What became of the Likely Lads?

By the way, you can listen to "Kachasu" by the Five Revolutions here and it's a pretty good song. As the reviewer notes:

There is a lot of warning in the lyrics, as on the lead track "Kachasu" by The Five Revolutions. During this same period, AIDS was quietly ravaging the population, and it was often remarked that people in denial attributed deaths to other causes. This song turns the tables, claiming that the popular local liquor called kachasu kills many, and that the deaths are often attributed to AIDS. Sorting that one out is analogous to untangling the frenzied guitar and bass lines that weave through this cranker. But again, a sweet vocal line makes it all go down easily, perhaps like a shot of kachasu. (D^2D has no official editorial line on whether a shot of kachasu would actually go down all that easily -dd)

Which of course reminds one of how the Bhundu Boys fell out with Robert Mugabe; they started talking about HIV at a point when HIV/AIDS denialism was the political fashion (Thabo Mbeki, infamously, hung on to this one far too long and for all I know Jacob Zuma still believes it). And thence to this article, via the Bhundu Boys wikipedia page, which was probably a big part of what led me on to the "Project Africa" idea in the first place; there was a time in the late 1980s when that band was really very important to me, although the only album I actually owned was "True Jit", widely regarded by genuine fans as a stinker. Of course, tough stories like this are pretty commonplace in the music industry; viz, Tansads[1]. But the entanglement with Zimbabwe somehow makes the whole thing much more poignant.

[1] And really at the end of the day, as with all such stories in the music industry, the petty financial venality and who-did-what-to-who, are secondary to the larger fact that the band didn't sell records. And looking back objectively in so far as I'm able to, this is really because they were actually a quite limited band - it's entirely possible for a band which has a fresh and attractive sound to really turn people's heads for a short while despite having not much material, look at the Ramones. I have the Bhundu Boys "Shed Sessions" and I like it, but that's because there's an awful lot of memories there - I don't really listen to it very much and I can't remember any of the songs in detail. On the other hand, I listen to my Orchestra Baobab CD a lot, and Orchestra Baobab are apparently doing all right financially.