If there's one thing holding Gauteng music scene back it's lack of venues. When I first got involved with all these shenanigans back in 2005 there were only a handful of spots between Jozi and P-Town where bands could have gigs, DJs could play sets and people could throw parties. In these years since then a bunch of these venues have closed down and very few new spots have opened up to take this place. So I was pretty delighted to be invited to play this show;
Arcade Empire is a brand new venue opening up in the East of Pretoria. To celebrate the launch of this new spot the boys behind it are throwing a huge free party. I'll be DJing alongside my main man Matt Suttner and the night will be headlined by a performance from Cape Town "repping masjien" Jack Parow. This is gonna be big!
Last Tuesday we threw a little launch party to celebrate the South African release of a little movie called Scott Pilgrim vs. The World based on a little comic called "The best thing your eyes will ever see".
Personally I had an night that was beyond awesome. The event sold out. Then people that couldn't get onto the list still showed up, just hoping someone wouldn't show so they could get in. So with a full cinema of kids I got to watch what is easily my favourite film of the year. In my opinion, the best "film based on a comic" that anyone has ever made.
After the screening we were given the cinema's smoking lounge to have a little after party, which featured loads of cool music and even more cool kids.
Monster-sized high fives to Nu Metro and UIP for making this night a reality. It was a fantastically special night.
If anyone reading this hasn't seen Scott Pilgrim vs the World, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's a must see.
This good weekend felt like a holiday, but instead of going somewhere with a beach or mountains I spent this holiday in the city I lived in for 21 years, Pretoria.
At around 8ish Anja and I drove through the capital city. I VJed at the afore mentioned Dogbox 80ies party. In keeping with Dogbox's reputation, the night was a predictably awesome blend of crazy dancefloor antics and backyard shenanigans. Although I spent most of the evening with my keyboard on the stove and my macbook on the fridge, getting to rock the kitchen with Haezer, Moe Joe, Dr Kuhmalo, Matt Suttner and Peter Pan made for a ridiculously fun way to enjoy the party.
Sometime after 2 Anja and I decided it was probably the responsible thing to do to head home. For once home wasn't an hour away in Melville, but 10 minutes away in Brooklyn, the location of the lovely Doktrine HQ.
This was where the weekend started feeling like a holiday because when MJ let us into his home, he showed Anja and I through to our room and we felt like we were going to be staying in a hotel.
Oh, I should probably mention here that MJ and Cecelia asked Anja to paint a mural for the offices of their fantastic design studio Doktrine. So they had us over at their place for the better part of the weekend and showed us the best time while we were there.
The first half of Saturday was made up of waking up way later than usual, eating awesome breakfast, having a swim, buying mural painting supplies. Anja then spent a couple hours painting while MJ and I hung out, bought braai stuff and proceeded to braai the rest of the night away. Many Black Label bottles were emptied and much awesome food eaten. Christian and Lizelle even came to hang out for a couple hours making the night even better.
I showed everyone the first episode of the Ben and Matt show:
MJ showed us one of the funniest things I've seen in ages:
We woke up early on Sunday, had some breakfast and then got down to some serious work. The paint Anja was using on the mural was kinda thin and was coming out an uneven and grey. To get everything looking solid black, I spent the whole day going over her lines while she drew incredible new instances of bats swooping downwards, ghost wolves floating around and fish spontaneously exploding into pieces of sushi.
At tenish, with Anja's mural looking fantastic, we packed up, bid MJ and Cecelia farewell and headed home. Once we were back in the hood I watched Matt and Shawn playing a couple holes of Wii golf and then Anja and I spent our last hour of consciousness with our close friends Veridium and popcorn.
If there's one thing holding Gauteng music scene back it's lack of venues. When I first got involved with all these shenanigans back in 2005 there were only a handful of spots between Jozi and P-Town where bands could have gigs, DJs could play sets and people could throw parties. In these years since then a bunch of these venues have closed down and very few new spots have opened up to take this place. So I was pretty delighted to be invited to play this show;
