It was a Red Moon back in 1975, an alien spaceship crash-landed in a field outside of Johannesburg. A small blob of goo was ejected from the foreign interstellar vehicle and splashed against the belly-button of a beautiful young South African woman. She didn't shower that night as she was considering becoming a hippy.
A few months later GARVIES was flushed into the ocean where he lived on fish & seaweed until his teenage years. One very bright sunny morning he was seen by an elderly man with a cane walking his dog on the beach, emerging from the rocky shore-break on The Bluff with nothing but a shitty warped Spanish guitar with some goo on it.
He allegedly skateboarded the mountainous downhills of the N2 Highway and surfed almost every spot along the way from The Kei to Cape Town, where he enrolled in Multimedia School to pick up some useful tools, like learning to turn a computer on & using a mouse. They say he also started playing bass that year, 1998. He joined an acoustic hip-hop band, The Freeflight Coalition, which is where he apparently learned to distinguish D from G; as well as how to fish-tail the bass guitar on stage. His singing at this point was still rather questionable so his band-mates kept him away from the microphone. The FFCO enjoyed some limelight on a local graffiti documentary "OverSpray" with a track entitled 'Bursting at the Seams'. The guitarist & head graffiti artist from this tender era, Jack Mantis features on GARVIES & DJ Quake's current number, 'More Than What It Seems' and the 2006 version of 'Fly Away'. 2001 Saw the sad end of The Freeflight Coalition.
The next year GARVIES and ex-FFCO MC Cloud 9 formed an electric hip-hop act called Lokyst, with DJ Quake on the turntables & Damo Stazz on drums. GARVIES fish-tailed up to the microphone on backing vocals and the band hit the ground running. Within a year Lokyst won the SL Magazine / Radio 5 Best Emerging Band 2002 contest with a toe-tapper called 'Closer'; and played the Flux Music Festival over the fateful New Years celebrations of 2002/2003. The band was at the time sharing their drummer with the already-established & high-up-on-the-food-chain Freshly Ground, both bands unfortunately double-booked that New Years, bringing the Lokyst effort to it's knees.
In 2004, GARVIES lived in an avocado tree-house by the beach & continued playing bass, but also took up songwriting. He found a new drummer in the form of a surfer friend from Llandudno, Pash; who he once dropped-in on & invoked the wrath of. The Light Merchants was formed, & 'Flight of the Pterodactyl' became the infamous number of the times where the G-string found his slap-attack on the bass; the same attack now found in a more polished form on the current GARVIES funk-rock number 'Out of my Mind'. Other songs written in this period were 'More Than What It Seems', 'Fly Away', 'Dripping' & 'Portal Petals'.
The next year, GARVIES moved to Hermanus to find his Songwriting Self in the form of a near-death experience while surfing. After going toe-to-toe with the reef one stormy afternoon, he came face to face with temporary paralysis, seizure & his own mortality; out in heaving surf. After exhaustion had set in & foam was brimming at his lips, an unseen force lifted his short-circuiting body from drowning, onto his surfboard & pushed him into an exploding foam-ball headed for the rocky shore. During the following two months he lay on his bed recovering, reviewing his life thus far. Word out there has it that this was when The Fire Inside started; followed by The Songs. He embarked right there on a journey from the foot-hills of Mount Self-Write/Perform/Producer, up the slippery slopes of Early Artistry.
The Light Merchants continued to work together & recruited a Songwriter from the area, Dino Von Chapman; featuring on keyboards on their current mystical jazzy number from 2007, 'Behind the Moon'. This was when GARVIES wrote 'Babylon Dust', 'Crows Cry', 'The Good Life' & 'Emergency'. Dark times followed as The Fall of the Middle Class gradually swept the cardinal reaches of The Republic of South Africa; our Starving Artist grew thin. GARVIES relocated to Cape Town to find more opportunity & for a while things were good.
The Light Merchants evolved into a 3-piece instrumental rock band called Love Juice, while GARVIES gathered up his chops on bass, songwriting, guitar-playing, singing & recording; as well as reaching the next town on the trail up the mountain: Internet City & it's original transit, MySpace. GARVIES became friends with Bob Marley, The Red Hot Chili Peppers & The Doors opened up to him.. or so it seemed. While around him, work became hard to find as opportunity dwindled in The Rainbow Nation. Poverty & crime were creeping nearer like the slow surge of some over-eager high-tide licking at your doorstep & after a few close-calls with some gold-toothed, neck-tattooed undesirables with screw-drivers & rusty fishing knives, GARVIES decided it was time to work some Magic.
He wrote 'Out of my Mind' describing the situation; followed swiftly with a homage to his childhood home reef in 'Riding Time'; and with a sparkle in his eye, cast The Spell with 'Music Come & Save Me'. A peculiar situation followed.. after playing that particular song at a small club one night, GARVIES met a band called Parklane that needed a bass player. Upon demo inspection he was inspired to audition for the position, & got it - he pulled ex-Lokyst drummer Damo Stazz into the mix.
The new lineup in the almost established band took it to new heights & they had their first show in the first 2 weeks of getting together. After rehearsing for but a few months & having recorded but a few songs, Parklane was invited to showcase themselves at Canadian Music Week 2009 after a Canadian A&R detective listened to their music on MySpace. Through Facebook the band organized a national tour to finance an international tour. Remarkably it all worked out & Parklane found themselves on a plane headed for North America after a month of playing shows all over South Africa.
Parklane played CMW 2009 in Toronto & upon arrival arranged themselves a colorful calendar of shows all over Ontario, set up management, bought a tour-van & hit the road. They played and they played and they played, and after six months GARVIES had learned the fish-tail-into-360-slide-guitar-pivot combination maneuver & the band were voted in the top 16 unsigned acts in Canada. True love called Mr. Stazz home & the band went their separate ways. Our G found himself in The Land of Milk & Honey, albeit The Land of Snow & Tim Hortons.
In these cosmic first-world surroundings The G was plunged deep within himself in a strange land, on a mysterious journey. The result of which would decipher without a doubt whether GARVIES was in fact Man or Mouse; and whether he was going to Sink or Swim in this New World. He saw it as Opportunity Knocking & wrote 'Walk a While', 'Ancient Dancefloor' and 'Coming Up For Air' in the meantime & then proceeded to take an auspicious surf trip to British Columbia where he found something incredible - himself. Now residing in the rainforests of Vancouver Island, he is composing the next chapter of this epic journey so stay tuned!
* Sail with us..
garvies@mail.com
<3 |)(. 26/2/2014
In 2004, GARVIES lived in an avocado tree-house by the beach & continued playing bass, but also took up songwriting. He found a new drummer in the form of a surfer friend from Llandudno, Pash; who he once dropped-in on & invoked the wrath of. The Light Merchants was formed, & 'Flight of the Pterodactyl' became the infamous number of the times where the G-string found his slap-attack on the bass; the same attack now found in a more polished form on the current GARVIES funk-rock number 'Out of my Mind'. Other songs written in this period were 'More Than What It Seems', 'Fly Away', 'Dripping' & 'Portal Petals'.
The next year, GARVIES moved to Hermanus to find his Songwriting Self in the form of a near-death experience while surfing. After going toe-to-toe with the reef one stormy afternoon, he came face to face with temporary paralysis, seizure & his own mortality; out in heaving surf. After exhaustion had set in & foam was brimming at his lips, an unseen force lifted his short-circuiting body from drowning, onto his surfboard & pushed him into an exploding foam-ball headed for the rocky shore. During the following two months he lay on his bed recovering, reviewing his life thus far. Word out there has it that this was when The Fire Inside started; followed by The Songs. He embarked right there on a journey from the foot-hills of Mount Self-Write/Perform/Producer, up the slippery slopes of Early Artistry.
The Light Merchants continued to work together & recruited a Songwriter from the area, Dino Von Chapman; featuring on keyboards on their current mystical jazzy number from 2007, 'Behind the Moon'. This was when GARVIES wrote 'Babylon Dust', 'Crows Cry', 'The Good Life' & 'Emergency'. Dark times followed as The Fall of the Middle Class gradually swept the cardinal reaches of The Republic of South Africa; our Starving Artist grew thin. GARVIES relocated to Cape Town to find more opportunity & for a while things were good.
The new lineup in the almost established band took it to new heights & they had their first show in the first 2 weeks of getting together. After rehearsing for but a few months & having recorded but a few songs, Parklane was invited to showcase themselves at Canadian Music Week 2009 after a Canadian A&R detective listened to their music on MySpace. Through Facebook the band organized a national tour to finance an international tour. Remarkably it all worked out & Parklane found themselves on a plane headed for North America after a month of playing shows all over South Africa.
No comments:
Post a Comment