Lisa van Wyk

Last weekend the lights went out. The music stopped, and for a moment we all stood in complete silence in the dark, wondering if it would only last a moment or whether it was a cue to go home. Then the lighters came out and everyone started muttering about Eskom. People dragged themselves off the […]

When I moved into my flat in Melville a few months ago, the wall of the school situated across the road was a depressing, sludgy grey expanse of concrete with a fence on top of it, punctuated by the occasional messy tag of some egotistical scribbler. Seeing it first thing in the morning was an […]

Henry Rollins impressed me so much more than I ever thought he would, and my expectations were pretty damn high. I knew he was clever. I knew he had interesting stories to tell. (Who wouldn’t, knowing the people he knows and having been where he has?). I knew he was funny. What I didn’t expect […]

I have a Parktown prawn called Henry living in my lounge. He is named after Henry Rollins, who I can’t wait to see tonight, because both look angry and inflated with steroids (and even Parktown prawns are more loveable when they have names). My Henry (the one without all the tattoos) has given me a […]

I know that the holiday season is never a good way to judge a city. If I was to look around Jo’burg for something to do over the festive season, I would probably come up with very little, as many music venues, galleries and theatres shut down. It’s understandable, given the mass exodus that takes […]

I have lived in Jo’burg for four months and, since moving here, I have come to learn that, as far as the live music scene goes, it’s usually a case of feast or famine. Granted, there’s always something on, and one could probably go out every night for about three weeks without hearing the same […]