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Concussion Girl

Concussion Girl survives slash fliek

By Robert Laing

Nothing proves government should stay out of business better than state funded films. You might argue state telecoms monopolies like Telkom are a stronger example, but then you haven't seen Slash.

Fortunately, neither have I — but I've seen enough state-funded disasters to imagine how bad this movie must be. Slash, the first film produced by government financier IDC, was never released in South Africa to avoid allowing the public to witness what their talentless bureaucrats waste money on.

Civil servants got to swank around the Hollywood-set at the Cannes Film Festival on the taxpayer's tab trying and sell this pseudo-American tosh, but a little government money did end up in the pockets of deserving locals. The script was by Madam & Eve writer Stephen Francis working with journalist Gus Silber. The fliek was scored by Neill Solomon, who used a track he had produced in the finale. So unlike the IDC's Stander, Slash's soundtrack actually had some local music content in it.

The consensus on IMDB is that while Slash represented "a new low in slasher film-making", the song at the end was great.

"That song was the ONLY good thing about the movie. By the gods, it sucked. It wasn't even bad in a funny way, just incredibly bad and boring", an IMDB reader wrote.

IMDB's comment section contains lots of pleas for the name of the song at the end of Slash and where to get it. The answer is Tie me up by Concussion Girl, and it is finally available on the band's debut CD.

The band named themselves after their blond singer, Beverley Jayne, who has been concussed six times.

As Bev knocked her beer over my lunch, it occurred to me that someone who bangs her head that often is probably pretty accident prone. Just as well the radio station's management ordered out the beers we took into the studio to drink during our show. The station once went off air for seven hours after someone spilled water over the mixing desk.

Watching Bev leaping around stage during a Concussion Girl performance, I was biting my nails hoping I wasn't about to witness her seventh head injury. There's much more suspense, besides better music, in a Concussion Girl show than you'll ever get in an IDC production.

This extroverted rock singer claims she was a shy girl until she spent a year in Dallas Texas as an au pair.

"I didn't start singing until I went to America. I went there all shy and came back the opposite — giving my family a bit of a shock. I went there thinking 'why should it be me?' and came back thinking 'why the hell shouldn't it be me?'"

When she returned to South Africa, she answered a 'singer wanted' ad in Junk Mail placed by Kevin Botha, a song-writer for Mango Groove among others. Kevin was recruiting for his first own band, which he called South. He gave Bev the job, and the two grew into song-writing collaborators as South transformed into Concussion Girl.

Mango Groove's Claire Johnston attended Bev's first public performance at Wing's Beat Bar in Braamfontein. Singing to one of South Africa's greats initially threw Bev, but Claire's compliment after the show has helped Bev persevere in South Africa's arid music environment.

The song title Tie me up sounds appropriate for a slasher fliek, but it's actually a sexy bondage song. Bev's husky voice adds a burlesque feel to lots of Concussion Girl material. My favourite is Pussy Cat, whose double entendres have been deemed too risque for commercial radio.

• www.myspace.com/concussiongirl

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