Good weekend: Night Sky and The Chills

This is a pretty uneventful weekend.

Next Friday I'll be flying to New York. The whole trip is something that's just fallen into place very suddenly. I only knew I'd be going for sure on Monday. Of course I couldn't be happier about visiting the birthplace of rock and roll, comic books and Bill Murray, but the downside is, this means I have a bunch to do, and very little time to do it in. The most hectic thing is getting 3 weeks ahead at work while still dealing with my normal workload over the next week. This means I need to come into the office and work all day Saturday and Sunday, which is a bummer, but so totally worth it when I imagine seeing Bill Murray eating a bagel on some New York sidewalk.

So considering I'll be working so much, and then be gone for 3 weeks, Anja and I are trying to squeeze in as much hang out time as we can before I go. On Friday I go to her place from work. Cue drinking sundowners in the garden with Cam, Lindi, Jar and Rox. We have an awesome time hanging out, then head through to the Boh to watch Night Sky Empire. This is totally the best of the three shows I've seen them play. Anja and I get really into it, start freaking out. We're joined by Gordon, an old friend that's been way too scarce for way too long. While the rest of the Bohemian stands around we get down on a little 3 person dancefloor. Occasionally Thato steps off the stage, plays guitar and dances with us bring the number up to four.

This makes me think of the earliest Kidofdoom shows. In the outside world nobody knows this is even happening. Little dancefloors with a handful of people moving around to the sounds of this exciting new band.

Anja and I had planned to head home and rock some Heavy Rain after the gig, but we're having to much fun hanging out, drinking Zamaleks and catching up with Gordon.

As explained, I'm stuck at work on Saturday. Still, I take a break to head through to North Gate for geek-o-mania. RAGE, the countries biggest gaming expo is happening.

An event like this, in a county like this, is a little pointless. Nobody in the gaming industry really cares about South Africa. Nothing major is unveiled or announced or shown off. I must see about 50 screens showing Halo Reach, which, besides some richer graphics doesn't really seem any different from Halo 3 which was showcased here 3 years back. X-Box also have a few TV's showing off their new Kinect system, but other than having Lady Gaga as the soundtrack and making people use their arms as well as legs, it's not much different to a Dance Dance Revolution machine in a mall ten years ago. There are a bunch of games with people driving cars, kicking balls or wrestling, but how any of these are different from last year's drive-around, kick-balls, cuddle-men-in-speedos games I have no idea.

Beyond BT and Look and Listen nobody even seems to be selling games. Some colleges are trying to convince kids to study with them. People sell computer hardware. There are a couple anime stores. A place called "radical fashions" is selling shirts with skulls and wolves on them. The most amusing/ horrifying thing at the expo is the EA Sports area. They've got people wrestling in those giant sumo-suits. Between each fight some dude is promising the crowd free copies of the latest soccer game and getting people to chant "EA SPORTS! EA SPORTS!" like the nerdiest group of jocks on the planet. He also tells them things like "Who's your favourite games publisher, EA Sports." While checking out Vanquish I hear a husband and wife team about to face off.

"What's you're name Red Sumo?"
"Red fire!"
"And what's your name Blue Sumo"
"The Wife!"
*MC-man laughs*
"I guess we know who's gonna win this one!"


A few minutes later I'm walking past the EA stand while a group of men stand around a motionless sumo wrestler.

"Don't worry everybody, she's all right. She's just lying still so we can make sure everything is okay".

Cue awkward silence. And all i can think is "EA SPORTS! EA SPORTS!"

Besides running into Jarred Tennyson (who seems to have become my new partner in all geekfest related crime) the only other really exciting thing that happens is I buy myself a Nintendo DS. Which given the amount of traveling I'll be doing to, in and from the States, makes all kinds of sense to me right now. In the evening Anja comes to hang out at my place. We spend most of the night playing Heavy Rain. Taking a brief break to rock some Chineese food and two episodes of Undeclared. Sunday is work and work and sea and cake. Patrick and I hit Cafe Mexico for dinner. Ri, Coleen, Cale and Jason come by later in the evening. We watch Burning, the new Mogwai film. Someday I'll finish writing about the second half of our last day at "T in the Park". Then you'll be able to read about how incredible it was for me to see Mogwai, in Scotland, closing their country's biggest music festival. For now let me just say that, watching Burning, I'm even more in awe of this band than i was when I saw them live. No doubt it has a lot to do with the beautiful shot, and fantastically edited footage. Mostly I guess it's hearing only the band, not the hundreds of people watching them. After burning we take a wee brake. Then rock the 2005 DVD "RGB" focused on the Japanese post rock superheroes Toe. Toe are quite possibly my favourite instrumental band this side of Godspeed, and this DVD is something I've been wanting to see for ages. I've listened to RGB's sountrack countless times and finally getting to see it is just great. While the production value doesn't hold a candle to Mogwai's perfect "Burning", the rock and roll is just as (if not even more) awesome. Honestly, I feel like I have to see this band live, preferably in Japan.

Right now you may be wondering why you're reading a blog about some guy's not very exciting weekend where he just watched a live band, played video games, went to a gaming expo and then watched post rock DVDs. The answer is; maybe, you're a geek like me!

We do this all the time: Generation Next!

Generation Next - Sat 18 Sep - Bridge Dinner
photos by Paris Brummer

(Really) Good Weekend. Generation Next and the New Mutants.

So Anja, Cam and I are working on something pretty fun. I'll write about it soon, but for now let me say that we spent Thursday evening making a fair bit of noise in Cam's bedroom. As mentioned previously, Anja showed up with champagne to celebrate this blog's third birthday. On Friday evening I get lost in town for a while. I'm trying to find the Afronova Gallery. Turns out it's on the same street as Kitchener's, although the address would have you believe otherwise. I've been trying get there for the opening of the new solo exhibition by the overly awesome Musa Nxumalo. Musa, if you don't know is a young photographer creating a document of one of the most exciting subcultures in South Africa today. He had an exhibition last year that I sadly missed. Now, seeing his images blown up huge on the walls of The Afronova is just awesome. And even more awesome is meeting a whole bunch of the rock and roll friends that have become the subject of his work.

After the opening closes we head up the street. To celebrate the exhibition the gallery is taking Musa and some friends out for dinner. This results in a whole gang of punk kids sitting in some super swanky restaurant, making a lot of noise, drinking a lot of wine, eating caviar, talking about Radiohead and local music and sometimes how excited we are tomorrow's gig.

I try to leave earlyish to try get home and animate some visuals for Generation Next. While saying my goodbyes I thank Musa for the awesome night and tell him how special i think the exhibition is. Some kid called Luna ("-tic" optional) yells that my words are too on point and demands that I have some of his wine before I leave. I oblige with a polite sip. This does not appease Luna who starts shouting that I need to down the whole glass. The rest of the table falls in with his "down down down" chant. I leave the restraunt with the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing I've made some rad new friends and just downed a glass of red.

I spend Saturday morning running around, trying to hook up a float for Gen Next. Then I spend the rest of the day animating visuals. It's going slow and I need to call Barend and tell him we won't be able to make it through to Pretoria for the braai we were planning. It's pretty depressing, but seeing a duiker head with bat wings flying over the CBD does a good job of consoling me. I head through to the venue at 7ish. Night Sky Empire are soundchecking. I hook up the visuals, stick posters around the venue and settle Jo in at the door. From here the night just flies by. Before I know it, the two Q and not U CDs I brought for backround music have both been played through. I didn't bring anything else along to play in the backround between bands. Luckily Ri saves the day with a totally awesome compilation he made a year ago for Ndax. I think... maybe it was for Themba... either way, what's inside the disc is just perfect. A bunch of pretty post rocky stuff and a good chunk of lovely Belleandsebastiany poppy stuff.

There's a really nice turnout and people generally seem pretty excited. Colin tells me he can't remember the last time he was so exciting to go out and watch two bands he'd never seen before. It's realLY nice thinking most of the people in the Bridge Dinner have no idea what they're in for. Night Sky Empire start out loud and leaning pretty heavily towards a metal sound. But after two songs they've made it pretty clear they won't ever be staying put in one place for too long. As they bounce enthusiastically between seemingly far removed genres of rock and roll, people fall from swaying slowly, to half dancing, to standing motionless in awe. The band end on a real high note, freaking out and producing a considerable amount of noise in the process.

I kill the DVD loop of visuals. The Mirrors and I quickly set up and start playing the first notes of "Last Song". As I slowly start fading a few millimeters of a R50 note in on the screen, I realise there's some kind of discoey effect light faintly shining on the screen. I wish I'd noticed this before we started playing, but taking advantage of not being directly plugged into anything I wonder into the little crowd watching us. I grab the closest friend I can find, who happens to be Warren and ask him to speak to Kevin about killing this light for our set. He seems a little confused, but heads off to finD Kevin. As I get back to "the stage". The guys break out of the intro, into the dual-drummer opening of Last Song and from there it's all fun. I should mention that during this week I hung out with the super-smart Jason of Cutout Collective/ Short Straw fame. Being the totally insane midi-professor he is Jason hooked me up with a little piece of software that translates the signals from my kaytar into different midi signals, essentially allowing me a bunch more control over video effects. Okay, I'm geeking out a bit here, bottom line: I have loads of fun with my new set up. We finish the set off with more newness, debuting a brand new ELM song that's so fresh it doesn't even have a name yet. For the visuals I've chopped up some parts of short films by Hans Richter, one of the earliest filmmakers to experiment with animation.

The song goes down awesome, and we have the best time playing it. A few minutes after the end of our set I realise I've hardly got any energy left in my to dance to Tennyson Extended who are about to start.

The boys take it easy for about 2 minutes. Their hands are all over the place, but their bodies are pretty stationery. This doesn't last long though, there's a little pause, then a wall of noise as both guitarists throw themselves across the floor. You can honestly feel the crowd's shock at seeing this reckless, physical display. It's too cool. But the world can't contain Tennyson's spazzy explosion very long, almost as suddenly as they started freaking out, everything around them freaks out too, Andrei's guitar get's unplugged, the strap on Dustin's bass breaks and one of the mics above Jarred's kit get's knocked over. Jarred doesn't miss a beat, pulling the stand back up with one hand as he keeps a solid groove going with the other. Once he plugs himself back in, Andrei joins in, jiving along while Dustin replaces his strap with the one from my keytar. Dustin booms back in and show rolls on.

I miss a bit of the middle of Tennyson's set. We close the door and I cash up. Catch the last songs of the band's set, and they really are too cool. Strangely after they finish playing the band aren't nearly as excited by what's just happened as the audience are. In fact, they all seem kinda depressed, which is a pretty confusing reaction for a band that's just played one of the most awesome second shows I've ever seen.

I pack things up a bit, hang out, pack up. Chat to Kevin. He seems as stoked about what's just happened as I am and we discuss the idea of doing a monthly night at Bridge Diner. I really hope it happens.

Ri's DJing down the road at Kitchener's. I could totally go celebrate the success of the night with a bit of dancing, but Anja's exhausted so we head home. Que new post show ritual - shower and read Mondo Urbano. Compared to all of Saturday's the hard work animating, then rocking out, Sunday feels like total vacation. Anja and I meet Cam and Lindi for breakfast at Cafe Sophia. Cam and I spend a few hours recording random sounds around his house. We lay down the final blueprint for what where're planning. We pick out some films that I'll edit into a kind of AV-sheet-music. Other than that we chill, chill and chill.

In the evening Patrick comes over. We try watching David Lynch's latest film, Inland Empire. As a massive Lynch fan I've been dying to see this film, but honestly it's pretty disappointing. Right from the get go the film is really crazy. His affinity for craziness is why I love Lynch so much, but here it's just too much. I'm sure being shot (really badly) on video has a lot to do with it, but the films really un-engaging. Still the craziness is really crazy, which is great. Patrick and I get through half the film. After an hour and a half we're both feeling pretty maxed out on crazy, decide we'll finish the second half some other time and watch some adventures of Orangehead Pilkington.