We pray for moments like this II - Cape Town - 12/ 13 Feb 2010

Three Fridays back I park my car in the OR Thambo long term parking, get on a plane and fly to Cape Town. Anja collects me from the airport and we head to her brother's place. Other than the usual Belville massive hanging at Jaco's house I'm re-united with Lexjunandkel. Jun and I hug through a sliding glass door. I show the kids the t-shirts Lewes drew, I designed and Misha printed for the tour. They like them.

We drive through to Cape Town to meet up with Joe, Ryk, Richard, Makkie, Peach and Dom. We land up rocking out way harder than we should given that the next night is the first show of the tour. This only occurs to me when I climb into bed at 5:30AM.

We get a few hours sleep, wake up, meet Dom at Jaco's and transport the band and their gear to The Assembly. While waiting to sound-check I show the band the little loops of ghosts, kittens and robots I've been animating over the past 3 months. Given that I'll be performing these animations live with the band in about 8 hours, It's kinda ridiculous that it's the first time they're seeing them.

I'm still making my keytar be best friends with the new version of Resolume while the band sound-check. Kelly sings the entire Inspector Gadget theme to check her mic. It's like the most awesome Johnny Foreigner b-side that never existed. The kids finish soundcheck and Anja wants to take them down to the beach for the first time since they got to South Africa. I stay at the club, still fine tuning the visuals and waiting for the projectors to be set up so I can do a video-check.

Around 6:30 the projectors are up and running. I climb onto stage, grap the VGA input, plug it into the video converter for my mac. Go to plug the video converter into my shiny new macbook and surprise! The converter doesn't fit my machine. Turns out the new Macbooks are coming out with some whole standard of video output. "Hey Ben! You're fucked!". Dom tells me to call the ultra friendly and helpful VJ Girl who gives me some numbers of people that might be able to save me and one of them does. A girl called Monique has the right converter. Problem is, she is more than half an hour away in Hout Bay and it's now 7PM - two hours before doors open. I am freaking out.

Joe, as always, handles the stress of shit fucking out way better than I do. He calms me down, gets directions to Hout Bay and borrows Dom's car to get us there. While I'm trying to stop myself freaking out too much more, all I can think is that right now, somewhere along Cape Town's coastline, Alexi is probably sitting with his feet buried in the sand, Kelly is about to dunk handfuls of sand on his head and Junior is dancing in the background. The sun has set by the time we reach Hout Bay. Monique, my hero for the night is standing in the street with the converter. We test it on my macbook and POW! It fits! We head back to Cape Town. Now I'm bummed thinking about Anja and the foreigners eating burgers at Royale. This feeling doesn't last all that long when I discover that Anja has, like an awesome girlfriend, ordered a take away for me. I sit in the backstage of The Assembly eating my burger and I can hear She Man Lion starting their set. And from here all the stress of the day ends and the awesomeness of the night begins... She Man Lion really get the crowd going. I play a mini DJ set while Kidofdoom set up. Kids buy Jo Fo Merch. Dom has decorated the whole venue with ghosty cutouts... ... and she's wearing a little piece of our history from the 2007 Sovereign Cape tour. Kidofdoom start. Makkie is filling in for Barend on bass. It's the first time Kidofdoom have shared a stage with him since his guest appearance at Koppi 08. He kills it. Moe Joe runs from behind the drum kit to the DJ booth and starts mixing some tracks while the Foreigners and I start setting up. I've barely got a moment to digest that I'm actually about to rock out with one of my favorite acts in the world before a the sound of a fuzzed out guitar starts joyfully firing the Top Gun theme into my ears... All beach photos by Anja Venter and Junior Foreigner All party photos by We-Are-Awesome, view the full gallery of their coverage of the night here.