Hi folks. Kwela-philes please adjust your browsers. In a rare outbreak of modesty, I'm moving the Positively Testcard website from my rather arcane personal web address to the rather more literal and user-friendly www.positivelytestcard.co.uk
Still the rather lame and computer-illiterate layout, but it is up-to-date and makes up with wit what it lacks in style. If you insist on using the old /~adam.keelan address you'll be hopelessly adrift in the fast moving world that is South African penny-whistle jive with a South London bent.
Indeed the new site is so up to date, you probably won't yet have read about our radio session going out on Spectrum Radio at 20.00 UK time (that's GMT at the moment) on Wednesday 15th March. Look up the address on Google and make sure you don't tune into the Tamil programme by accident (Spectrum broadcast all sorts of languages - hence the name - the programme is called Rainbow Radio I think.) I can happily promise Dave and I will be talking in English. But it will be nonsense as usual.

Hi Adam

Any chance of you sorting out a mailing list to let people know when things are happening?

Keep up the good work.

Cheers

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?

Any chance of the next album coming out before 2009?

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It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that schwing

Ditto what Martin asked!

I LOVE you guys' music! More, More, More!!!!!

edited to add:

Oh yeah, and come out to California sometime. Pleeeeaaaaasee!!!!

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My CD! Click here to listen!
Whistle, uke, guitar, English concertina & more!: http://www.nowhereradio.com/onemanband

Well -- of course if anyone wants to be on a mail list we'll happily put them there - don't expect a flurry of gigs just yet although we're looking at some public stuff around May maybe at the moment.
Dave has just been doing some recording with Basement Jaxx (CD should be out in the summer sometime he thinks).

Also forgot to mention - for real Kwela afficianados, the DVD of the black & white chronicle of the Newport (Rhode Island) Folk Festival in 1963, '64, and '65 features a short clip from Spokes Mashiyane (about 45 secs) playing Zoo Garden (or is it Zoo Park. Can't remember)

And....

The British Film Institute have released a retrospective of the British filmaker Geoffrey Jones, who sadly died last year. The man was a pioneer - not least because he had the gumption to use kwela music for the backing of a seminal advert for Shell petrol (gas). It's a work of genius. He was good enough to get in touch with the band and get us to record some more kwela for him (currrently unreleased). Obviously we could never hope to match Lemmy Mabaso, who recorded the theme of the advert 'Shell Spirit' when he was at the height of his fame - in between visits to the pub in Soho round the corner from where they recorded it. Every film student should look at this brilliant two minutes - you can view it on the archives of the BFI website if you're in a UK library or school (http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1056888/) - or better still buy the DVD - The Rhythm of Film.
(The DVD also features "Chair a Plane kwela", recorded by Albert Ramulini, who is now archivist at Gallo Records in South Africa)
Many of Geoffrey's other industrial films are fantastic, including Snow, which was nominated for an Oscar in 1963. If you're very lucky, you may be able to track down a flexidisc of the original track for 'Shell Spirit', which was given away free in garages (gas stations)