THE FUNK WILL FIND YOU

Sunday night didn’t start on such a good note (oh man…I just realised what a bad pun that was… sorry) as my car’s battery died, and as we eventually made it to Tempos, WHITE RABBIT were bellowing out their dreary tunes. *shudder*

The bands I went to watch were playing inside, next to the bar (weird) and they had to wait for the soccer (yawn) to finish before they could set up. I thought I had seen small stages before, but this was a couple of blocks that could be moved around to cater for a drummer and anyone else not willing to move around too much. I wont bore you with the details of the two power failures that almost caused the whole evening to be scratched (nnnnnnooooooooooooo), but as soon as the lights came back on again, VOODOO CHILD transformed the post load shedding vibe into one that got people dancing and singing along in no time. I’ve never seen a bad VOODOO CHILD set and now see that regardless of the circumstance or stage size, they always put on a big, professional and energetic performance.

If you haven’t decided what to buy with your Musica vouchers you got as a Christmas present, I would highly recommend the NEW ACADEMICS album ‘CITY OF STRANGE’, that I have had on repeat since Woodstock. Every time I think we have found SA’s ‘most likely to succeed’ export, another one crawls out of the woodwork. This was another really amazing act, making this particular evening such a highlight. There are so many great things about NEW ACADEMICS that all I can say is that you need to take the time out to experience a live show. This band, and their album are both phenomenal and (take this as a warning – in a good way) VERY addictive.

THE NARROW, 16 STITCH & INERSHA @ TEMPOS

Even though we keep promising each other that we will never take another step in, or trip over another drunken passed out teenager at Tempos, we are always lured back by some brilliant band.
To find out that we had missed MUNKINPURE’s set (AGAIN…the third time), bummed us out a bit, but surely the evening still had much promise.

I think we’ve been a bit unfair on 16 STITCH lately. We’ve seen this band so many times that we either leave before they play, arrive after a set, or just don’t go because we’ve “been there, done that”. We also gave them a bad review once for taking over an hour to set up for a set. We will be the first to admit that we can be fickle at times, and through it all we have actually forgotten how good these guys really are. They played a fantastic set and entertained the crowd more than I think anyone expected. Good going guys!

Some bands just seem unavoidable and INERSHA are currently that band. They are not bad, but unfortunately they aren’t very good either. They played an average set resulting in us adding them to our list of ‘sameish’ bands.

After missing their reportedly fantastic gig at Woodstock, I was really glad I got an opportunity to see THE NARROW. People seemed to appear out of nowhere and we ended up standing on a wall on the side of the stage to see anything. By ‘anything’ I really mean the occasional appearance of the bassist between people’s heads. But the most important thing was the music and I really enjoyed every bit and everyone else seemed to be under the same impression. They showed yet again the level of professionalism that comes with being one of the countries ‘bigger’ bands. They take rock to it’s full potential without compromising the vocals (they rock harder than most heavy bands without screaming). THE NARROW made up for an otherwise not particularly musically interesting evening and made yet another trip to Tempos worth it.

Replay, Voodoo Child, Harris Tweed

Double whammy…and I’m not referring to the Michael Bolton/Westlife weekend. What I do mean is two VERY late nights at Cool Runnings on Thursday and 88, Norwood on Friday.

We saw nine bands in two days, which was pretty awesome. We saw a band we hadn’t seen before called “Re-Play”. Do yourself a favour and go watch them at Tempo’s on 10 March. Their image may be deceiving, but their stage show is BRILLIANT! They also have the best drummer in the country, in my opinion, who should also, in my opinion, leave his shirt off permanently.

Voodoo Child stole the show, as they always do. They were worth waiting around for…they just need to update the “gigs” section on their MySpace page so we can spread the word and the love.

The only band really worth mentioning from Friday night is Harris Tweed. These cowboys/girl are on their way to Texas for the SXSW festival, so they had a fund-raiser to help them along. The gig was filmed by MK89, so look out for that. It was a brilliant gig and they will show those Texans how to do it SA style.