Cape Town Festival – Jax Panik, Nomfusi & The Lucky Charms

Sat 19 March 2011

To coincide with Human Rights Day, The Cape Town Festival consisted of three days worth of of free concerts and entertainment at the Company Gardens. I missed the Rio-style carnival on Long Street unfortunately, but braved the heat to go check out Jax Panik on Saturday evening.

It was a lot bigger than I’d expected – the whole of the gardens seemed filled with people, and all kinds of weird and wonderful people they were too…fitting, as the festival was celebrating the diversity of people living in Cape Town. From little kids to homeless people – it was a total mix of ages and backgrounds.

We got there in time for the last few songs from the Glenn Robertson Jazz Band, who were really good, if you like that sort of thing…

Goodhope FM was one of the sponsors, so the MC was one of their presenters/DJs whose name I forget…anyway, she did her bit to keep the crowd engaged while the next act were setting up. She walked around interviewing people and asking them where they were from and what they loved most about Cape Town – most people answered the second question with rapturous cries of ‘snoek!’ and ‘gatsbies!’ which was pretty hilarious :D

Up next on stage were Nomfusi & The Lucky Charms. Again, not my kind of music, but they did what they did really well and were fun to watch.

Afterwards, the MC was back for some more audience interaction. This time she invited some girls up on stage to compete for a CT Festival T-shirt by dancing to 4 or 5 different songs…the way they were going at though, you’d swear it was their lives on the line. Every song, regardless of the change in mood or tempo, saw them crazily bouncing, shaking and (in the case of the winner) mildly flashing the crowd.

Initially they’d stood there and introduced themselves by telling the crowd where they were from. Cheers from their fellow representitives errupted as they went down the row – “Mannenberg!” woooooooo “Bontes!” weeeooooooo “Brooklyn!” waaaaaaah “Botswana!” ….the MC stared blankly, “I’m sorry, where?” “Botswana…”…”like…the country…?” “Yup!”…”Oh! Okay…Botswana!” – finally some backup from her homies and the rest of the crowd at this point – wooooo!

Botswana went on to be the crowd favourite and winner, which was amusing given that the whole festival was centered on celebrating the diversity of Capetonians…

Jax Panik still weren’t ready so the MCs (another Goodhope chicky had come out by this point) were forced to improvise…they called the two ‘biggest Jax Panik fans’ on stage to give a mini performance while we waited…kudos to the ‘super fans’ for doing it, but shame…

The Panik fans seemed to have appeared out of nowhere – I turned around at some point and became aware of a whole flock of them, (mostly girls but quite a few guys too) dressed in their artfully home-modified JP T-shirts and staring at the stage with looks of undisguised longing and anticipation.

Finally they errupted into shrieks of joy as the band appeared onstage. Last time I saw them was at Sonic Summer in December last year, and at their first live performance (with the full band) at Synergy Live before that. Both previous times they’d kinda been experimenting and getting a feel for how best to perform live, wearing masks, having a guitarist, using backtracks etc.

This time round the only mask was on the guy behind the laptop (a different one from the synth player I’d seen the previous times) and some of the arrangements had been altered a bit. Their tracks are generally a bit dancier during the live shows so it was a welcome surprise to hear a slower, more stripped down version of Loser for Love, a version I actually really prefer to the one on the album.

I’m a big fan of Jax Panik and love watching them. It’s great seeing them get more comfortable onstage as they get more gigs under their belt – I saw one of the media photographers (wearing a Depeche Mode T-shirt – awesome!) indicating his long zoom lens and giving a defeated glance to one of the other media guys as Jax jumped off stage and ran past him to greet the crowd…the photographer disappeared for a while after that and when he reappeared it was with a wide-angle lens – a good call given that Jax and HC were bouncing around all over the stage.

Super fun as always, my personal highlight was the gasp and look of outrage on the tannie next to me during Sex Me Slowly (she then shuffled out rather rapidly 3 lines into the opening chorus).

We didn’t stick around for Die Heuwels Fantasties who were up next, but wandered back up the avenue past the small crowds at the food and drink and market areas. I’m generally pretty cynical about organised public holiday events as they tend to be overly political and wearisome, but this one was different. It was hard not to feel a little warm and fuzzy looking around at the really cool festival put together for our city – I think it’s a great initiative and I hope to see lots more fun stuff like it in the future.