My Wild Youth

I was going to start this post by referring to Wild Youth as the leading lights of the original South African punk scene, but that would have been misleading as there wasn't really enough bands to call it a scene.

Apart from Wild Youth there was the wonderfully named Young Dumb & Violent and The Safari Suits, who were probably too arty to count as real punks anyway. I saw the Suits in Cape Town in 1978/9 and to end their first set they got one of their mates to charge on stage dressed as a policeman, denounce us all as subversives and threaten us with arrest. Unfortunately he did it rather too convincingly and most of the audience left immediately. There were only about four of us there for the second set, and I only stayed because I had to wait for my Mum to pick me up - very punk.

None of the bands were particularly brilliant, to be honest, but Wild Youth were definitely the pick of the bunch. Here are a couple of their finer moments.

"Wot About Me" - Wild Youth

"Radio Youth" - Wild Youth