Bands that changed my life part 3 (in no particular order): Led Zeppelin. I’m not sure how it happened, but I didn’t really know Zep at all until much later on compared to other groups I still love. It just never blipped on the radar, and if I heard the name mentioned, I (weirdly) thought that they were a metal band. And then a certain Mr Martin Wolfaardt dragged me to the Mini Cine in Hillbrow, a dark and awesomely dingy ‘above the flea market’ cinema vibe in what we called the Bronx. As well as standard fare, they’d show stuff like Pink Floyd live in Pompei, the Blues Brothers, A Clockwork Orange, The Rocky Horror and other cult classics.

For The Song Remains the Same they’d brought in special speakers, and it was basically loud enough in there to melt your face off. To cut a tipping-point moment short, I watched 137 minutes of rock gods playing their rock god music, and when I stumbled out into the sunlight, brain leaking out of my eyes at what I had just witnessed, the world was not the same anymore and never would be. I had been given the key to a kingdom that had been there all along, and up until then I just hadn’t known it.