Completely Strung Out
How Guy Buttery and Dan Patlansky Broke My Brain
I’m not one of those homies who will ever show you my phone and ask you to look at videos or photos from a gig. At a push, you’ll get a video of my pigs.
My preferred method of sharing is to write a review and tell you to read it, or to force you into listening to a story with a lot of hand gestures and unnecessary segues. Of course, this might be infinitely more excruciating than having to sit and watch a series of substandard cellphone videos of a blurry musician, through a tinny speaker, while getting sporadic commentary from the starry-eyed purveyor… “Wait for it, just wait for this bit coming up… You won’t believe it…” And trust me, like a clickbait headline, you literally won’t believe it.
So, bust out the half time oranges and strap yourself in while you indulge me waxing lyrical about the Guy Buttery-Dan Patlansky musical fiesta that I’m still processing in my loud and what-the-fucked brain.
Before I explain why my brain is so loud and hurty, let’s go back in time, a couple of weeks ago, to when I saw that these two legends were teaming up for a gig. I bought tickets almost immediately, even though the gig was at a school, forty minutes away, on a Sunday.
- School makes me a bit twitchy, especially single-sex schools.
- I live in a small town, also called a village, where I sometimes run for transport. If I ran to Michaelhouse, I would die. Hence it is not close enough.
- Sundays are usually when I dabble in puzzles, make a lot of food, or practise my act for best hermit under 45.
You won’t believe I used to live in London and Cape Town. Anyway, you can clearly see that me going in guns blazing to secure my tickets is a testament to my enthusiasm. The thing is, when I want something, I also spiral by convincing myself that everyone else wants it as much as me, and therefore it has a strong chance of selling out. Cue the sleepless nights. Once I’d secured my tickets, I prepared myself by watching YouTube videos and telling everyone how excited I was. I will not apologise for this.
OK preamble over, let’s get to the sexy chorus so you can sing along or pretend to know the words.
Guy Buttery gets on stage. It’s unnerving because he looks a lot like a friend of mine, and they dress almost the same. Sadly, my friend is not as musically talented as Guy – I’d love to drag him out at parties to impress my friends. Anyway, Guy is understated and I dig that. I always love bathos, it’s one of my favourite literary devices. I think it’s because I’m a fan of delayed gratification and suffering for pleasure. I also love the absurd. And, if things turn into a fiasco I’m there for it. This wasn’t a fiasco, which is great news for the musicians, the backstage techies, and 99% of the audience. However, it was frequently offbeat (not literally) and a little bonkers. Back to bathos… Guy parks on his seat, picks up his guitar, and decides, naught, this isn’t going to work. He needs to buff his nails.
On any other day, I would have shouted out something about “Guy Buffery”. It’s not a great joke, sure, but it was low hanging fruit, and I love a bit of strawberry picking. This day, my soul was more tempered though, and I think that worked out best for everyone.
In any event, I liked the fact that this bit of stage work did something to the audience. We relaxed, and were lulled into a false sense of security. Sadly, what happens next won’t blow your mind because you weren’t there, and hopefully you haven’t been duped into watching a shit cellphone video of the gig. But, hyperbole aside, it blew my mind.
In four songs, Guy told an acoustic story that took me back to the first time I heard Peter and the Wolf. I know that sounds completely bonkers, but this is my story and sadly you’re my captive who’s probably fresh out of half time oranges. However, instead of characters it was places that he invoked. His music felt like a journey through places that exist in my mind, and places that don’t. I have no idea if this was his intention but holy smackerel it was profound and beautiful and I was mesmerised. And then I was sad because there is sadness in beauty. And that’s OK.
Before I got too sad though, he broke the fourth wall, which it really did feel like, even though this wasn’t theatre. Guy is a placemaker, and he just builds and bashes down metaphorical walls like a crazed tween playing Minecraft. On one hand he’s playing music that seems effortless, and on the other he’s telling a story about how this very music is a culmination of a 12-year project that nearly killed him. I bloody love a juxtaposition. And, aside from juxtapositions, bathos, hyperbole, tangents, and a couple of other things, boy-oh-boy do I love project-obsession. I love the graceful and terrible art of patience and time when creating. However, I do draw the line at 12-years. Nonetheless, I’m glad Guy is a better creative than me, his 12-year album is certainly something to write home about. Which is weird, because most people only write home to ask their parents for money.
After a masterclass in acoustic guitar, it was Dan’s turn. I’m not sure if this is offensive, I have almost no filter as you may know, but here goes…
Dan Patlansky is like a rockabilly South African hybrid Bruce Springsteen.
There I said it.
Feel free to send me shit (literal and figurative).
I like my rock with as much gravel as it would take to fix all the potholes in the greater Msunduzi area, and Dan delivers it in spades. He also makes loop pedals artful and not gimmicky. My English teacher once told me you can break the rules when you know them, and I feel like this applies to loop pedals. Once you’re a proper musician you can use one. And only then.
I don’t have to tell you that Dan is obviously a proper musician because he can make sounds out of a Fender Strat (my personal favourite of all the guitar varietals) that would make even the hardiest sound engineering nerd weak at the knees. Honestly, if it came down to it, I would listen to Dan play Stairway to Heaven. And I’d like it.
When he busted out Hendrix and made it his own, I was a bit alarmed. I wanted to use the term “world-class”. South Africans always have to strive to be “world-class”. Fuck that. Dan’s in a class of his own. At Michaelhouse, on a drizzly Sunday afternoon.
And speaking of Michaelhouse, it seems prudent to give the Schlesinger Theatre’s acoustics a helluva shoutout, that space was humming like a 90s pentium computer. And, the invisible heroes, the sound guys… Well, let’s just say I haven’t heard sound like that since I stomped my feet at the Tomb of Agamemnon.
The combined set with Dan and Guy was like an audiovisual Bromance experience… But with zero Bro Rogan vibes. And while I sat through their individual sets, and their combined set, I just couldn’t shake this one word. One wanky term that was prodding at my grey matter like an excitable toddler at a dinosaur convention.
“Conceptual.”
“Fuck”, I thought, this music is conceptual.
Conceptual and self-indulgent are often in the same WhatsApp Group. There is a subtle difference though. Self-indulgence is almost always a wank-fest, whereas conceptual can be a wank-fest but it can also be the Lance Klusener we all need to smash it into the cheap seats for six. Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve been self-indulgent/conceptual enough to use a dazzling sports metaphor.
Guy and Dan are conceptual. They push you to the brink of being almost very uncomfortable and then whip you back with a just-in-time bridge or with the familiarity of a riff to cling onto. It’s thinking music, and you have to go with it.
You have to suffer for your art.
It’s hard work.
And the results sparkle, dazzle, confound, and linger in a world where ephemerality and limited attention spans promise the illusion of the next best thing.