Everyone! Do the rebellion !

Here's your money back! Here's your punk rock back!

We pray for moments like this XIV - Joburg - 20 Feb 2010

After the madness of last night I'm seriously regretting telling the Dynamo gang to be at my house at 12. After I've dragged myself out of bed and had a shower however I'm pretty relieved we aren't getting started any later.

Jared's the first robot technician that shows up. We head through to Campus Square to get some final supplies and munchies. Richard meets up with us at the Square. We head back to my place and get to making the last few pieces of decor and some bonus robot helmets to give kids. Over the course of the day Kobe, Rox, Patrick, Claudette, Colin, Cam, Wim and Rod pull through. We make robots all afternoon, until we need to head through to the venue to set up.

Days like Television: Isochronous - The Curve

I thought it'd be nice to occasionally post some cool videos by cool local acts. To facilitate this I've started yet another new series, Days like Television. With a title lifted from lyrics by my 2nd favourite band of the past decade and a picture of a tiny 8mm camera wielding green nagaapie-ish creature, Days like Television is here!

...

WOO!

For this debut episode I present you with the recently unveiled video for "The Curve" by Pretoria over-achievers, Isochronous.

You are invited! Dogbox Stellenbosch

Damn! This is a total fail; It's not like you can travel back in time and go to this party now, but the artwork on this poster is too damn awesome not to post, even if it is after the event. Total awesomeness created by Haasbroek for Dogbox Stellenbosch.

We pray for moments like this XIII - Pretoria - 19 Feb 2010

I've posted a crapload of photos documenting the Pretoria leg of Johnny Forienger's SA tour. This post will however be the last focusing on this part of the tour. For this final Pretoria post I proudly to present the photography of AJ Howard.

Hooray for Humans! Us Kids Know have problems!

After releasing their much animal called about debut EP in December, Us Kids Know are already working on recording a new song! It isn't so much shocking that the kids are already recording new material. What surprising is that this new song (optimistically titled Problems) will take you longer to listen to than the whole of the band's EP, Friendship Test. Yes, Problems is a 30 minute long song and even weirder than the song's epic durration is the format the band have chosen to release it on - cassette tape!

Durban based, rock and roll oriented clothing label Hruki will be releasing a brand new Us Kids Know shirt. With a design inspired by the band's fantastic Tick Stapping video, each shirt will be partnered with a copy of the Problems tape.

Woo!

Good weekend en dis befok.

My weekend was highlighted by Chocobo chicks, no wave noise, dolphins bursting through the chests of Scottish men and songs about toasted sandwiches. I honestly spent half the weekend on my couch. Final Fantasy XIII has come into my life, and I couldn't be happier for it. Wondering through sci fi worlds, killing weird creatures with a gang over styled kids has been a big part of my life since i was 16. Ten years later I'm loving the direction Square have taken the franchise. Being able to shoot things with a guy that has a cute baby bird living in his afro just makes it that much better.

Anja and I also spent all of yesterday moleing, in celebration of our 3 year anniversary.

But this weekend wasn't entirely spent on the couch. On Saturday night I went to Kitcheners to see two new acts, acoustic soloist Gil Hockman and no wave duo Jaco & Z-Dog. Pretty exciting stuff.

Gil, as the former owner of legendary venue the Armchair Theater, was responsible for many of my best memories touring Cape Town back in the day. I'd seen his noise-poetry band Buckfever Underground, but since he moved to Joburg a year or so ago I haven't heard of him making any music. Pleasently I discovered on Saturday that Gil has in fact taken up an acoustic guitar and recently started performing some singer songwriter stuff that I must say is pretty damn good. Really beautiful, sincere, moving stuff.

Gil was followed up by the most exciting new project I've seen out of Joburg since discovering Eyes like Mirror sometime last year. Jaco & Z-Dog are 2 members of the rock-and-roll-as-fuck art collective, Avant Car Guard. Avant Car Guard have spoken of their three members as a band. They clearly have a totally punk rock approach to making art, churning out work that constantly gives the art world a massive "fuck you". But at their core, they're still a visual art collective. Jaco and Z Dog however, are a real band. Well, that's if you're someone that considers one guy with a guitar and one guy with a microphone to be a band. Given their drummerless, bassless, keyboardless, saxaphoneless set-up, it's pretty tricky trying to box the band into a genre. Z-Dog plays massively distorted guitar that veers between Shellac, Pelican and Lightning Bolt. Jaco talks, screams and occasionally sings over this noise. The songs cover as diverse topics as driving for ages, trying to find a firewire cable:

"Ons ry en ons ry om een firewire cable te kry"

... to ranting about the fact that almost all South African frontmen/women in bands, really really really suck:

"Every night there's an asshole on the stage"

Highly relateable topics for me. One of their songs starts out looking like it's just gonna be a mockery of Joburg nightlife, but escalates to an epic journey. The band go to Cape town...

"en dis boring"

fly to Durban...

"en dis boring"

drive to Swaziland

"En dis boring! En ek se Z-Dog! Ons kan nie so aan gaan nie!"

Eventually they drive a bakie all the way from South Africa to Holland

"...en dis boring!"

Even North America, South America and most of the world is boring so finally Jaco & Z-Dog head back to Joburg

"... en dis befok!"

Too awesome. I had to buy a copy of their debut EP, which came on a CD-R, complete with already smashed jewel case. I also had to get myself a pair of official Jaco & Z-Dog gold nail clippers. So with adequate doses of sci-fi carnage, chocolate mouse, French men on wires, basil chicken, pretty songs, noisy songs, new nail clippers and dead Scottish groundskeepers, I think it's safe to say this was a good weekend.

We pray for moments like this XII - Pretoria - 19 Feb 2010

When I wrote about Johnny Foreigner's performance in Pretoria I mentioned that our friend Liam Lynch was dragged up on stage at the show. He played guest guitarist for Salt Pepper and Spinderella, as seen in this photo by his awesome girl Lize Kay. When Liam wasn't rocking out with the band, he was crystallizing moments of the band rocking out.

Here's a little selection of the those crystallized moments...