Band of the Week: Florence + The Machine

This is some of the strangest music I've listened to in a while. Not avant garde strange, rather peculiar. It features the chanteuse Florence Welsh belting it out like there's no tomorrow, sometimes aiming for high notes and failing to reach them. They use obscure instruments such as harps, accordions and "elevator shafts and bits of metal" according to their biography. Call it "baroque pop", if you will. They won Best British Album for Lungs at the Brit Awards last night, so they are going to be pretty huge. Check out the tracks Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up), Kiss With A Fist, Dog Days Are Over and Falling. I'll keep saying it's strange, but I've been listening to this album for the last 3 days.

Buy Me A Valentine...Give Me A Christmas...I Want A Easter

With the yearly dredge of me ending up single on Valentine's Day for the last 25 years, I think I might be going for a record. Not to single (excuse the pun) myself out, but I really don't know why there's so much fuss about a singular (there I did it again) day of the year where one should celebrate the institution of love.

Hypothetically speaking - shouldn't you be loving your significant other EVERY day of the year? Isn't that the mystical, romanticised pursuit that we call love?

What excites me are the deviating groups of people who try and counter-act against Valentine's Day. People who have either become disillusioned, been disappointed or embraced the apathy towards LuvDay.

You have your Chocolate Bingers, Anti-Valentine corroborators, the Grey's Anatomy clan and the Anti-Monogamists.

Hopefully you know what I'm talking about. These people convulse at the thought of saccharine gestures such as picnics in parks, bottles of champagne being popped, strawberries being dipped in cream, adult contemporary music acting as an aural aphrodisiac or oysters acting as an oral aphrodisiac.

The Chocolate Bingers embrace the fact that they are single by indulging in their self-pity via chocolate. Not just your front-of-the-store Cadbury or Nestlé. No, they go all out as only Lindt or boutique Belgian chocolate would suffice.

Anti-Valentine corroborators are the infantile opponents of love. They either tell everyone how much they hate love, or they just burn Hallmark cards with hearts on them. That's their statement, and it's pretty lame.

The Grey's Anatomy clan snuggle up with their teddy bears, warm water bottles, a glass of wine and swoon over impossibly good looking medical practitioners. Usually a slow building ballad will play as someone dies of pneumonia or a car crash. The clan cries. They are concordantly satisfied.

Anti-monogamists just want to get laid and frown upon staying true to you one love. They are not polygamists. They are just looking to get laid. Really, that's all.

Then you see photos of couples in newspapers, holding hands, kissing, sending each other messages recollecting memories of how they met and why they are still together.

Have we become cynical because of the sugary sweetness of love, or perhaps the commercialisation thereof?

Today, 20 Years Ago

On the 11th of February 1990, South Africa changed. The day when Nelson Mandela was released from Robben Island marked a significant change in the political landscape of South Africa and became a landmark moment in history as one of the greatest leaders of modern times went forth to become the father of a nation.

Zula Sound Bar - 5 March 2009

It's Justin, our guitarist's birthday on the 5th of March, and we'll be performing at Zula Sound Bar with The The Stremes. Entrance is R30, and the show starts at 9PM.

Band of the Week: Get Well Soon - Rest Now, Weary Head

Get Well Soon. A German alternative rock band, signed to City Slang Records. All I can say is this is just one awesome album. You can order it from Amazon or get it from iTunes. I've been listening to it non-stop the last day. Especially the tracks You/Aurora/You/Seaside, I Sold My Hands For Food So Please Feed Me and People Magazine Front Cover.



http://www.youwillgetwellsoon.com/

Classic Album Of The Week: Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head

It seems like only when I heard this album for the first time. I knew Coldplay from their debut album Parachute and hits like Yellow, Trouble and Don't Panic. In November 2002, I watched the MTV Europe Awards and I was dumbstruck by their performance of the first single from A Rush Of Blood To The Head called In My Place. The beautiful chiming delay coming from Johnny Buckland's guitar and the memorable chorus made me want to go out and listen to the album.

Getting to the music store, the cover struck me as very avant garde and I was afraid that the album might be that over-ambitious second album, rich with pompous arrangements and political grandstanding. This was after all recorded just after the September 11th attacks, and everybody was getting onto that bandwagon (here's looking at you Bruce Springsteen).

I asked for the album, went to the listening booth, and my fears were allayed the second the minor chords to the album's opener, Politik, started. The soundscapes on this album is huge, but the songs themselves are not over produced, which says a lot about Coldplay. They make do with what they have, and they do it well.

Clocks with it's instantly recognisable arpeggios was pretty much the song that cemented them as a band that would be around for some time, while Amsterdam positioned them as cerebral, yet sad souls. And then there's The Scientist, the big lighter ballad of the noughties. It's video was extremely innovative and the song itself became a mainstay on the charts and at weddings/funerals/any post-breakup happening.

Key Track: The Scientist - just for that last epic minute. All big guitars, big drums, big piano chords, big falsetto. Big.

Local is Lauded

People always compare the South African entertainment industry to the much more established and refined worldwide industry. You usually get comments like: "That's really sounds/looks/was good. For a local/South African band/film/whatever." I'm starting to think our industry is fast catching up to the rest of the world.



If you look at the output of quality products we deliver we can seriously pat ourselves on our back. In the last two days District 9 got nominated in Oscar categories (including Best Picture and Best Screenplay) and one of our own won a Grammy Award.


Yes, SA got a Grammy on Sunday night. Elza van den Heever was part of the eight vocalists part of the album that claimed the Best Classical Album award, a recording of Mahler's 8th Symphony.

Local is playing with the big boys now.

Some Women...

Yes ladies and gentleman, this is a woman. In Cape Town. Disgusting ain't it? Who drinks wine in a toilet? Who smokes in a toilet?

Yes, maybe I am a bit of a chauvinist by saying this, but some women revolt me when they don't act like "ladies".

Don't get me wrong - I love an intelligent, independent, beautiful woman who can stand her ground. I hate the treatment of women as subservient sex slaves and live-in domestic workers.But even if I saw a picture of a man smoking a cigarette and swigging wine on a toilet like that I'd be repulsed.

Yes, this is apparently the state of women in Cape Town.

Lord, give us proper women.