The Z-Factor: How we became the Worst Band In Joburg™

I sometimes play in a band called The Near Misses, aka The Worst Band In Joburg™.

It’s catchy to call yourself that, to kind of trade off how bad you are, but it isn’t just irony. We really are pretty terrible.

We’re on hiatus at the moment, but we play a style of garage rock inspired by 1960s lo-fi, 80s pop, township jive, The Beach Boys and classic rock – but without any of the actual talent required to play that.

When we started, we were also inexperienced, under-practised and over-confident, with no qualms whatsoever about embarrassing ourselves in public. A recipe for spectacular disaster if ever there was one!

In the early days, gigs were hard to come by, so we jumped at the chance to play an event just outside Pretoria – the Zwartkops Raceway Battle Of The Bands!

This is not a particularly prestigious musical happening, but we didn’t deserve much better at that point, so we entered. It was like the Idols of Messy Garage Rock! The Z-Factor! Pretoria West’s Got Talent. Or no talent in our case.

We always had a healthy sense of our own ridiculousness, but we were not quite prepared for how ridiculous this experience was going to be.

The event was part of a track day at the famous Zwartkops motor-racing venue. So the place was crawling with petrol-heads who had almost no interest in music.

We eventually found the stage, where we were scheduled just after an impressively tight Christian band with a polished routine and good crowd rapport.

We were about to go on, when we realised we’d forgotten some of our gear. We sprinted back to the vehicle, bickering all the way, grabbed our pedals and cables and stuffed them into some shopping bags I happened to have in my boot.

We rushed back, and found that our performance had been pushed out so they could announce the winners of the children’s colouring-in competition. The kids were called up, one by one and presented with their prizes.

“First place: Jean Viljoen, seven years old. Is Jean here?”

Jean was not there. While the organisers went to find him. A pair of clowns took the stage to entertain the crowd. There was a lady clown named Bobo, and a clown named Chunky Man.

This may have been Chunky Man’s first gig, because he appeared to have stage fright. He was a person with dwarfism. The crowd had been drinking in the sun all day, and they hurled a bunch of choice words at Bobo and Chunky Man. At one point it looked like he might start crying.

Once they’d finished abusing the clowns and announced the winners of the colouring-in competition, it was time for The Near Misses. We stumbled onto the stage, flushed, out of breath, arguing and carrying our gear in plastic bags like a bunch of street people.

We proceeded to play a messy, rushed set of songs we hadn’t quite learned yet. We were out of key, out of time and we missed most of our cues. We felt terrible for Bobo and Chunky Man, and suspected we had already been upstaged by the winners of the colouring-in competition.

Our suspicions were confirmed when the results were announced. Winners: That Christian band. Last place: The Near Misses.

To help us improve, we were provided with the judging sheets. This, then, was a codified certification of precisely how crap we were. Documentary proof.

“Preparedness: 1 out of 20,” proclaimed the judges sheet. “Audience interaction: 1. Performance: 1. Presentation: 1.”

We cracked a 16 for originality, and a grand total of 20 points. If this had been an exam, we would have received an H symbol. Or perhaps a Z.

This was a spectacular, ignominious and categorical failure. We had come last by miles at possibly the most obscure talent search in the world, and we had the paperwork to prove it. It’s hard to come back from that.

But come back we did. Because of that aforementioned ability to embrace our own absurdity. We embraced that failure. Failing that badly is actually hilarious, and we were lucky enough to see that.

We integrated that failure into our name, so that even today, you can never mention The Near Misses without acknowledging the fact that we are the Worst Band In Joburg™.

We have been friends and collaborators for six years now, and we have played some incredibly fun, often ludicrous, but super-entertaining gigs – including the country’s pre-eminent music festival, Oppikoppi. We remained rather loose and shambolic, but that was the secret of our success.

There is a lesson in there somewhere and perhaps it’s this: You don’t have to be good to be awesome!

Hagen Engler. Picture: Supplied

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.