On Waxing Lyrical Pt.II: Self Exploration

Music became the most powerful and prominent way in which I could identify myself. With a guffaw and a slight snarl, I shunned all genres that fell outside of rock's influence. Music was my religion, alternative was my sect and Tuks FM was my all day mass.

A friend of mine was housesitting for a relative and a small group of us stayed over a lot. There was a feature on Tuks called the Request Explosion. Every hour on the half hour, the DJ would take three calls and play the callers' requests. On the first night at the house, we managed to phone through every hour for seven hours straight. Once we even got through twice in one sitting.

At the time, Hatfield was the regular hangout. Every weekend, one of our parents picked all four of us up and dropped us off. Every weekend we would decide which fine establishment we would most likely have a chance at not being bounced from in the attempt to fuel our underage drinking habits. I had been 18 for a full three years before seeing my 18th birthday. When things didn't go our way, or when the night turned out to be a bust, the four of us (sometimes with an extra person - a girlfriend or a schoolmate) would take a walk over to the radio station on campus. After chatting with the DJ we listened to our request in the lounge before heading back to Hatfield to be picked at up around eleven o'clock.

The extraordinary means that resulted in Feeder reaching South Africa was one of controversy for me. They were the headline act for the all day music festival that was 5FM's birthday celebration. I was not about to let that stop me however. I refused to refer to the event with its official title, opting instead to call it "the Feeder concert". The same group of friends that made the unbeatable run on the request line were present at the event. Surrounded by limegreen t-shirts, we would make our presence known with the name of our regular place of praise written on our cheeks with eyeliner.