We do this all the time: Monkey Island

THE CURSE OF MONKEY ISLAND! - 29 MAY - CAPITOL THEATER photos by Anja Venter

Good weekend: UFO and The Sleestaks

If you're only here to read about South Africa's exciting little rock and roll party scene then skip this post.

This weekend there weren't any rocking DJ gigs or crazy sets by fantastic bands. Save for a pretty lovely soundtrack at a house party and a new album by an old favourite on Saturday afternoon, this was a pretty rock and roll free weekend.

Said house party went down on Friday night, and it was in celebration of a pretty special occasion. Phil Davies was celebrating his birthday. I became friends with Phil when he was 6 years old - he's my oldest friend and on Friday night we celebrated him turning 25. It was an awesome night, listened to great music, saw many awesome friends, ate green curry and pudding out of ice cream cones. Too cool.

On Saturday we slept super late. Woke up, bought groceries to make delicious brunch, ate, watched Surface and then went to hang out with our kitten friends at Bounty Hunters. I took Anja home to her place. Landed up hanging out with her and Cam, Jar and Chris for hours, listening to the new Japandroids "album" and watching this guy: ...and the recent remake of Land of The Lost. I thought it was pretty damn cool. I really loved the intentionally horrible rubber aliens. Later in the night I headed home and met up with Matt McFarlane, my dear friend that now lives in London. Through the beauty of modern technology and X-Box Live we were able to hang out till ealry on Sunday morning, killing thousands of zombies together. I got up pretty early on Sunday morning. Anja and gang came to fetch me and we drove through to the international capital of bad fiberglass rocks and disturbing miners, Gold Reef City. This isn't how we usually enjoy our Sundays, but yesterday was special; we were having ourselves wildly flung around in the air to say bye to our friend Duncan. Pretty soon he'll be leaving us to move to the UK. I can't think of a more fun way to have seen him off. Plus we got to play with a baby cow!

Kill your cool and let it move you,

PUT YOUR BODY ON AUTOMATIC!

We pray for moments like this XXVIII - Joburg to middle of Karoo - 23 Feb 2010

We're up way early on Wednesday morning. Everyone had packed the night before, so we just load the bags and gear into the cars. Matt and Marc drive us to the train station.

In the 26 years I've been alive I don't think I've ever set foot on a train in South Africa. Now we're going to be taking one all the way across the country.

To be honest I was worried about 7 geeky kids with a ridiculous amount of instruments, cameras, clothes, food, booze and camping gear wondering into Johannesburg station. Turns out my fears were complete paranoia and the station is totally chilled. We spot Henk from Hotbox wondering around eating a giant sausage roll - he directs us to where everyone's waiting to board the train and in a few minutes we're surrounded by a small army of other geeky kids with loads of instruments and bags. It's awesome seeing everyone, the Doomers, Cutout Collective, Tidal Waves and Yesterday's Pupil, Peter, MJ, Brendon, Thomas and all Hotbox doggies. There are some new faces too. We find out a bunch of the Pretoria kids have already done a little train trip from PTA station to JHB. Then there's Roger Young and his gang that drove up from Durban for this. With our stupid amount of luggage it's a little tricky getting down flights of stairs and into the train, but we all manage. Everyone's super friendly and helping one another out. Some dudes gladly move a compartment down so Anja, Chris, Anthea and I can hook up a cabin alongside the Foreigners.

It isn't even 10 in the morning, but we start partying before we've even left the station. Henk and Willie show up with complimentary bags of supplies from Hotbox. Each person get some candy, an energy drink, a Vice magazine and a bottle of wine. And then they give us our awesome, Doktrine illustrated t-shirts (design at the end of this post). Once we're"on the road" our cabin seems to officially become the party spot for our gang and any passing friends. Things get silly. Really silly. At times the amount of people we squeeze into the cabin is just absurd. Drinks get spilt. Sunglasses fly off faces sticking out of windows. Lex keeps asking concerned questions about "bandits". Anja's drawing everyone labels for our little plastic cups. Jun is wearing two hats at the same time. Someone gives an authoritative triple knock on our door. A paranoid kid grabs a triple-blade J from the lips of a band's bassist and throws it out a window. At a station. When someone that isn't a cop turns out to be the individual behind the knocking someone else offers to get off the train, climb down onto the tracks and recover the lost artifact. Said plan is put into action and pulled off. Except the conductor shows up, waves at the cabin and tells us we shouldn't get off the train at stations. We say it was the other guy with dreadlocks. He says okay. Pauses. Tells us "Ek ryk die dagga." Blank stares. "The weed - I smell the weed". More confused stares. "Okay guys; be safe".

After this "go ahead and do anything" from the train's main authority figure I'm feeling even happier watching South Africa blur past me. We're trying to use Lex's phone as a kind of tiny boom box. For the most part it's doing a pretty good job as the sounds of Hot Club and Life Without Buildings drift down from one of the top bunk beds. Later henk and Willie hook up a DVD player to a surround sound system, distributing individual speakers to the five closest compartments.

Wondering around the train I discover that the only other passengers are a large church group, mostly pensioners, dressed in matching lime green t-shirts. I can only imagine what they must think the 80 something animals partying their way across the country. By midnight we realise that we've been rocking out for more than 12 hours. Everyone seems to agree that we should do the responsible thing and get to bed, we've still got 3 nights of music festival mayhem ahead. Before our plans of sleep can be put into action, Ariel storms into our cabin and sits down. He's massivly drunk/ amusing. Before being chased out so we can sleep, he puts on an incredibly spirited performance, singing his own version of Art Brut's "My Little Brother just discovered rock and roll" while the original faintly plays over our fifth of a surround-sound-system.

"WHY DON'T OUR PARENTS CARE ABOUT US?!?" He screams at the end. I'm sure they do care about us. And if they knew what an amazing, unforgettable day their children have had while traveling across the country, they'd be pretty glad we did discover rock and roll. * photos by Kevin Goss Ross

Free Mix Friday! Sockets Records Spring Mix!

This week's episode of "Free Mix Friday" is quite a departure from the past posts in the series. While past entries were mixes by South African DJs, this time it's a kind of sampler from a Washington DC based label called Sockets Records.

The music that's come out of DC has had a massive impact on me. From Bad Brains to Fugazi to The Dismemberment Plan to Q and not U, from the early 80ies to the mid 2000s the US capital churned out a pretty hefty chunk of my favourite bands of my lifetime.

But somewhere around the middle of the last decade, following Fugazi going on hiatus, El Guapo changing their name and moving to New York, Q and not U, Black Eyes and The Plan breaking up and several other casualties, after 20 years of totally destroying, the DC rock and roll machine really lost momentum.

Luckily it seems that at the turn of the decade there's been a major revitalization in the DC music community with a whole bunch of massively promising new acts bubbling under. Part of it is members of old Dischord acts (like Beauty Pill & Q and not U) forming new bands. But a major part of it is entirely new acts, making music that's so different it looks set to usher in a whole new chapter in DC music history. Looking over at DC from Johannesburg, it seems like no-one has as a bigger a finger on the pulse of this new wave of DC awesome as Socket Records does. Although my favourite Sockets act (the STELLAR instrumental band "Buildings") aren't included, The Sockets Records Spring Mix is a pretty great representation of the label's fantastic roster of fresh, exciting acts. From the fuck-yeah-feel-good-math-pop of Hume to the alt-hop of the Cornel West Theory the mix is a total winner. It covers a whole lot of awesome ground and cements Sockets' position in my mind as the one of most exciting new labels to follow going into this decade.

DOWNLOAD THE SOCKETS RECORDS SPRING MIX HERE!

1. Grip - Hume 2. Five Minutes at the Rainforest Cafe - Macaw 3. A Diviner - True Womanhood 4. Moon Rocks (Ricky Rabbit remix) - Rap Dragons 5. Rookie of the Year - Nine-11 Thesaurus 6. Head Shrinker (Tyondai Braxton remix) - Extra Life 7. In Pursuit of Sunshine - The Wholeheart 8. Hearted - Sean Peoples 9. Letter of a General - Imperial China 10. Durito's Revenge (Dirty Bombs) - The Cornel West Theory

You Are Invited! Givan Lotz and the Howling Gils.

I should actually just start some new series stricktly dedicated to Wolves' Howl nights. It seems week after week they're fulling their fantastic little coffee shop up with folky fun that gets the Animal Calls stamp of approval.

Tonight they're hosting long time singer/ songwriter favourite Givan Lotz as well as very pleasant new discovery Gil Hockman.

RSVP here!

While prior commitments will mean I won't be able to make it tonight, I'll be wishing I was eating some red velvet cupcakes and listening to Gil's ballad of him and the doctor. You should totally head through and have an eat/ listen for me!

Hooray for Humans! Johnny Foreigner and Yesterday's Pupil collaboration unveiled!

It's hard to believe it's been three months since Johnny Foreigner left South Africa. A quarter of a year down the line and I'm still slowly posting words and pictures of the tour in the now pretty epic "We Pray for Moments Like This" series. We haven't even started editing the 7 hours of footage we shot while they were here and I still have a copy of "Grace and the Bigger Picture" that I owe Cam.

But while So Many Animal Calls is still kinda spinning after having the noise pop trio in our country, there is something really special from their SA tour that I can share with you right now.

Right at the start of the "We Pray..." series I mentioned how the band spent a few days collaborating on a recording with our own Yesterday's Pupil. Well three months down the line you can now:

DOWNLOAD
JOHHNY FOREIGNER vs YESTERDAY'S PUPIL:
WITH WHO, WHO AND WHAT I'VE GOT

Personally I think the experiment worked out beautifully. It came out REALLY different to how it was sounding down in Cape town right after they'd laid it down and the dense, synthy sound has it really feeling like a collaboration between the two entities and not just a Jo Fo song produced by Peach.

As if the unveiling of this beautiful South African produce weren't enough to get you shouting hooray;

In a recent blog post the band said they'd like to come record their next album here! How freaking awesome?

We do this all the time: You! Me! Dancing! pt II

YOU! ME! DANCING! - 22 MAY - KITCHENERS CARVERY
photos by Anja Venter