to own the stage. Honestly, most of them just stand there, and those that do try to incorporate some form of stagemanship into their shows make it look half-arsed. Or worse, really awkward.

But this band on that night at Kitchener’s rocked. They genuinely looked like they were having mounds of fun and the crowd had no hesitation joining in. Granted, the limited space in Kitchener’s means that bands don’t have to work terribly hard to fill the room with their presence, but this band was good, I thought. I inquired of the man standing next to me as to whom the band were. The Graeme Watkins Project, I was told.

I loved them so much on the night that I bought their album Corridors of the Mind. The ska band Captain Stu was the next act – their CD wasn’t bought.

Here’s the thing about the Graeme Watkins Project. When I listened to Corridors of the Mind in my car the next day, I found that their music went down like a flat Coke. The lyrics of most of the songs appear to have been written by a very lazy eight year old. I’m really surprised that the band thought that they could get away with such simplistic lyrics. And I don’t mean simplistic in the sense of the purity of their ideas, but rather that I found them to be unspeakably childish. I was almost insulted by it all.

But not to be too harsh – it is the band’s debut album after all. And they’re really good on stage (so all that Idols stuff has some use; I see). And I kind of get what the band is driving at with this intellectually weak wordplay of theirs.

It’s a bit like punk rock.

Depending on whom you ask, it was either the Ramones or the Sex Pistols in the mid-1970s who were the vanguard of punk. This new musical movement was a direct response to progressive rock, which had become too precious for the agitating youth of the miserable 70s. The whole idea was anti-establishment – short, sharp and often brutal lyrics accompanied by unpretentious thrash instrumentation. It was rock at its barest form. Whereas prog stood tallest in the pantheon as the highest expression that art rock could fathom, punk sought to limn the furthest excesses of angry youthful exuberance. Prog was (and still is) the creamy, layered operas of Pink Floyd and Genesis. Punk was Johnny Rotten gobbing into the mosh pit and Paul Simonon smashing a priceless bass guitar on stage. The punk crowd didn’t care that their ear drums would be destroyed and their hair mussed by some stranger’s spit at the end of the concert night. It was all about the thrill, the danger and staying up long after the deadline set by dad.

And that’s what I kept in mind when the Graeme Watkins Project thumped in my little car. Their lyrics don’t hold water and their instrumentation is largely derivative. Their debut album can’t be expected to bring in the awards and critical accolades. But none of that mattered that night at Kitchener’s when we were all jumping about to Music Affair.