Tag: music

Kirstenbosch Summer Sunset Concerts 2009/10

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Summer’s here and with it the promise of lazy Sunday afternoons enjoying the Old Mutual Summer Sunset Concerts at Kirstenbosch.

Kicking off on 22nd November with South African legend, Johnny Clegg, the concerts run through to the end of March (and, I guess, the end of summer) with Watershed signing off for the season on the 28th.

The full line up:

2009 

22 November – Johnny Clegg
06 December – Jesse Clegg 
13 December – Jonny Cooper Orchestra
27 December – Ashtray Electric and Pretty Blue Guns
 

2010

03 January – A Fist Full of Diamonds with Josie Fields, Faryll Purkiss and Dan Patlansky
10 January – Freshlyground
17 January – Zebra & Giraffe
24 January – Fokofpolisiekar

07 February – aKING
21 February – Just Jinjer
28 February – Prime Circle

07 March – Goldfish
14 March – The Dirty Skirts
21 March – The Cape Philharmonic Orchestra
28 March – Watershed

Tickets for the first concert cost R95 for adults (yep – that’s what I thought too!) and are available from Kirstenbosch ticket office (021) 761 2866 or via http://www.webtickets.co.za/.

As usual, Kirstenbosch will be the place to be to rock out those Sunday afternoons (with the exception of 21st March, perhaps).

EDIT: While cross-checking details for the above piece (we’re damn thorough here at 6000 Towers), I saw this on the sanbi.org website:

cr

Is that a promise?? I hope so.

Choked

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I’m in shock. Mildly, anyway. I just got this in my email from a-ha’s official website:

With the current album ‘Foot of The Mountain’ enjoying both commercial success and critical acclaim, A-ha has decided to call it a day.

As a consequence, A-ha will not be releasing any further albums in the future.

The band would like to thank their fans and everyone who has contributed to their amazing journey, and say:
‘We’ve literally lived the ultimate boy’s adventure tale, through a longer, more rewarding career than anyone could hope for.
Doing this now will give us a chance to get more involved in other meaningful aspects of life, be it humanitarian work, politics, or whatever else – and of course through new constellations in the field of art and music. We are retiring as a band, not as individuals.
Change is always difficult and it is easy to get set in one’s ways. Now it is time to move on.’

Wow. We shared a quarter of a century together.
You were my first compact disc, you came to my school discos, you kept me sane on wet Lake District holidays.
You popped in while I was at University, you played at my wedding (on CD, because we couldn’t afford to fly you to Cape Town and still have the lamb on the menu) and at the birth of my child (as an mp3 file, for obvious reasons); a child that I then named after your lead singer. 
You are my most played band on iTunes. By a country mile.

And now you leave me for humanitarian work and politics? Politics??

Gutted.

Not always what it seems…

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Look, I know that you’re all ready and waiting for something big after my refreshing break at Fancourt, but I need to let you in on a long-held secret here. The lifestyle of a top blogger isn’t always as exciting as you might imagine.
Sure, there’s the jet-setting up and down the country, the trips abroad, the glamorous wife and the copious volumes of red wine, but to balance that out, there has to be a certain degree of mundanitude as well.
For example, tonight, I’m going to be moving some furniture around so that my carpets can be cleaned tomorrow. And no, there are no euphemisms in there at all. Literally, I am moving a couple of couches so the guys can wash the floor covering underneath them. With two small kids and a whole heap of building work, they certainly need the attention.

But every cloud has its silver lining. On the plus side, I get to move into my new study too. The walls are up, the ceiling is done and the desk is there. In an amazing show of foresight, Mrs 6000 even managed to organise some of those special holes with the plastic edges so you don’t have wires hanging everywhere. True, I’d have preferred them in the desk, but it’s surely the thought that counts.

Once the “plumbing in” of all the electronica is completed, I can then get round to listening to some loud music and tonight’s offering may well be the bizarre – yet brilliant – sounds of Werk 80 II by German Goth legends, Atrocity. There’s something strangely captivating about Alexander Krull’s voice doing their industrial metal-style cover of Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy.

atrocity

Rumour has it that Alexander is rather proud of his luxurious mane – and checking it out – who wouldn’t be? In the image above, he has even had a couple of saucily-clad minxes super-imposed on the picture, but you were so busy looking at his hair, you never even noticed, right?
That’s how confident he is of the enchanting, mesmerising, hypnotising effect of his hair. It’s powerful stuff.
Strong, lengthy, well-maintained Teutonic hair. Big hair.

[Hint: one of them has a bare bottom. A slightly greased bare bottom. On the left. Got it yet?]

Regular readers will probably just suggest that I threw that picture in precisely because of the saucily-clad minxes. Apparently, I have a record of occasionally publishing gratuitous saucily-clad minx pictures.

Do you have a problem with that?

Are The Killers coming?

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I had a whole heap of people in a very brief frenzy with this post:

Capture11

But – whatever the comments said and however dysfunctional the Computicket link was, that post was based on at least some small degree of truth, as iAfrica states here:

It all started with an entry on the Computicket website listing The Killers performing at a Cape Town wine farm during December.
The event, discovered on the ticket booking website on Tuesday 11 August, revealed that the ‘Human’ hitmakers were playing at the Val De Vie Wine and Polo Estate on 6 December, with bookings set to open on 14 August.
A source at the venue confirmed she had also heard news of the forthcoming show and we are currently awaiting confirmation of the event details.
However the event was removed from the Computicket website later on Tuesday.

We live in hope. It would be a stunning venue for a stunning band.

Patience is all that is required. And of course, the RSS feed for this blog – because we’ll keep you posted.

Musical matters

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Thanks to the wife Skypeing friends in the UK, when I came to use Harold this evening, I found the chunky Skype headset still plugged in. Bonus.
Whilst I look pretty daft beneath said headset (but there’s no-one here to see me anyway), it provides surprisingly good sound quality and since I don’t get as much chance to listen to decent music as loudly as I would like to, I’m taking the opportunity to get reacquainted with Koosh’s favourite man, Jared Leto, and his 30 Seconds to Mars cronies.

This in turn brings back memories of My Cokefest and that in turn reminded me of Koosh’s heartfelt plea to her readers to not join the Facebook group concerned with objecting to those local residents who complained about the noise of this years event. Still with me?
I was going to show you that post, but she’s deleted it. Shame.

My wife, 5 months pregnant and a self-confessed hater of “shouty music” spent 12 hours in the burning African sun that day, listening solely to “shouty music” and humouring me as Matt Bellamy dissolved me into a quivering jelly of raw emotion.  Such is love. Unconditional love. (Me and the wife, not me and Matt.)

Or so I thought.

It turns out that there was (at least) one condition. A biggie. And yes, in exactly a fortnight’s time I will be at Grand West Arena watching (and – sadly – listening to) James Blunt. Through gritted teeth, I admit that it could be worse. But not even my wife, despite her bizarre musical tastes, would stoop so low as Sicky Dion or we wouldn’t be married.
“Are you a Sicky Dion fan?” was usually my second question to any eligible young lady, right after “So, do you come here often?”. Best to get those awkward and embarrassing things out of the way as soon as possible.
So there you have it. James Blunt. I wonder if I can sneak my iPod in?

Meanwhile, I’m sat here waiting for my download of MGMT’s brilliant Oracular Spactacular to complete. Specifically the Flaming Lips/Polyphonic Spree-esque Time to Pretend with its übercatchy keyboard riff. Here, in a Fleet of Worlds stylee, is the video for your perusal. Enjoy.

P.S. If you have 102MB of bandwidth to spare (i.e you’re not in South Africa), a hi-res copy of this video is available here (right click/save target as). Awesome.