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16
Apr
12

The Tiger Hits Up Holland, Relaxes To The MAX

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Being Slick and Good Times
Tags: , , , , , , ,

tulipssThat’s right bitches! Your Tiger pal is in Holland, relaxing to the maximum at his sister’s place in Bergen, 40 mins outside Amsterdam where it’s a balmy 6 degrees at present.

I know what you’re all thinking right now and I’m just gonna stop you dead in your tracks and say no. I’m not planning on visiting any coffee shops during my stay.

This isn’t my first time in Holland, I’ve done this twice before and both times I did the touristy let’s-see-how-many-different-strains-of-marijuana-we-can-smoke thing and holy balls, it did not end well.

I’m older now, more mature and to be perfectly frank, not keen to spend the better part of a day hiding under the table in a random coffee shop because the parries has eroded my self-confidence to the point where even the simple act of standing up and leaving the room fills me with mortal terror.

 

 

So I’m taking it super easy breezy. As you read this I want you to picture me in my PJs with a hot cuppa java, sitting in my nephew’s room literally surrounded by screens (5 to be exact) and about to engage in a serious Black Ops marathon.

I need to brush up on that shit yo. My nephews (who are 8 and 14) and I have been playing on the Playstation Network, which has been pretty humiliating to say the least.

My average game goes as follows:

Slick’s Interior Monologue (SIM): BOOM! Game on, bitches! Ok… KILL THESE GUYS! Oh wait, they’re on my team… They look like they know shit, I’m going to follow th-

DEAD

SIM: Woah, what the fuck?! Who did that?! Oh wait, back in the game, bit-

DEAD

SIM: Come the fuck on! Ok, enough fucking around, next asshole I see gets a lead salad in his FACE! I’m just gonna run up these stairs and do a little camping… this shit’s foolproof… come to papa… any minute now… THERE! THAT GUY! DIE MOTHE-

DEAD

SIM: HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?! I WAS SHOOTING RIGHT AT HIM! I SWEAR TO GOD THESE GUYS ARE-

DEAD

SIM: Ok, this is getting a little-

DEAD

Slick to Nephew 1: Who are these people, man?! They’re handing our ASSES to us!

Nephew 1: I know, I’ve only got 5 kills so far.

Slick: What?! How is that humanly poss-

Nephew 1: Six kills. Haha! Caught a guy camping, what a jerk.

Slick: Yeah… I hate it when they do tha-

DEAD

Slick: OH COME ON! I WASN’T EVEN WATCHING THAT TIME! I’m done man. I’m out. These guys are pros. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re actually seen action in real life.

Nephew 1: I doubt it. A few are playing with headphones and I’m pretty sure the person who just killed you is either a girl or a kid who’s voice hasn’t broken yet.

Slick: FML.

 

 

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to immerse myself in a whole lot of (hopefully) killing for the rest of today, so yeah.

Have fun at work Knipogende emoticon

-ST

05
Mar
12

The Tiger Survives Thailand

By SlickTiger 2 Comments
Categories: Being Slick, Good Times and Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thailand1Wattup party people!

It’s been way too long since my last post but that’s because I’ve been in THAILAND, soaking up the sunshine, drinking ice-cold coconuts and playing “spot the ladyboy” on Bangla Road.

See, last year J-Rab and I won a travel voucher worth R20 000 from Nandos which we initially thought was just for Africa, but later found out was for anywhere in the world.

So we bought a 7 night stay at the Kata Palm Beach Resort in Phuket, jumped on a plane Monday a week ago and began what turned out to be the SICKEST holiday we’ve ever had.

 

 

Phuket is a jungle paradise. It’s surrounded by 32 islands and a turquoise ocean that is not only crystal clear but sits at a balmy 28 degrees, making it warm enough that you can float around for hours and cool enough that if you dive down deep you can escape the sweltering heat that blazes relentlessly, making everyone shiny with a permanent sheen of sweat.

From the minute we stepped out of the airport until the minute we boarded the plane to leave again, is was literally boiling hot. It rained once when we were driving back to the airport, otherwise everyday was an average of 32 degrees and so humid it felt like you were walking around in an oven.

It was glorious! You basically just move from one body of water to the next – ocean, hotel swimming pool, cold shower, ocean again – while your skin gets visibly browner with each day.

 

 

So yeah, it’s a jungle paradise, the weather is SICK, the beaches are stunning and it’s ridiculous how much there is to see and do. The only one slight drawback though is how many millions and millions of tourists and just people in general are packed onto Phuket.

Because of this, at any given time, the place is sheer chaos. Everything from the anarchic roads to the seemingly haphazard way the whole of Phuket is built exudes this vibe of infectious craziness and energy that sparks in the air and makes you feel ALIVE, BROTHER!

It’s madness. Just take a 20 minute stroll down a road in Kata and you’ll be offered 9 tuk-tuk rides, 12 Thai massages, 6 suits (so random), 7 banana pancakes and 4 coconuts.

 

 

You’ll see easily 100 scooters zipping along the roads and 200 sunburned tourists ambling aimlessly looking ugly and bored shitless (there are exceptions to every rule, but generally I hated the shit out of the other tourists. Overweight, old and bored-looking, I wanted to slap them upside the head and be like, “Smile you goddamn miserable pricks! You’re in paradise!”).

I don’t really know where to start writing about our experience in Phuket, so I think I’ll just let the pictures do the talking instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Besides the 900+ pics we took, I also filmed about two hours of random, crazy shit that I’m hoping to cut up into a Tiger Life video (yeah, remember those?) which will give you guys a much better sense of what we got up to.

If you haven’t been to Thailand already, for God’s sake get your shit together and go there. Once your flights and accomodation are taken care of, it’s dirt cheap once you land there. Save up R5k and it will easily last you a week in Phuket.

Hope you enjoyed the pics. Now back to work ya lazy bum!

-ST

01
Feb
12

The Tiger And The Nokia Lumia Launch

By SlickTiger 1 Comment
Categories: Events and Good Times
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Nokia launchYou get jaded pretty quickly as a blogger – PR companies contact you to invite you to one launch event after the next, all of them promising events that will CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER!

Fast forward to when you get there and you find a bunch of completely disinterested journos scratching their bums while they wait for the powerpoint presentation they know is going to follow with a look of mortal terror in their eyes.

You bolt as soon as it’s over and vow never, EVER again. Then you get the other kind of launch event, the kind that is awesome from start to finish like the Nokia Lumia launch I hit up last night.

Both the product and the event itself were noteworthy, but let me start with the product because gauging both from the launch and the buzz online at the moment,  Nokia’s new Lumia phones could very well be the game-changers Nokia needs to regain market share in the smartphone arena.

 

 

The Lumia 800 and 710 are Nokia’s first Windows Phones, both running Windows Phone 7.5 which, from the demo I was given at the event, looked like a MASSIVE improvement on previous versions of Windows I’ve used on phones like the HTC Touch 2 though, granted, that was a LONG time ago.

This time around, the folks at Microsoft have spent a LOT of time and effort thinking up ways to seamlessly merge all your accounts (Google, Twitter, Facebook, Windows Live, LinkedIn, etc.) so that communicating becomes as easy as selecting a person and choosing how you want to communicate with him / her.

Instead of a “call register” you can literally bring up your entire communication history with a person which lists, in chronological order, all the conversations you’ve had with that person whether they’re via email, sms, Facebook chat or over the phone.

 

 

The best part of it is because your “People” list is cloud-based, if you ever loose your phone, you will be able to pull all your contacts onto your new phone by simply logging into your Windows Live account – BADA BANG!

You can also log in to your X-Box Live account from your phone and communicate with your little gaming buddies whenever the fancy strikes you.

In case you’re interested, here are the specs for both phones so you can see what they’re packing under the hood:

Nokia Lumia 800: Stunningly social

  • Unibody design with vivid colors: cyan, magenta, black
  • Social networking provided by Windows Phone release 7.5
  • Internet Explorer 9 (hmmm… hope it’s better than the PC version…)
  • 3.7” AMOLED, ClearBlack display with WVGA 800×480 pixels, 16 million colours and 2.5D curved glass
  • Leading imaging capabilities with Carl Zeiss optics, above the lock capture, 8MP camera with autofocus and touch focus capability, dual LED flash, high definition 720p video recording with 30FPS and one touch image sharing
  • 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 512MB program memory, 16GB internal user memory, and up to 9 hours of 3G talktime

 

 

Nokia Lumia 710: Designed to be personal and affordable

  • Can be personalized with white or black body design, five vibrant exchangeable back covers (black, white, cyan, fuchsia and yellow) and thousands of apps
  • Social networking provided by Windows Phone release 7.5
  • Again, Internet Explorer 9
  • 3.7” WVGA TFT, ClearBlack capacitive touch screen with pinch zoom, 800 x 480 pixels and 16 million colours
  • 5 MP camera with auto focus, LED flash, high definition 720p video recording with 30FPS and one-touch image sharing
  • 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 512MB program memory, 8GB internal user memory, and up to 7.6 hours of 3G talktime

 

 

And as for the event itself, it was like no launch I’ve ever seen.

In between speeches by the head honchos at Nokia, Microsoft and Vodacom, a group of dancers ripped up the stage, accompanied by shirtless okes pounding drums and this guy who twirled a steel-framed cube whilst dancing in and around it.

Shows like that I usually find pretty nauseating to sit through, but I really enjoyed this one, which ended with all these cannons blasting confetti like gigantic snowflakes for a good 5 minutes before the DJs took to the decks and got the party officially started.

 

 

Which was when I left.

I would have loved to have stayed and partied on through the night, but as a general rule I don’t party on school nights because my internal organs don’t bounce back like they used to and going to work hungover is right up there with removing my teeth with pliers when it comes to my favourite experiences.

I am keen as a bean to get my hands on a Lumia 800 review unit so I can give you guys a better run-down of what it’s like to actually use one of these phones, but if the hype is to be believed, it will CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER!

Only time. Will tell Winking smile

-ST

30
Jan
12

The Tiger Hits Up The Met, Becomes Instantly hooked on Horseracing

By SlickTiger 1 Comment
Categories: Being Slick, Events and Good Times
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

ShadowAs I mentioned last week, thanks to the kind folks at Ladbrokes, J-Rab and I got to go to the J&B Met on Saturday and bet some money on the races and ended up having a killer time!

Sure, we went to the Met last year as well, but that was really just to swan around in the main marquee drinking champers, eating crayfish and mingling with all the ZAlebrities.

This time around we were there to BET and we had the upper hand from the get go because the kind folks from Ladbrokes gave us some scarily accurate odds and as a result, we actually won some money!

See, we were smart enough to engage in what I call “bi-betting” – ie. we bet online through my www.ladbrokes.co.za account AND we placed bets at the ticket office at the Met itself.

 

 

In this way, we turned R700 into R550 in no time – BOOYA! So yeah, technically I guess we lost, BUT we won a good couple of races as well thanks to the tips Ladbrokes gave us.

To be perfectly honest, we lost most of our money at the ticket office. It was just plain weird, J-Rab and I would decide on a bet, then one of us would waltz over to the ticket office to place it and the minute we got there, second guess everything our Ladbrokes buddies told us and bet like total retards.

NEVER second guess yourself like that. Because of that, we missed nailing the trifecta on the main race by ONE HORSE! Ladbrokes’ predictions were leaning heavily toward no. 12 (Igugu), no. 1 (Bravura) and no. 15 (Gimmiethegreenlight) coming first, second and third respectively.

 

 

So I saunter over to the ticket office, all confident and ready to place my bet, but at the last minute I overhear some punk next to me saying how no. 2 (Apache) is going to kill EVERYONE in the big race so naturally I change my bet completely, swapping Bravura for Apache, and then spend the rest of the weekend KICKING MYSELF because sure as eggs is eggs, Ladbrokes were right.

And not only do they know their odds, but they know how to get a little attention for their brand as well, hoo-wee! Have a look at the flock of Ladbrokes ladies that were sauntering around the Met while jaws hit the floor around them so hard, the resulting dust cloud made it difficult to breathe.

 

 

All in all we had a killer time. The sun was baking, the champagne was flowing and the horses were tearing up the turf while vast amounts of money changed hands, making and breaking fortunes in a frenzy of horseracing good times.

Hopefully this isn’t the last we’ll hear from our friends at Ladbrokes – still got some money in my account so maybe they can give me a heads-up when major sporting events are going down and I’ll share the tips I get with you guys.

We’ll be millionaires before we know it Winking smile

-ST

26
Jan
12

Ladbrokes Sets The Tiger Loose At The J&B Met

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Being Slick and Good Times
Tags: , , , , , ,

PastMasterMet2011I think I speak for all bloggers here when I say that we get a serious kick out of brands that not only *get* what we do, but approach us completely out of the blue and are like, “Hey Slicky-T, whatcha up to this weekend? No plans? Here are two tickets to our hospitality area at the J&B Met, BOOM!”

That’s what Ladbrokes did just yesterday in an effort to get me excited in, and blogging about, their online betting service and suffice to say, it worked.

After getting the invite, I did a little digging and found out that Ladbrokes has been operating in the UK for over 120 years! How the hell had I never heard of them before?!

Some more digging revealed that they only recently launched www.ladbrokes.co.za to the South African market (last year August to be precise) and are currently based right here in Cape Town.

I also found this video, which features Pop-eye’s dad in the last shot:

 

 

They focus on online betting for sports like horse-racing, rugby, cricket, football, golf and tennis, but you can also bet on some really cool, random things like who you think is going to win Big Brother, MMA / UFC fights, the Olympics and even awards ceremonies like the upcoming Brit Awards.

Being fairly new to the whole online sports gambling gig, the kind folks at Ladbrokes have offered to give me pointers and tips on the day to guide me in terms of how to bet and who to bet for, how flippin’ sweet is THAT!

 

 

So I went ahead and opened an account and am going to be giving you guys a blow-by-blow account of how everything goes down on Monday.

In the meantime if you know anything about horseracing and wanna give your Tiger pal a heads-up on what horses are looking like they’re going to kill it this weekend, hit me on tellthetiger@gmail.com.

If I get this right, I’ll be a millionaire by Sunday.

Here’s hopin’ Winking smile

-ST

30
Dec
11

Let The Good Times Roll

By SlickTiger 1 Comment
Categories: Being Slick and Good Times
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

220px-1859-Martinique.webThings have been quiet here at Tiger HQ as you may have noticed over the past few days, but it’s nothing to freak out about, I haven’t lost my blogging mojo, I’m just on holiday, being a lazy ass.

Christmas was awesome, spent it with J-Rab’s family soaking up the sun by the pool and stuffing our faces with more food than you can shake a stick at.

Otherwise I’ve been taking it super easy-breezy, reading, drinking and writing. Actually managed to bang a short screenplay out for the Jameson / Kevin Spacey competition and entered it. If I win, Kevin Spacey will produce and act in my short movie!

But that’s not why I’m writing this.

I’m writing this to wish all you crazy kids a fucking sick New Years because I don’t think I’ll have any time tomorrow to bang something out before the festivities kick in.

It’s been a trying year, but then again, aren’t they all?

I don’t mean that in a bad way. The human spirit is like a muscle, it needs to be tested, torn up once in awhile, stretched to its limits in order for it to grow and strengthen.

 

 

I wouldn’t wish easy years on my worst enemy. I wouldn’t wish hellish years either, but somewhere between the two is where you’ll strike the balance needed to grow your spirit without getting it crushed.

When all is said and done, I hope 2011 was a good year for you. High five for making it out alive.

2012 could very well bring about the end of the world if the Mayans are right so we gotta make the most of every fucking second of it.

Next year we fight tooth and nail for the things we want and we don’t fucking back down for anyone or anything.

Fight on, and when life knocks you down, get the fuck back up and headbutt it in the face.

 

 

I leave you with these words, my parting gift for 2011:

 

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

– e. e. cummings

 

Happy New Year Winking smile

-ST

12
Dec
11

Foy Vance Conquers &Union

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Being Slick, Events, Good Times and Killer Posts
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13597aThe true merit of any musician is not measured in a recording studio, it is measured from the minute they step onstage until the minute they step off.

As a performer it can be intensely nerve wracking, especially if you’re going up there alone in front of a crowd a hundred thousand miles from home that knows you for one or two songs if you’re lucky.

But if Irish singer / songwriter Foy Vance was nervous before he went onstage at &Union in Cape Town last Friday night to deliver one of the best performances I’ve heard this year, he sure as hell didn’t show it.

From the first few chords of the gospel / blues anthem “I Got Love” to the audience singing the chorous of the soulful acoustic ballad “Guiding Light” over and over, long after Foy himself had stopped playing, his performance was nothing short of inspirational.

It was interesting to note that, over the course of the evening, everyone I spoke to about his set professed to not only know exactly who he is, but were also proud to say they owned at least one or two of his albums.

 

 

Whether this was true or not I’ll never know, but either way it shows that his music struck a chord with the audience gathered at &Union on Friday, though to be honest I could have guessed that just by watching their reaction to his set.

His set was split down the middle between his own material and his favourite covers which included the Paul Simon track “You Can Call Me Al”, one of my favourite Hendrix songs of all time “Crosstown Traffic”, the Michael Jackson classic “Billy Jean”, the most soulful rendition of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” I’ve ever heard and even a cover of the long lost Joan Osborne song “What If God Was One Of Us?”

But for me, the highlight of his set was hearing him play “Hold Me In Your Arms” which, I found out later is one of his original songs. There’s something in the stark honesty of that song, the way it builds slowly to it’s howling, heartfelt climax that tears me up every time I hear it and Friday night was no exception.

Looking around at the sea of happy faces laughing at his jokes, clapping and singing along to his songs and demanding he go back onstage for an encore that ended up lasting another 40 minutes, I couldn’t help but feel like for that brief moment, everything was right in the world.

The wind whipped through the trees on either side of Foy as he played and his voice rang out through the streets for a five block radius from Hout Street to Wale and Loop Street to Buitengracht. The mic was his pulpit and we were his choir, the holy spirit blowing all around us while we danced and drank and celebrated being ALIVE brother!

 

 

After Foy finished up at &Union, we jumped in the car and hit the Shack to shoot the breeze and play some pool (he kicked my ass 2 games to 1, but we teamed up to play some challengers and mopped the floor with them).

I got to know the man a little better over a couple of rounds of drinks and can honestly say his talent is outweighed only by his humility and his soulfulness by his quick wit, which is sharp as a tack and had us laughing until the early hours of the morning.

It’s no surprise to me that his songs have continued to ring out inside my head from after I shook his hand and bade him farewell sometime around 3 on Saturday morning right up until now as I struggle to put the experience of meeting him and watching him play into words.

Suffice to say, Foy taught me something I consider extremely valuable, that what I previously thought was gospel – that the true merit of a musician is measured from the minute he steps onstage until the minute he steps off – isn’t actually true.

The true merit of a musician extends far beyond his performance. If the man himself doesn’t weigh up to the man onstage, his authenticity of both his character and his music becomes compromised.

Foy is a great musician because he is a great person. The two go hand in hand, and I only hope that his career continues to grow from strength to strength in the coming years and that sometime in the future, at a nameless bar on a nameless night, our paths may cross again.

 

 

-ST

28
Nov
11

Synergy 2011 FUll Event Review

By SlickTiger 20 Comments
Categories: Being Slick, Events, Gig Reviews, Good Times and Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Synergy CrowdWhat can I possibly write that could ever do justice to the fucking awesome time I had at Synergy this past weekend?

After building it up in my head to be this epic event that was going to change my life forever, I was pretty sure the actual experience would never live up to that, but after a bit of a rocky start, everything came together in the best possible way and we had a truly epic weekend.

The Good…

I actually started writing a full, blow-by-blow account of the entire weekend, but after I got to 2000 words I realised I need to keep this punchy.

So instead, here are some bullet points on what was awesome about the festival:

  • Boschendal is STUNNING! Surrounded by majestic mountain peaks and flanked on the one side by a river perfect for dipping your toes in or, further down, jumping in for a swim, the whole area is really beautiful and perfect for a festival

 

  • The organisation is pretty damned sick. At festivals you expect to spend a fair amount of time queuing for food and booze and holding your breath as you walk into porta-loos that look like hell, but Synergy was really well organised that way. Every toilet I went into was actually spotless, even right at the end and the food stalls were plenty and not too expensive either

 

  • TAXI VIOLENCE! These guys put on the best fucking show I’ve seen them play EVER! It was fucking electrifying, the crowd was loving every second of it and George and the guys were giving it their all. Great job, you blew everyone the fuck away!

 

 

 

  • LMG STAGE – a great place to discover new talent. These are the bands that will one day be tearing it up on the mainstage, no doubt. We caught snatches of bands playing here, but to be honest were too busy missioning around to remember who any of them were. DEFINITELY should have spent more time there, big fail on my part

 

  • The rides! We never went on them, but DAMN they looked like fun!

 

 

  • The river! On Saturday morning we went down to the river and spent a long time sitting or rocks slowly getting drunker, talking shit and splashing around in the river. This is what festivals are about, getting away from it all and doing something as simple as sitting with your feet in a river, not giving a shit about anything

 

  • The sun cream girls! Spraying everyone that needed sun cream with sun cream. VERY cool idea, a nice touch to make sure people didn’t get fried in their own natural juices

 

 

  • Our gazebo. This, more than anything, is a festival essential if you’re going with a big group of people. The gazebo united us. It provided much needed shade when the day started getting baking hot and it was the perfect thing to lie under and drink cold Bloody Marys all afternoon

 

 

  • Playing the messiest game of Kings ever! You know it’s a good one when the cards end up all over the camp site once the game has disintegrated into random shouting, laughter and drunken chants of “Down it!” All thanks to the genius “every time someone pulls a black card, everyone drinks” rule. That’s a recipe for awesome right there…

 

  • THE COMEDY TENT! Who goes to a music festival to listen to comedy, right? What a total waste of time, right? WRONG MUTHUFUKKAHS! On Saturday night we wandered randomly into the comedy tent and caught Dylan Skews’ set (who also happens to be a friend of ours) and basically spent the next hour crying with laughter. I’ve known Dylan for a couple of years through friends of ours, but never heard his stuff – it was the funniest comedy I’ve seen in YEARS. Great job man, J-Rab and I love your work

 

  • JAX PANIK! Possibly the biggest crowd I saw at the main stage all weekend – not really the kind of music I go for, but they were fucking AMAZING! The crowd went crazy for them and they delivered the goods. Definitely watch out for this band, they put on a great live show, one of those moments that makes you proud to be South African

 

 

  • ISOCHRONOUS! Ok, anyone who was at the festival is probably starting to pick up a general trend here – yes, we basically missed all the bands on the opening night except Taxi Violence (a lot of tequila happened. I blame you Ebz, I blame you… Joking! We had a badass time, sorry we missed you the rest of the festival!). But we caught Isochronous, who have a strong Muse-flavour to their material, and are face-meltingly awesome to watch live

 

  • Morning bacon and egg rolls for R15! That’s all we need to say about that one

 

  • VIP bracelets – thank you to the festival organisers for hooking J-Rab and I up with these, we put them to good use on Saturday night when, on a random mission to arrange a photo pass, we headed backstage to the production office and ended up…

 

  • MEETING BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB! Well, actually we didn’t really meet them so much as round a corner and find them sitting literally five feet from us being interviewed by MK89. For this BRMC-obsessed fan, it was fucking surreal to see the band so close, but we were asked to please leave by the band’s manager, not in a shitty way, in fact they even listened to me gush for 15 minutes about how amazing I think they are even though they’ve probably heard it a million times before. It was a perfect moment seeing them so close in this quiet, random corner of the festival and one I won’t soon forget

The Bad…

Of course, it can’t be all sunshine and lollypops, there are a few bad points about the festival that I feel I need to mention, namely:

 

  • The fact that I had to wait for over 2 HOURS for those aforementioned VIP passes! Thank God I managed to win a ticket to the festival through Bangers & Nash or I never would have gotten inside to find the festival organisers in the first place. It was a kak way to start the festival, but things were chaotic for the organisers so I understand, but still, 2 HOURS waiting alone under the Synergy arch?! That was painful

 

  • The nights. They were FREEZING cold! Friday especially – you could see your fucking breath it was so bad. J-Rab was practically crying she was so cold. Next year we’re taking backup blankets, that’s for DAMN SURE!

 

 

  • The drunken douchebags camping near us. Who, at 6 in the morning, think it’s cool to shout “Show us your pussy!” to the girls walking past their camp site. Don’t be a “show us your pussy” kind of guy, no one likes guys like that, especially not at 6 in the morning

 

  • The Redbull Stage. Not that the music was bad, the music was pretty sick for the most part, but the people listening to it, phwoar! Ease up on the MDMA guys, you look like a bunch of Gummi Bears bouncing here and there and everywhere, high adventures beyond compare…

 

  • The trek from the parking to the campsite. I guess this is to be expected at festivals, but you had to lug your shit for a good 20 mins before you hit the campsite and then at least another 10 before you found a spot to camp

 

  • This is a bit of a sad one, but after all that hype, after building it up for so long, it pains me to say that one of the bad things for the festival for me was Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. We fought our way right up to the stage, about 5 metres from the band and stayed there, basically in the mosh pit for the next hour before finally leaving before the band had even finished playing.

 

I mean, they NAILED some of the songs – “Conscience Killer” was INTENSE! They banged it out full of sound and fury, “Ain’t No Easy Way” was also fucking brilliant, as was “Six Barrel Shotgun”, but to be perfectly frank, for the most part the band looked a bit bored.

Leah (the drummer) came alive for one song maybe, the rest of the time she stared ahead with the same blank expression on her face, Peter (singer, guitarist) played like a fucking MACHINE, tearing his fretboard to pieces and banging out some seriously badass bluesy rock, but was also expressionless throughout.

Robert (singer, bassist) was the most animated of the three – he has this cool way of playing his base guitar like he’s aiming a rifle and MAN can he play that bass. He also swapped it out for a normal six string a couple of times, he’s a fucking talented musician.

 

 

In fact, they all are. You cannot fault them on that point and I will always, always love BRMC, but I just feel like their performance was missing something. I’m stoked I got to see them live and like I said, I loved a lot of songs they played, but they fluffed a few tracks too, which was a bit sad.

 

The Ugly…

And then there are the moments you kinda wish you hadn’t ever seen, like when…

  • It was 5pm on the OPENING DAY OF THE FESTIVAL, and I watched a girl falling all over the place, drunk as a mineworker and splashing white wine everywhere while her buddy tried to walk her back to her tent

 

  • One of the drunken douches camping next to us passed out at 6pm on Saturday night with his head out his tent so he could have a nice, hearty chunder while J-Rab and I were eating our sammiches not 10 feet away from him. Yummy.

 

  • On Saturday night, a guy ran straight into a car. It was actually hilarious. There was one solitary white polo parked off to the side the main stage, you couldn’t miss it, but this genius ran right into it, BANG! Hahahaha!

 

The Amazing…

I don’t want to end this on a shitty note, so let me sum up by first thanking everyone who made our festival experience possible, Tchavdar and the crew at Synergy Live, New Sound Artist Management and of course Mr Dan Nash.

Our plan came together in the best possible way and we had a fucking amazing time!

 

 

Sure, I didn’t catch half the bands I wanted to see, but there will always be time to watch them play in and get the interviews I want to sometime in the future.

The bands were amazing, the organisation was top notch, the good times kept rolling and the shower and nap we had after we got back home yesterday was fucking glorious!

You bet your ass we’ll be at Synergy 2012 and so will you guys because it’s a brilliant festival.

Here’s to an amazing weekend of sick bands, sunshine and good times Winking smile

-ST

15
Nov
11

The Tiger Jumps Back On The Horse

By SlickTiger 2 Comments
Categories: Being Slick and Good Times
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Tiger_riding_a_horseHey party people, how the hell are ya!

It’s been way, way too long since I last did this. Work has literally been killing me the past two weeks, but things are finally stabilising which means I’m back in the saddle, riding this, the Anti-Christ of South African blogs once again, all flashing eyes and floating hair, towards the event horizon.

So what’s your Tiger pal been up to the past two weeks? Curazy pops that’s for sure, ricocheting all around the country like a piece of loose shrapnel.

Transport, motorways and tramlines, starting and then stopping, taking off and landing, the emptiest of feelings…

One minute I’m dressed in full black tie, sipping Johnnie Walker Blue Label and listening to Lewis Pugh speak about how his old man was part of the team of physicists that first started detonating nuclear bombs.

His old man was standing hundreds of miles away in full protective gear when the first one went off, but even that far away, the light was so bright he held his hand up to shield his eyes and saw the bones of his hands like he was looking at an x-ray of himself.

The next minute I’m dressed in a full kilt, sporran and ghillie shirt at the Cape Town leg of the Whisky Live Festival, regaling people with stories of Bell’s Special Reserve whilst pouring my way through 23 bottles of it, one shot at a time.

 

 

I’m in a plane flying over the mountain ranges of the Western Cape, I’m looking down and wondering what life would be like down there if I just build a house right there in those mountains, away from it all, J-Rab and I could start a family there, farm vegetables.

I wanna live in a wooden house. Making new friends would be easy…

I’m meeting with Diageo’s Global Whisky Ambassador, we’re doing one media interview after the next, he’s talking about how they drink whisky in Suriname with coconut water and in China with green tea. I’m nodding and smiling and thinking “Suriname… where the fuck is that?!”

I’m driving through the streets of Jozi, the ones I grew up on, and the sun is pouring out of the sky in waves so hot they’re turning the tar soft and leaving a shimmering heat haze over the horizon. It’s glorious how hot it is, how many memories this brings back.

 

 

I’m seeing my mom again after too long. I’m feeling that deep down sadness that echoes in the well of your soul when you can’t ignore how old your parents are getting. I wish I was a better son.

I’m flying into Shaka International, my stomach twisted up in knots because later that same day I’m going to co-ordinate a putting coaching session with the media and Gary Player. At seventy-six, when the man gives you an hour of his time, you make that hour count.

Everything comes together at the last second, and moments after I arrive at the putting green with the media, Mr Player’s golf cart pulls up, he steps out and like a true veteran, takes centre stage like a pro. It’s awesome watching him operate. Seventy-six years old and still able to keep his audience utterly captivated with every word.

I’m drinking Johnnie Black and watching Johnny Clegg rock out onstage. I’m thinking how much this man has seen and done, how he made it his life’s mission to write and perform music that brings us together. South African music, played with a lot of heart. Stories of love and bravery and triumph. I’ll play this music to my kids one day, whether we live in this country or not.

 

 

I’m standing side by side in the DJ booth with Gareth Cliff and we’re shooting the breeze. He’s surprising me with how utterly unaffected he is, I’m throwing curveballs at him and he’s smacking them out the park.

Other people come up to him every 5 minutes to say hi, or request a song or just tell him he’s rad and he takes the time to talk to them all. He’s a stand-up guy – don’t believe the bullshit people say about him, it’s based on jealousy, not fact.

And finally, I’m on a flight back home, so hungover it hurts to breathe. When I finally land what feels like eons later, J-Rab greets me at the airport with that beautiful smile of hers and I take her in my arms and breathe her in until my lungs feel like they’re going to burst.

We go home and I wash the hangover and grime from travelling off me. We curl up for an afternoon nap and in that moment I couldn’t be happier.

It’s been a rough two weeks, what you’re reading here are only the very best parts. The bad parts aren’t worth repeating or remembering and most of them I’ve already cut loose anyway.

I completely missed it in the midst of the chaos of the last two weeks, but it was my birthday on the 3rd of November.

I’m 28 years old now.

Ain’t that wonder Winking smile

-ST

27
Oct
11

Kings Of Leon Melt Faces In Cape Town

By SlickTiger 3 Comments
Categories: Being Slick, Events, Gig Reviews and Good Times
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

26102011430“If it bleeds, it leads,” is generally accepted as the first rule of journalism, which is why I should have been sceptical right from the outset when I heard that Kings Of Leon were cocky, arrogant arseholes who were known to give the middle finger to crowds who don’t hang onto every note the band plays.

Their performance last night in Cape Town was anything but cocky and arrogant, which proves that either the rumours were a load of utter shite, or the band were suitably impressed by their reception last night when they took to the stage and melted our faces off.

I was lucky enough to have been given VIP passes by the kind folks at Nokia, but even better than that was the fact that I also bagged one of 20 VIP parking tickets that were randomly put into the 200 media packs they handed out.

It’s the only way to go, seriously. J-Rab and I drove right INTO THE STADIUM after passing through security checks that were so intense, at one of them they unleashed a sniffer dog on us to make sure we weren’t packing any bombs to blow the place up (luckily I’m saving the bomb for when Maroon 5 come to play so I was safe).

Once inside we hopped in the lift, shot up to the fifth floor and sauntered into the Nokia suite where, like a typical blogger, I immediately started abusing the free drinks and taking pictures of the food.

 

 

We managed to catch the end of Shadowclub’s set which I was really impressed with. It’s a bit sad the stadium was basically empty at that stage because the guys put on a great show and played some killer blues/rock in the Strokes / Wolfmother / Black Rebel Motorcycle Club vein that would have gotten the crowd pretty pumped if there was one.

What quickly became apparent though was that while the Nokia lounge was seriously p1mping, it was pretty far away from the stage, and even with my camera on full zoom, this is what everything looked like:

 

 

A plan would have to be made… but not before another few rounds of drinks / bowls of biltong.

The Black Hotels followed Shadowclub and played a decent set, but sadly we missed quite a big chunk of it thanks to the varied distractions of the VIP lounge (whisky).

Unfortunately when it came to the SA bands, they were given such limited stage time that it felt like they were over before they’d really begun. On the plus side, their sound was surprisingly good and for once it didn’t sound like they were playing through rusty tin cans.

By the time Die Heuwels Fantasties took to the stage, the place was starting to really fill out and energy levels in the crowd were rising fast. Die Heuwels played like seasoned stadium veterans, but it wasn’t until Jack Parow joined them onstage for “Die Vraagstuk” that the crowd really started going batshit crazy.

From there on in, the night belonged to Kings Of Leon and I for one was truly blown away by their performance which, coming from a cynical basterd like myself, is saying a lot.

 

 

I started following KOL when Because Of The Times dropped and within weeks of getting my filthy mitts on that album, picked up Youth And Young Manhood and Aha Shake Heartbreak. 

For me, the material in those three albums is some of the band’s best to date, which was why I fucking loved their set last night.

Sure, they played the four tracks that make up the entire catalogue most South Africans know (ie. “Sex On Fire”, “Use Somebody”, “Radioactive” and “Pyro”), but they also played at least 7 or 8 tracks from Because Of The Times and some classics like “Molly’s Chambers” and “Taper Jeans Girl” from their first two albums.

It was a nod to their die-hard fans to remind us that before they exploded into the mainstream with Only By The Night KOL was our band, not 5FM’s, and the music they wrote was the soundtrack to our lives that we heard at random house parties and played on epic road trips.

 

 

I know I sound like a typical music snob saying it, but there’s a very close connection you feel to a band before they get picked up by the mainstream that is never quite the same after their material gets blasted on high rotation on every radio and TV station known to man.

And don’t even get me started on remixes. I’ve heard “Sex On Fire” remixed so many times I start twitching involuntarily whenever I hear that song butchered on another “doef doef” beat.

In a sentence, I loved KOL’s performance last night because it made me remember why I used to love this band and judging from how fucking nuts the crowd went, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the people there last night go out and buy their first three albums.

 

 

Also, Nathan Followill is a fucking SICK drummer. If you’re going to watch them in Joburg, keep an eye on that man, he’s truly amazing to watch live – he pounds the living shit out of his skins, it’s beautiful.

Joburg, prepare yourselves for a concert you won’t soon forget, but take my advice and go out there and get their first three albums because listening to those songs live is nothing short of breath-taking.

Big up to Nokia for hooking a brother up. I love your work guys, after the concert we partied at the VIP lounge until they turned the lights on and then J-Rab asked if she could have the flowers and kind folks at Nokia were like “Sure, go wild.”

 

 

But most importantly – Kings Of Leon, thank you for an amazing show, you made a believer out of this cynical music snob and for the two hours you were onstage, became our band again Winking smile

-ST

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