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Capital 604 – Chris Prior’s Top Picks!

Chris Prior was one of the original dee jays on Capital radio when it first aired in 1979. He spent the late 1960s and first half of the seventies travelling the world before joining the SABC, initially for a brief spell with the news department and then the English Service where he was with Radio Today for two and a half years as a radio journalist and then he was appointed as editor of Audio Mix round about 1978. And then at the end of ’78 Capital Radio took him on as their specialist music presenter, programmer and he was with them for two years. After a brief period overseas he joined SABC’s Radio 5 at the end of ’81, beginning of ’82 and was with them into the early-mid 1990s. During this time he became known as the ‘rock professor’ for his knowledge of blues and rock music which was reflected in his playlists. Since the mid-1990s he has continued to host specialist rock shows through various outlets and is currently hosting The Rock Professor Show every Friday evening on MC90.3 Plettenberg Bay and Knysna 97.0 FM (also available as a Podcast).

Reflecting on South African music in the 1980s he lamented “the type of material that the record companies had chosen to record and the lack of effort that they put behind musicians of real worth and calibre …the type of crap that they thought the listeners should hear. You know, the kind of music that they were selling, that they actually put a bit of money behind – it was never much – was the sort of Euro-centric disco twaddle that really wasn’t worth anything at all. And that in essence was all that South African music consisted of. Fortunately in the ’70s there was the sort of underground element, and I think in terms of Mike Dickman playing guitar, and Abstract Truth were a very nice band. I mean now they’re horribly dated, but in those days they were jolly interesting and innovative. Julian Laxton and Freedom’s Children and all that stuff. I mean Baxtop: great, great, great! And in the ’80s we had bands like Falling Mirror. I mean there were always bands that were just a little outside of the outside. But what was available as a DJ to play was pure shlock.”

Fortunately Chris Prior has been able to provide us with a grooving playlist of South African music from the late 1970s into the early 1990s which we can enjoy, from the Radio Rats, Finch & Henson and Baxtop in the late 1970s to Neill Solomon & the Uptown Rhythm Dogs in the early ’80s, eVoid, Cherry Faced Lurchers, Falling Mirror, Tribe After Tribe and Edi Niederlander in the mid ’80s, the Genuines and Celtic Rumours in the late 1980s and Mauritz Lotz in 1991.

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Capital 604 – 1983

It was fairly slim pickings for South African music on Capital countdowns in 1983 but the year did produce some South African classics. It was the year when different forms of cutting edge music styles developed, alongside a hybrid of music, fashion and language, to create a new identity of openness and togetherness rather than apartheid separation and repression. As Rene Veldsman of Via Afrika described , “even though we had the apartheid laws and that sort of thing, we found freedom in music, and I think lots of groups felt that way, and that’s why we got some great music out in the ’80s. It was kind of like a club, a secret place to go where we could be free.”

Juluka had been around for a while, charting on Capital each year of the 80s so far, and they continued to produce excellent songs out of a mix of neo-traditional Zulu, Celtic folk and rock music, what Johnny Clegg described as “a fascinating adventure in trying to construct a meeting point between different forms of musical expression, rhythm, melody (and) tone.” Clegg also sustained his exploration of Zulu culture with Sipho Mchunu in several other ways, including language, dance and dress. Meanwhile eVoid had started out in Brakpan in the late 70s as Zennith, before becoming Void but by 1982 they were transformed into eVoid: fadgets adorned in a fusion of fashion styles and playing a vibrant form of what eVoid called ‘ethnotronics’, a combination of new wave, rock and mbaqanga grooves. They also developed their own style of new romantic fashion which incorporated Ndebele beadwork and other Southern African influences. At the same time Via Afrika were also expressing themselves through music and fashion. Rene Veldsman described the group as “an explosion of talented people getting together and expressing themselves”. Via Afrika’s ‘curio-pop’ ( a term coined by band member Lucas Crouse) was a combination of pan-African and western music styles, all done with the intention of partying and dancing against the system – of racism, homophobia and separation.

Veteran Billy Forrest and former Pop Shop presenter Karl Kikillus had fringe hits on the countdown, and the novelty act the Soft Shoes who had won the tv “Follow That Star” talent competition entered the charts on the back of that exposure. But 1983 can be remembered as the year in which a fresh fusion of African-western musical styles combined with broader elements of cultural bricolage entered the mainstream of South African music.

Of the most successful songs of 1983, eVoid reached number 1 with “Shadows”, and number 4 with “Taximan”, the Soft Shoes also reached number 1 with “Elvis Astaire”, Juluka spent two weeks at number 7 with “December African rain” but only reached number 17 with “Umbaqanga music” and Via Afrika’s “Hey boy” surprisingly only reached number 11, where it spent two weeks.

*Unfortunately we were not able to track down the original vinyl release of Billy Forrest’s “I loved ’em everyone” in time to include on this mixtape and we have had to rely on a later version.

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Capital 604 – Darren Scott’s Top 20


Darren Scott is the first guest DJ on Mixedtapes ZA, offering us his choice of South African music; in this case his Top 20 South African songs of the 1980s, including songs from 1979 which were around at the beginning of 1980.

This is the first of our occasional series of Guest DJ mixed tapes compiled by former Capital Radio DJ s.

These are ranked from No 20 through to number 1 on the mixed tape. Enjoy!

If you want to see the play listing prior to listening to the countdown you can view the order of the songs in this week’s poll below.

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