Springs’ Most Persistently Peculiar Band Return With Another Dose of Delightful Derangement
They’ve had more drummers than Spinal Tap (and with Spinal Tap II: The End Continues just hitting cinemas, that’s saying something). They’ve been making noise since October 1978. And somehow, impossibly, the Radio Rats are still at it.
Jonathan Handley and Dave Davies, the indestructible core of South Africa’s most wonderfully warped rock outfit, have unleashed “Vampire Weekends” upon an unsuspecting world. Because apparently someone needed to show that American indie band how it’s really done.
Forty-Seven Years of Glorious Chaos
For those keeping score at home, that’s 47 years since the Rats first crawled out of Springs with their gloriously skewed take on rock and roll. The band that gave us “ZX Dan” (held off the number one spot by Michael Jackson, no less) has been persistently, stubbornly, magnificently refusing to go away ever since.
The partnership between songwriter and guitarist Jonathan Handley and vocalist Dave Davies has survived longer than most marriages, most governments, and definitely most drummers. Speaking of which, the band’s revolving door of sticksmen has become the stuff of legend. If Spinal Tap’s drummers met untimely ends involving spontaneous combustion and bizarre gardening accidents, the Radio Rats simply wore theirs out through sheer persistence and Springs-flavoured stubbornness.
A Tribute and a Loss
This new album arrives in the shadow of loss. Herbie Parkin, the bassist who anchored the Rats’ sound from their earliest days (Dave Davies gave him the nickname “Herbie” because he didn’t want two Daves in the band), passed away in 2020. Herbie had been living and playing in Sweden for years, but his bass lines remain woven into the fabric of everything the Radio Rats created.
The band’s discography tells the story of a group that simply cannot stop making music, logic and commercial concerns be damned. From “Into the Night We Slide” in 1978 through to “Vampire Weekends”, they’ve released album after album. It’s all archived at the Radio Rats Discography, a testament to what happens when a medical student born in Tanganyika and a vocalist from Springs decide that rock and roll matters more than sanity.
Still Making Noise
Jonathan Handley continues to juggle his day job as an anaesthetist in Pietermaritzburg with his relentless output of three-minute rock songs. Dave Davies is still in the same house in Springs where he’s always been. And together, they’re still making the kind of music that, as producer Patric van Blerk once said, is “oh-so right.”
“Vampire Weekends” joins a catalogue that includes everything from their legendary debut to “Big Beat”, “Night Thoughts”, “Cyanide Lake”, “Moordenaars Karoo”, and “The Concise Rock ‘n Roll Primer”. Each album a small act of defiance against good taste, commercial viability, and the general expectation that bands should know when to call it quits.
The Rats That Refuse to Sink
There’s something gloriously, stubbornly South African about the Radio Rats. They’ve never chased fame, never compromised, never stopped writing songs about Springs, medical students, post-World War II industrial decay, and whatever else catches Jonathan Handley’s peculiar fancy. They influenced James Phillips. They inspired a documentary. They’ve outlasted just about everyone.
And now they’ve given us “Vampire Weekends”, presumably because “Vampire Weekend” (singular) was already taken by some American indie band who probably don’t even know about Springs.
The Radio Rats: 47 years in, still making noise, still refusing to behave, still utterly, wonderfully themselves.
Welcome to “Vampire Weekends”. We’re pressing play.