Campus Invasion Tour Stellenbosch

Friday 3 February 2012

Usually the weekend of a big festival means precious little entertainment back home for those not attending. Luckily for everyone who didn’t go to Up The Creek, there was some great stuff happening in Stellenbosch, like Friday’s Campus Invasion Tour at the Klein Libertas, featuring an epic line-up of KONGOS, Bittereinder, Van Coke Kartel, Yesterday’s Pupil & Dead Lucky.

Dead Lucky were playing when we arrived at 6:30 – they weren’t on the lineup the last time I’d checked so their presence was a nice surprise. The only other time I saw them, they were dressed as a congregation of demonic nuns, so seeing them outside in the Stellenbosch sun was doubly surprising.

There was a modest crowd given the early timeslot but the band did a great job of starting things off with a bang.

Up next, and surprise highlight of the night for me was Yesterday’s Pupil. I say ‘surprise’ highlight because, while I’ve seen Peach van Pletzen colaborate with Tumi and am familiar with a few YP tracks, I’d never seem him do a solo set before, and was really impressed.

He was in great spirits and super entertaining, cracking dry jokes about stage-diving into the empty space in front of him and enticing one guy to run into said space after a CD…

The music was great too – Lines and Colours and The Beast particularly stood out, and the electric guitar he whipped out added a fun dimension to the performance. I confess, I didn’t mind Too Tired to Disco‘s absence – as I’m not mad about the track, I’d also neglected to download the free EP but I swiftly rectified that after the gig (and have had Harm on repeat all weekend – go download the EP if you haven’t already, it’s great).

Van Coke Kartel have yet to disappoint, and thrilled the crowd with another high energy, in-your-face performance. They continue to be one of my favourite live bands, and while I wasn’t sold on Vir Almal (especially the video, oh dear oh dear…), Wie’s Bang’s second single Dis ‘n Land is a cracker (and the video’s great too).

With one of my favourite albums of 2010 and a solid live presence, Bittereinder remain one of the most exciting local bands I’ve heard in a long time. It’s been a while since they visited the Cape, (they’ve been busy touring overseas) so I was really looking forward to seeing them again.

Their set felt a bit short and sadly lacked Ware Verhaal, but did premier (for Cape Town at least) 2 new songs and a remix of Voleinder, all of which were pretty hard. It seems the new material is decidely dancier and heavier than their debut, but I’ll reserve judgement until they release their second album – I dunno when that will be, but I can’t wait.

The early night (I couldn’t handle sticking around for PH Fat & SFR inside…) ended with KONGOS’ last CT (excluding Up the Creek) and third last SA performance. There were a few technical issues with the bass lead and the 11pm cut-off time left cries for an encore unsatisfied but apart from that, they were great as ever.

Cool surprise of the set was Bittereinder’s Jaco van der Merwe lending his rhymes to their rendition of Come Together and post-gig surprise was vocalist/bassist Dylan Kongos swapping his shirt with a fan.

I think it’s safe to say SA has gone nuts for KONGOS (I know I’ve loved following their CT gigs) and I’m sure we’ll all be welcoming them with open arms when they come to visit again.