I’ve been to two award ceremonies in my life – the 2009 Loeries (and that one time was quite enough, thanks) and the 2011 MK Awards at the CTICC last Friday. I’ve heard a couple of people complain about the lighting, sound and a whole bunch of other things; maybe it’s my lack of award-show-attendance-experience, or the fact that the most recent thing I can compare them to was the predictably abysmal Grammy Awards, but I really enjoyed the MK Awards. I thought the musicians’ performances were good and really entertaining and that Corne and Twakkie made great hosts. Okay, so the models and sportsmen doing the presenting were pretty useless on the whole, but isn’t that kinda inevitable for award shows?

I liked that each of the performances had something unique about them – I mean this literally; first off Taxi Violence & Inge Beckmann opened alongside Bingo’s crazy axe-grinder-ing:

Hosts Corne & Twakkie then made their entrance, clad in leather, top hats and fake mustaches, and as the evening wore on, each cutaway to them revealed one less item of clothing…

I was surprised Prime Circle scooped ‘best international breakthrough’ over Die Antwoord (the fact that the latter won nothing surprised me too) but good for them…the awards themselves were carried in by models dressed in weird outfits, a different one per category. I didn’t get a shot of all of them, just the more interesting ones…anyway, the second performance of the evening was Jack Parow & JR, and their on-stage-enhancement came in the form of skateboarders and breakdancers – pretty cool.

A couple more awards then Zebra & Giraffe burst into ‘The Inside’ with singer/guitarist Greg Carlin being lowered onto the stage from the ceiling.

Prime Circle performed next, saving their surprise, a  shower of fireworks, for the end – and such a surprise it was, that my poor little camera just couldn’t focus in time…

A few more awards then ‘Way to go’ by Thieve & Die Heuwels Fantasties, which, to be honest is really just a boring song that wasn’t even greatly enhanced by their on-stage laser lightshow.

Heuwels (and Mr X) were the big winners of the night though, winning best SFX, neon, video and a Hyundai i10 for being the best group.

The second last performance was from Foto Na Dans, who had some pretty (though unfortunately non-lit) lamps on stage as well as a full on choir and strings section.

Best live act went to Van Coke Kartel, who proved exactly why they deserved it as they closed the awards ceremony in chaotic style; their ‘special something’? Full-on fire-ball-shooting stage props…

I thought some of the winners were a bit unexpected (nothing for Die Antwoord and Jack Parow was a surprise) and some were a bit unfortunate (Snotkop winning multiple awards for anything just seems wrong to me) but overall, I  seemed to have missed some of the things most people seemed critical of (sound, lighting etc.), I was annoyed by a couple of other things though…

Fearing security would give me grief, I decided to leave my big camera at home and take along my little point-and-hope Ixus. This turned out to be a mistake. While the little camera actually managed pretty decently, there were loads of non-media people wandering around with DSLRs and I have no doubt I’d’ve had no trouble bringing mine in. Bummer.

The other thing was seating – the seated tickets turned out to be unnumbered and unrowed. So our ‘row H’ tickets meant nothing, which worked out well for us as we got in early enough to find good seats near the front, but it meant that when people got up to stand by the stage or to get drinks, their seats were pretty much fair game for anyone else – including people who only had standing tickets (this happened in the row in front of me, 3 people left for whatever reason and some time later 3 chancers wandered up and congratulated themselves on getting seats at half price). Yes, I can understand the ‘those seats were just gonna stand there empty’ argument to an extent but if anyone could just go anywhere, the tickets should’ve all cost the same.

Finally there was the afterparty – the info I’d seen for it said that the price of entry was included in the MKA ticket price…turns out that wasn’t the case at all and only VIPs got in free. Look, I have no problem paying to get into a gig, but when it’s advertised with the impression of it being included and it’s not then I feel a bit cheated…

Anyway, all things considered I still enjoyed the show and had a great night :)