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Entertainment Music

Metallica – The Band That Would Not Leave

Metallica - James Hetfield
Saturday’s concert was awesome, despite the problems detailed in my last post. As a matter of fact, I’d have to write an essay just to do each act justice.

All the supporting acts performed really good sets – sticking to the hits and keeping the crowd alive. The only band that seemed to be a bit flat was The Rasmus, but I’ve had plenty of exposure to Finns, and relatively speaking they were positively jovial!!!

Simple Plan
were great openers, Seether rocked with all their classics and some new material too, Collective Soul had a great (gremlin-filled) performance and Metallica just blew everyone away, over and over again. James Hetfield has a stage presence second to none. They owned that stadium. By the end of their two hour long performance they looked just as tired as we did (probably far more) and yet they did not want to leave the stage. Our enthusiasm gave big man James gooseflesh! Lars practically died of exhaustion on stage too!

Was it worth the R500? Hell yeah.

After about 15 minutes of us cheering them and them cheering us, eventually they left the stage with a promise to return soon.

Oh, you want photos? Check here…

Tags: band, South Africa, rock, collaboration, SouthAfricanRockMusic, South African Rock, Metallica, Collective Soul, Seether, The Rasmus, Simple Plan, Prime Circle, The Finkelstiens, The Parlotones, Arno Carstens

Categories
Entertainment Music

Saving Silence at Charelli’s

Last night’s adventures turned into an unexpected treat – Brad and I went out for what was supposed to be a quick drink at Charelli’s – and discovered a great rock band playing there. Saving Silence is a 5 piece outfit boasting powerful melodic rock, solid acoustic guitarwork and a few edgy twists in their set too.

Highlights of the performance were the ballad written for a cousin’s wedding (unfortunately the lead singer tended to mumble the song names), the funky reggae tune where they bring on the rapper, and a cover of ACDC’s Thunderstruck on acoustic. Very good stuff. Their album is due out around August.

As a side note, I like the idea of a good black rapper heading up a straight-laced rock band. Serious rock with just a hint of funkiness through rap, kwaito, R&B and soul could do very well in South Africa, targeting the right combination of audiences. This sort of collaboration has to be done right, in the same way it was with “Can you feel it building?” by Tweak, Pro-Verb and Josie. Artists, are you listening?

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Entertainment Music

Barney Simon to Podcast

Very, very interesting news – keep an eye on this site for news about Barney Simon’s radio future. I spoke to him on Saturday at The Rock Concert 6 at Carnival City, and he indicated his interest in releasing his show as a podcast while he works on bringing his choice of rock music back into mainstream radio.

I definitely underestimated Barney’s tech-savvy on this one – podcasting is the perfect medium for rock (and any other style of alternative) radio in South Africa’s licensing-choked broadcast industry. Hopefully the podcast will stay online even once he goes over the air again.