Between Rock & a Hard Place

The ‘80s in South Africa was a schmangled clusterfuck of a decade.Resistance against the apartheid government was mounting whileviolence swamped the beleaguered land. Change was undeniably in theair. As the country heaved and hummed with resistant energy, in Joburg,Cape Town and Durban, tiny pockets of anti-apartheid whiteys were usingmusic and parties to stage a punk-driven uprising against the tyrannicalgovernment. With guitars instead of guns and an insatiable hunger forfreedom, the state saw this bizarre subculture as a hive of hedonists anddrugged-up nihilists. However, this anarchic collection of guitar-wielding,pill-munching, dope-smoking musicians and their followers were in facta second front in the struggle against apartheid.This is history like you've never read it. In brilliantly tragic and hilariousdetail, Between Rock & a Hard Place is an epic memoir by musician,promoter and enthusiastic participant Carsten Rasch. Rasch is a giftedstoryteller as he paints an untold history, detailing those tumultuous andgiddy times with heartfelt irreverence. Veering between lucid momentsof desperate innovation and psychotic adventures on the rim of sanity,all the time riding roughshod at delirious speeds over the potholes of‘culture', the reader is introduced to half-forgotten heroes, now fastdisappearing into the fog of time, and the band of misfits who attemptedto disrupt the system. Between Rock & a Hard Place is simultaneously ablow-for-blow rock 'n roll story told from the dubious vantage point ofbeing below the underbelly; an aberrant coming-of-age tale set in a timeof political madness and mad debauchery; and, finally, a lesson on horses.