the corner office

After a bit of a hiatus I got back into the CD ripping. I've been making my way through the Rs, and currently on rotation is a compilation Ronwen bought a while ago called Rocking Against The System. It's a collection of South African music from the 80s, and it really is a trip listening to some of these old songs again. It's not that I was nuts about all of these songs when I was growing up, but a lot of these really were part of the theme music of the 80s in ZA, as it were, for better or worse. The passage of two decades and evocation of fond memories makes some of even the tiredest of these songs sound a whole lot better.

Of course, some of these tracks are Damned Fine Tunes, nostalgia notwithstanding. Most notably for me, the Psycho Reptiles' 'Monster From The Bog,' because, well, if you were a kid in the 80s in South Africa, then that ska-esque tune is well and truly imprinted in your psyche, and being schoolboys and all, the line 'There's a monster... in the bog' took on a whole meaning of its own. No Friends of Harry's 'Competition Rules' is a close second, because, well, NFOH rocked and I thought they were cool long before I knew what 'goth rock' was. I don't remember The Dynamics, but 'Thugs' is just plain groovy. Celtic Rumours weren't bad (and as a youngster it just seemed so wrong and too close to home when vocalist Kevin Van Staden died in a car accident), and listening now, stuff like Via Afrika's 'Hey Boy' just says '80s' in all its eccentricity, and songs like Falling Mirror's 'Johnny Calls the Chemist' just stand as plain well-crafted pieces of music.

The saddest thing is that given the limited market this music had, a lot of these albums are out of print (although Fresh Music is reissuing some of them), and there's very little to be learned about these bands. Ditto for anything as exotic as their music videos (a number of which, I realised, I can still clearly remember). Googling for the Reptiles comes back with around 200 hits, and the majority of them are for the handful of compilations their songs have been added to.

Anyway, I figured I'd do my bit for history, and see what sorts of cool things Google can do with this ;-)

Moon is hiding behind the clouds
The swamp is full of eerie howls
The monster from the bog
He's gonna come out all covered in slime
He's gonna make sure that he gets you this time

A few miles away there is a laboratory
Mixing up the chemicals and pumping them in the sea
All the toxic waste goes to the bed
And that's where the monster was born and bred

Only female flesh can satisfy his need
It's got to be alive and it's got to bleed
The monster from the bog
Yeah he's real ugly and he's slimy and mean
and when he rips your head off you're bound to scream

A few miles away there a laboratory...

The monster from the bog
Be careful what you throw down your kitchen sink
Cause it's not quite as harmless as you might think

Weeell, his hands are calloused and his teeth are green
The elephant hide man it's so obscene
The monster from the bog
When he knocks you on the head and drags you to his cave
It's not quite certain you'll be seen again

There's a monster... in the bog