Rammstein at the Grand Arena

Wed 09 February 2011

Rammstein announced near the end of last year that they’d be coming to SA and I dragged my feet, so that, by the time I decided I wanted to go, it was too late and the concert was sold out. I tried not to dwell on it and just reasoned, ‘oh well, it’s fine, it’s just not meant to be…’

Months elapsed and suddenly it was Wednesday February 9, the day of the Cape Town concert. Having made my peace with not going some while back, it took me a while to react to the news that Big Concerts had released some 60 canceled tickets that morning – but not too long a while. I think the whole procedure that followed took around an hour, but it was both so frantic and intense that it oscillated between feeling quicker and slower; basically there were a lot of panicked and broken (apparently the reception at UCT seriously sucks) phonecalls back and forth until everything was confirmed and 2 of my friends and I were officially off to Rammstein that evening.

It was the first time I’d been to a concert at Grand West Casino’s Grand Arena, and the first ‘proper’ concert I’ve been to too (I mean with designated standing/sitting areas – I’m more used to standing where I like in a dingy club…); the security lady who took our tickets said they were expecting 7000 people, and that some had been waiting at the venue since 11AM…now, I was super excited, but definitely not enough so to camp out 9 hours early.  But this was Rammstein, and they had some diehard fans, which is why I was actually a little disappointed, as I was totally expecting more dressing up than there actually was. Sure, there were a few old-school corset, boots and scary-haired goths but they seemed to be in the minority, at least from what I saw. There were a few weekend goths, who sort of tried a bit too hard and weren’t very convincing, there were even a couple of peak caps and golf shirts, but mostly the crowd seemed to consist of long-haired, jeans and black/band (Rammstein, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin even…) t-shirted metalheads.

Still, we made an effort! (Well, Mikhaila said she’d leave the dressing up to me and Jess, so we had fun with that…)

Jess Jess & me

Continue reading

Posted in Gigs/Live Music
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2 Comments

send to twitter


Spoek Mathambo & Mshini Wam and the Wild Eyes at the Assembly

Sat 05 February 2011

Last Saturday I saw the Wild Eyes again for the first time since 2005. Last I’d heard they’d broken up some years ago – I was always a fan, so when I heard they were back I was pretty excited, and when they played a set of all-new songs, I was really excited.

Last time I saw them, front-man Nikhil was in a short, hot pink wig; aside from the fact that this time’s wig was platinum blonde, visually they hadn’t changed. Their sound however had changed quite a bit. The new material feels a little less frantic (which isn’t really the word but…) and a little more measured…older and wiser maybe? I dunno, and it doesn’t really matter – the point is they’re back and they’re better than ever:

Continue reading

Posted in Gigs/Live Music
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Leave a comment

send to twitter


Boo! & Caroline Coon at Mercury

Fri 04 February 2011

Last Friday we headed to Mercury to see Boo!, and were actually so early that the we had to wait outside the closed doors for a little while…but we weren’t the only ones – there was quite a crowd of eager beavers gathered by the time the doors finally opened.

Once inside and upstairs, we were entertained by a somewhat thrashy set from Caroline Coon.

Continue reading

Posted in Gigs/Live Music
Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

2 Comments

send to twitter


Yoav, Farryl Purkiss & Jeremy Loops at The Assembly

Thurs 03 February 2011

On Thursday, Yoav played a final Cape Town show at the Assembly, and, as usual, was totally fantastic. The other two acts were good matches for him, also doing the singer-songwriter-loop-pedal-one-man-band thing, though Jeremy was billed as “Jeremy Loops & Co” (“& Co” took the form of a rapper while we were there) and Farryl was joined by Ross Campbell on drums.

We arrived in time to catch the last few tracks from Jeremy Loops (& Co) – I’d never heard him before and was pretty impressed.

Continue reading

Posted in Gigs/Live Music
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2 Comments

send to twitter


Balkan Beat Box

Fri 21 January 2011

On Friday I saw Balkan Beat Box at the (very windy) parking lot in Harrington Street.

Continue reading

Posted in Gigs/Live Music
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

1 Comment

send to twitter