Publications
Partners
31 December 2010
New Year's Eve. We believe we're immune to the emotional coercion of the calendar, but everyone's anticipating what we always agree in retrospect is the most important party of the year.
Location: Club Mykonos. What are the options? Swim, drink warm wine on the beach, mince around full of melancholy (or is that nostalgia?), dance, laugh, love and let go. In no particular order.
To be honest, I don't remember the order of the bands. I remember that the sun shone for the second time on tour, and so did we. I remember unstraightening a drummer's golden hair with salt water.
I remember suddenly appreciating No One's Arc properly (they're nice, all mixy-mixy-like, and fun; we need fun in South Africa).
Also, my aural memory is mumbling about glitches in the matrix - there is some horrible interference in the sound system at one stage; snap, crackle, stop. It tests Isochronous's professionalism.
They were born polite and patient, however, so they don't even blink, fill in with something easy and unplanned while the engineers find the fault, and, when it's fixed, go on to rock the room sideways with their celestial sounds. No surprise there, because they're always good (they even wrote a special ditty for the tour that they included specially in their sets), but what is wonderful about this band, besides the way they lift the roof and remind us of heaven, is that they are as down to earth as a bergie's nose after a night at the bottle.
Speaking of night, somewhere along the line the sun has sunk, the very last of twenty ten, and we realise it's also the last public gig of the whole tour. We may get a little depro, because while we have complained variously and lazily about the weather, the mosquitoes, the crowd and rowdy tent mates who do naughty things, we have all fallen in love with life on the road together.
Luckily the line-up is chugging choppily, so there isn't time to mope about returning to civilisation. But it is time for the countdown to midnight, and as we stream onto the stage from all directions (the security staff know us all by now, and wave us through with a smile), The Tidal Waves welcome twenty eleven the best way they can – by bringing everyone together as one. Kudos to DPK for giving them this slot, and then following it with the rambunctious roars of Mr Cat And The Jackal.
We limp away with sprained knees, drained bodies, and a sense of unexplained triumph, which is probably the combination of road fatigue, tequila and all those hugs. All along the tour, and especially tonight, we are luckier than we'll ever know to have had the unstinting attention and consideration of the most loving security staff, bus personnel and kitchen gurus to take care of us when we've stopped making sense, which is important, because by now we don't know our heads from our hearts from our ends or our starts.
All we know is that we went to meet the horizon singing and dancing, and we made a lot of friends on the way. And that you can still use a camera that's been puked on. And that boys can spider-walk on the ceiling of busses driving through electric storms at two am. And that there will never be another 'toer like this one, but we hope it's one of very many to come…
Previously: Hip-Hip-Hermanus
New Year's Eve. We believe we're immune to the emotional coercion of the calendar, but everyone's anticipating what we always agree in retrospect is the most important party of the year.
Location: Club Mykonos. What are the options? Swim, drink warm wine on the beach, mince around full of melancholy (or is that nostalgia?), dance, laugh, love and let go. In no particular order.
To be honest, I don't remember the order of the bands. I remember that the sun shone for the second time on tour, and so did we. I remember unstraightening a drummer's golden hair with salt water.
I remember suddenly appreciating No One's Arc properly (they're nice, all mixy-mixy-like, and fun; we need fun in South Africa).
Also, my aural memory is mumbling about glitches in the matrix - there is some horrible interference in the sound system at one stage; snap, crackle, stop. It tests Isochronous's professionalism.
They were born polite and patient, however, so they don't even blink, fill in with something easy and unplanned while the engineers find the fault, and, when it's fixed, go on to rock the room sideways with their celestial sounds. No surprise there, because they're always good (they even wrote a special ditty for the tour that they included specially in their sets), but what is wonderful about this band, besides the way they lift the roof and remind us of heaven, is that they are as down to earth as a bergie's nose after a night at the bottle.
Speaking of night, somewhere along the line the sun has sunk, the very last of twenty ten, and we realise it's also the last public gig of the whole tour. We may get a little depro, because while we have complained variously and lazily about the weather, the mosquitoes, the crowd and rowdy tent mates who do naughty things, we have all fallen in love with life on the road together.
Luckily the line-up is chugging choppily, so there isn't time to mope about returning to civilisation. But it is time for the countdown to midnight, and as we stream onto the stage from all directions (the security staff know us all by now, and wave us through with a smile), The Tidal Waves welcome twenty eleven the best way they can – by bringing everyone together as one. Kudos to DPK for giving them this slot, and then following it with the rambunctious roars of Mr Cat And The Jackal.
We limp away with sprained knees, drained bodies, and a sense of unexplained triumph, which is probably the combination of road fatigue, tequila and all those hugs. All along the tour, and especially tonight, we are luckier than we'll ever know to have had the unstinting attention and consideration of the most loving security staff, bus personnel and kitchen gurus to take care of us when we've stopped making sense, which is important, because by now we don't know our heads from our hearts from our ends or our starts.
All we know is that we went to meet the horizon singing and dancing, and we made a lot of friends on the way. And that you can still use a camera that's been puked on. And that boys can spider-walk on the ceiling of busses driving through electric storms at two am. And that there will never be another 'toer like this one, but we hope it's one of very many to come…
Previously: Hip-Hip-Hermanus
