Live! At the Roxy! Saturday night only!

“What brings you here?”
It was the only way Kobus could think of asking her. He didn’t know a other way. And still she looked at him funny. But it was true mos. A oke had to mos ask. She was the only black girl in the whole Roxy. And she was sitting right there by him, So he was of course going to be interested.
“I came to catch the band, just like you,” she said, in a funny kind of way, as if she wasn’t the only black girl in a rock ‘n’ roll club full of sweaty, white, Afrikaans okes.
“No,” Kobus didn’t want her to now take it the wrong way, “I mean it’s nice to see your kinds of people in here. What’s your name?”
“Er, thanks,” she said. “I’m Zama.”
“I’m Kobus,” Kobus said. “Aangename kennis.” And he shook her hand to be polite. They were sitting on the bar, right at the back of the Roxy, as Fokof kicked into their third song.
It was Vernietig Jouself, one of his favourites, and he would have gone to the front to join the mosh pit, but the place was so packed he could barely see, let alone move from his position.
The ceiling was low there by the bar, so Kobus had to kind of stoop with his head to fit in, and lean a bit to his right, so he loomed rudely over Zama. He was breathing in her face a bit. He was sure she could smell the Martell. But what the hell. It’s not every day Fokof comes to play at the Roxy.
Instead of moshing, he just nodded his head and sung along.
“Does everyone know all the words?” Zama asked in awe as the Roxy reverberated to the selfdestructive lyrics and Kobus tried to see if the guy on the other side of her was her boyfriend or just another Afrikaans guy.
“Ja man. Have you not heard them before?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve never even heard of the band. What are they called again?”
“We call them Fokof. I’ve got both albums. Lugsteuring and As Jy Met Vuur Speel. I know all the guys. They came and drank by me the last time they were here.”
You could mos see they liked to drink. They were all fatter than they were last time. And that was only about six months ago. And sommer hairier too. They all had beards now, except the one guitarist.
But there was a guy in a Moose outfit in the pit, and he looked like he was having so much fun that Kobus decided to ma’ push through the crowd and to dance. It was just as well he did, because the crowd wasn’t so druk there by the stage.
There was more space, but the people were rough. It wasn’t a fight, this, but the one oke still hit him hard in the leg, like that. Kobus is big, so he knows he mustn’t fight. He just pushed him away and then the brandy took over.
It was a bit like a fight in the end. There were fists and knees and kopstamp even. Kobus’s old knee injury from under-19s even got twisted when the one guy tackled him.
So he pulled himself up on the stage to recover a bit before he went back in. But as he sat on the edge of the stage, just to sit for a half a song or what, Francois dragged him right onto the stage in front of the mike.
“Sing jy vir ‘n’ ruk” he screamed in his ear, and then went to the back of the stage to fetch another Black Label. By this stage they were playing Tevrede already and Kobus knew all the words to that too.
So he stood up and sang it! In front of maybe 400-500 people. And then half of Sporadies Nomadies, but by then Francois was back. He patted Kobus on the arm and pointed into the crowd to show he must now get down.
So he stood for a moment on the lip of the stage with his arms above him and then dived. Swak! Right onto the head of the Moose. And they caught him.
Kobus crowdsurfed above the heads of those 400 drunk, white Afrikaans guys, from the stage all the way to the bar at the back of Roxy’s. And it was a celebration of life.
Zama saw him too. She was going to put that in her article.