You are invited! Generation Next

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This Saturday So Many Animal Calls will be hosting an very special event. Featuring Tennyson Extended and Night Sky Empire, two brand new Joburg bands who have both having just started playing shows, and both are playing very different styles of instrumental guitar music. The night's lineup will be completed by the not as brand new but just as awesome Eyes Like Mirrors and will feature visuals by your humble narrator, Ben Rausch.

Back in November 2005, in Trance Sky, I watched the first live performance by an instrumental band from Pretoria. During that first Kidofdoom show I had no idea that just 1 year down the line I'd be throwing parties with the dudes on a monthly basis and touring to Cape Town together. I had no idea a whole little community of awesome bands would pop up and that hundreds of kids would get behind this new wave of local music.

Once this community was established I had no idea how by the end of 2008 almost all the bands would be breaking up or going on hiatus. I had no idea no new bands would come along and we'd enter a pretty barren dry patch where very little exciting new stuff happened at all.

But all through the dry patch that stretched over 2008/9/10 I fully believed things would pick up again - new bands would start up, new venues would present themselves, a new generation of kids would create a new community of bands. After seeing Night Sky Empire and Tennyson Extended, each playing awesome debut sets only a few weeks apart, I'm now fully confident this is going to happen. To me, the three bands playing Generation Next really are ushering in a new era. Honestly, I couldn't feel more lucky to be able to watch things unfolding right from the get go.