I fell for Wet Wet Wet when I heard their third single on the radio in 1988. I remember having enjoyed their second one, Sweet Little Mystery before then, but had been unaware of who sang it. It was Angel Eyes that first saw into my heart and charmed my ears. The video made me smile the reflection of that infectious Marti Pellow grin. Till now I have had to settle for music videos, magazine pictures, posters, television interviews, and newspaper cuttings to see them.
For seven years I've longed to see them in person, to see the people who have so often brought delight and inspiration into my life with their unique and diverse melodies. Yet I am not entirely satisfied that the guys - Neil, Graeme, Tommy, Marti and Graeme-number-two-the-sort-of-fifth-member - will shortly bring life to the same Good Hope Centre that's temporarily the Design for Living cemetery each year.
It isn't as if I live in Johannesburg and will be inconvenienced because the Wets won't be honouring Ellis Park with their presence. Strangely enough they are leaving Gauteng with arid blue skies, but are splashing down onto Durban, raining in Cape Town and finally drying up (not permanently of course) at Sun City. So being in Cape Town I can get there easily enough.
I have my ticket. It's amazing that I have hardly managed a smile since discovering that it has been bought for me today. I should be jumping up and down with glee, telling all the world, "Hey, I'm going to be in the same room as Wet Wet Wet next month!", shouldn't I? After all, I haven't stopped being crazy about them. Turning twenty-one didn't change that.
I am certainly grateful, but if I had a job I would have been able to afford the ticket myself and I don't think anyone knows just how much I want to be independent, have my own money to spend, have my guilty conscience cleared, have the freedom to buy my own ticket to the Wet Wet Wet concert.
Yet I am unemployed. We all know about the high rate of unemployment which incidentally means that it is extremely hard to find a job. And who wants to employ a BA degree graduate with no experience?
I find that I am on the verge of something here. I want to write to earn my money. I have been writing almost all my life and yet I have no experience. Getting things published is apparently the key. So I write things, but they haven't been sent anywhere in an attempt to have them published. Why? Because I think they are not good enough and don't know who would take the kind of things I write.
So I should make them good enough and then ought to be able to find someone who will publish them. Perhaps I would even be paid. Now I have to find a way to take that step, make something good enough to be published somewhere. Wet Wet Wet didn't stop after they sang Wishing I was lucky. They persisted and released The Memphis Sessions, their second album, meant to have been their first. Why didn't they release it initially? Because the record company thought it hadn't enough commercial appeal.
True, The Memphis Sessions never did sell as much as their first album, Popped In Souled Out, but they didn't promote it by releasing singles from it either. I think it was the mouth that emptied their river of talent into the sea of superb soul they have produced since. Popped In Souled Out may have sold out at many stores, but it isn't completely "souled out".
The Memphis foundation is partially the reason they are still together and creating and performing excellent music today. They were willing to send it, as a part of themselves, out into the world despite the small-scale appeal the record company felt it would have.
Perhaps its sales were influenced by the immense popularity of the first album, but that overlooks the fact that it is very good music and that it was made to please themselves. I want to write what pleases me, but it must be done in a way that will please its readers. The greatest pleasure will be to have it published. Or is the greatest pleasure to see my favourite musicians performing in my own country?
Indeed it will be a pleasure: to see and hear Tom drumming as if joy itself depended on it, Neil feeling life into his keyboard, Graeme caressing and strumming his bass, Other-Graeme nurturing his guitar-strings and Marti exercising his lungs and vocal chords; to watch and listen; to feel, and yet, to feel frustrated.
I can feel their music live. But I can't touch. I mean, I can't give each of them a hug and tell them face to face, person to person that I love them. I can't break away from the thousands of others there and be the individual who wants to exchange a smile with each of them. I can't say, "Thank you for everything you've given me" while looking Tom in the eye or giving Neil a hug or smiling at Marti, or after sharing a joke with Graeme and Graeme-the-guitarist.
I can type out something I write on a word processor, I can print it out on the Epsom printer, I can even feel satisfaction at having written it. And I can get a phone call like I did earlier tonight from a friend who has just read some fiction I wrote recently. "Your stories are brilliant!" she exclaimed, and urged me to have them published. It's not that easy, but I can make the attempt.
It was a wonderful to hear that from her, but as with seeing Wet Wet Wet in concert, the frustration lies in being so near yet so far.
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