We were famous, and we didn’t even know it!

In my distant twenties, we started a band called Jedi Rollers. It was one of my first bands, and it sprang marvellously from a series of open-mic jams at a bar called the Speakeasy in our secretly idyllic coastal town of Port Elizabeth.

From a loose amalgamation of about 10 people, the band evolved and crystallised to a core of five people. We gradually shed a couple of vocalists, the djembe players and the keyboardist, until our line-up was a more traditional bass-guitar-drums kind of set-up.

We became a real band. We must have been okay, because we started getting booked almost from the moment of our inception, playing festivals and out-of-town gigs at exotic locations like Jeffreys Bay, Port Alfred… even Grahamstown. We were the well-travelled troubadours of our bunch of mates. Provincial Men Of Mystery.

We assembled a body of work, and recorded. We laid down three albums worth of material over the years, with the process culminating in a rather good record called Cloud Control.

It bears mentioning that while the Jedi Rollers made amazing music together, we could barely communicate. It may have been the amount of weed we were smoking, but we were terrible at sharing actual ideas with each other. Let alone emotions.

We would rehearse, travel around the Eastern Cape and play shows as a group, but I must confess, we took each other for granted and did not really get to know each other as people. Any issues were swept under the rug, or dealt with in passive-aggressive silences, which did nothing to enhance our understanding.

In the end, we drifted apart as a band, because we simply didn’t feel we were getting anywhere. We had created some amazing, world-class music, but it was not being recognised, and there was no sign of that happening. No progress.

In the end, I moved to Cape Town, then Joburg. The bassist to Bristol. The other guys started other bands…

The thing was, that third album was quite good. We really should have promoted it more. At least submitted it for chart consideration or something. In fact… Didn’t we actually do that?

This was the question my former bandmate Kendall asked me. That band is long defunct – or “on hiatus”, as the euphemism goes. But we’re all grown up and on good terms now. We’ve even learned conversational skills, and we’re no longer fuelled solely by TK rooibaard.

“Didn’t you submit that last album to the SA Rock Chart?” Kendall asked me, when we were reminiscing over text.

We released the album about 15 years ago, so I really couldn’t remember. But we decided to check. We went online and found the SA Rock Charts archive. Sure enough, that Cloud Control album had been submitted.

Not only that, but the album had reached number 8 on the chart. A song from the album had reached number 9 on the singles chart!

How’s that for delayed glory!

We had made the Top 10 on the charts, and we’d been such goofballs we didn’t even know it. We even broke up because we didn’t think we were getting anywhere, meantime we totally were!

We had achieved the recognition we so craved, but we only became aware of it 15 years later. And by that stage it had kind of expired.

The best way we could claim it was to make a Facebook post linking back to our song and saying, “Wow, how silly are we. We made the Top 10 in 2005, and we didn’t even know it!”

We are silly, and one can only wonder what might have happened if we’d been aware enough to notice our own incremental success. Maybe we wouldn’t even have broken up. Maybe we’d still be going. Touring the world!

Well, I’m not sure we would be, because terrible communication skills don’t make for long-term relationships. But it would have given us some impetus, perhaps.

What it has done, is given us something to chuckle about on Facebook, and helped us reminisce over the old music. It’s also encouraged us to live more consciously, to be there inside every moment that we live.

Because life is not always as it seems. You may be doing a lot better than you realise. So be aware. Cherish your achievements. Humility is fine, but we also need to celebrate ourselves, and share our joy with those around us.

Life keeps moving, but you can’t always be focused on where you wish you were. It’s cool to stop and appreciate exactly where you are, in all its complexity and possible glory.

Check where you are, and check how others relate to you. It’ll help you value every second of your life so you don’t just keep moving and miss it. So you don’t break up when you’re in the Top 10!

Hagen Engler. Picture: Supplied

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