This was another one of those Jailbreak weekends for me. I went into it in shackles and came out of it a free man!
I spent Friday night working. Animating visuals for The Crusades launch. This wasn't all bad as, some this time was spent animating on the couch while Annette watched the awesome Porco Rosso in the background.
The band I and met at The Bioscope early on Saturday morning and were joined by Cam and Chad who would be doing the sound for the night. What followed was undoubtedly the most enjoyable set-up and soundcheck that I've ever been involved in. Been able to get into the Bioscope 10 hours before the doors would even open meant the whole thing was really relaxed and the fact that it was our friends doing the sound meant the whole thing felt more like hanging out than working. By 2PM the visuals we're checked and the place was sounding fantastic. Chad and I popped out to get some Thai food, then I headed "home".(I should mention that, since my update about moving out of Lothbury, I've temporarily moved in with Patrick and Annette in Illovo and it's been awesome) Patrick and I chilled on the balcony for a bit while I made some last minute tweaks on the visuals. Phil came over and together we made our way back to The Bioscope. And with that let me switch to the present tense:
We hang out outside the venue for a while, greeting our guests as they slowly start showing up. It's great seeing the amount of our friends that have pulled through for this way more expensive than usual show. There's also a good amount of new faces coming through the doors of The Bioscope which is really cool to see. For me it's pretty rad that my parents have come all the way from Pretoria for the show. In the 6 years I've been DJing, VJing, throwing parties and playing in bands they've never really seen what I do - I figured a nice sit down show like this would be the most perfect way to fix that.
The show has sold out the 68 spots that the Bioscope offered, but as the awesome guys they are, Russel and Darryl squeeze and extra chair on each side of each row so we can fit in the extra people that have shown up without booking tickets. Once the 80-odd people have taken their places in the cinema The Mirrors and I lead in and unleash the best we've engineered, trained and groomed over the past month and a bit.
The show goes fantastically. Cam's mix sounds totally perfect, the crowd is lovely and seeing my visuals projected onto such a massive screen is such an awesome feeling. Sadly what goes down is mostly undocument, save for the above picture and the below video.
We play through 2 songs not on EP, then say our farewells and tear through the 5 tracks of Crusades as they are on the CD. I have the best time, but it's over all too soon, leaving me a sweaty exhausted mess. After the show is done I stick around the stage for a bit, selling our recently printed t-shirts to some enthusiastic audience members. Once they've left I head outside to hang with the people that have stuck around. It's really cool chatting to people about the show, the response is really positive and it's so interesting hearing how different people picked up on different little things that we worked into the visuals.
Eventually things start thinning out, we pack up, say bye to the band and then make my way to Kitchener's for some celebratory beer and dancing. There's a 90ies party going down. I buy said beer, and before I can have a sip I hear the first beats of Weezer's El Scorcho bouncing along the dancefloor. I run through the crowd to the front of the dancefloor and happily see Warren screaming along. I drop my beer down on a table grab Warren and start screaming. Having done exactly the same thing at Wipeout the weekend before, this is the second time Warren and I are singing along and rocking out to this gem in the space of a week. The only thing I can deduce from this is that life is most certainly getting better. Ri proceeds to play some more great rock hits from the decade of my teenhood and I happily bounce around.
Suitably rocked-out I head out for some air, have some great chats with some great kids, have a beer or two and then suddenly realised I'm totally exhausted. Head back to the flat, rock a shower and then fire up my far too neglected Nintendo DS. For this very light night gaming session I choose to hang out with kittens and moogles in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of time.
Eventaully Pat and Phil get home. Pat and I drink whiskey. Phil passes out. Pat and I take photos of him sleeping next to strange artifacts from around the flat. We pass out as well. The next morning it's time for omelets at Wolves and then more Final Fantasy. In the afternoon we head through to Phil's place in Pretoria. As he's leaving the country in a few days he had a bunch of his friends over for a farewell braai. It was really cool/ sad occasion.
After Phil's farewell we rolled onto another pretty special event. Efterklang have just released a film, called "An Island" directed by Vincent Moon. The band are releasing the film through a series of private and public screenings organized by their fans around the world. The first South African screening of the film was organised by Jacob and Ola Fulka. Hooking everything up with the band, inviting a small group of us over to their house and firing up their projector they hosted a very special night indeed. The company was great and the film was beautiful. A very awesome way to end a very awesome weekend.
