Jazztacular

I saw a flying saucer last night!

Or at least I thought I did, until I realized that it was just a satellite orbiting the earth. But still it was pretty cool to see something whizzing around in the sky...got my heart rate up a bit, I was that excited.

What a beautiful evening. Well, at least until the wind started howling. I spent most of the latter part of the evening on the rooftop of the Waiting Room, gazing at the stars and chilling to the sound of Rus Nerwich on saxophone.

I love jazz, or at least certain types of jazz and I am definitely a big fan of the blues. Unfortunately, not many others in my friendship circle are. Most of them are into the house music scene, so I usually end up at the jazz-blues places by myself.

The thing that attracts me to jazz is how quirky it can be, especially with all the improvisation. Improv distinguishes an amazing musician apart from a good musician, it seperates the mice from the men, so to speak; and allows for creative interpretation. Blues is cool too and also has that element of improv but it's pretty easy for anyone half decent to get into the groove and play. With jazz it's different, it's exciting and a jazz musician needs to be slightly eccentric. A good jazz musicians plays notes that would ordinarily be completely out of place, totally off key, but for some reason when they play it, it just fits together.

Jazz confuses me, I certainly can't play it, at least not well and I have massive respect for anyone who can. Maybe the fact that I'm not skilled enough to master it, is where its appeal lies. As humans we often want the things we can't have, don't have or can't do; and the lure of the unknown or unmastered has always been part of my nature.

Don't Panic

The coolest thing about being in the spotlight, becoming a rock star, and having thousands and thousands of people watching, adoring and focusing all their attention on you as you perform, is that it is serves as the perfect medium… to publicly, humiliate your friends- well at least that is the only reason why I would seek the limelight. My childhood partner in crime, Bryan, started a rock band; just for that specific reason.

I remember when I first met him, I had just moved to Port Elizabeth from East London, and starting at a new school I didn't have any friends. The first weekend of being in Port Elizabeth, my folks decided that we were going to go try out a restaurant somewhere, we landed up at Sacramento's a cool little spot in Schoenmakerskop. As we arrived I noticed a kid from my new school, and went up to him to say hi.

The coversation went a little along the following lines:
Me: "Hey dude, good to see ya."
Bryan: "Hey man, whats up?"
Me: "Not much, just having lunch."
Bryan: "Ahhh ok, I had the steak"
Me: "Oh cool, so was it good"
Bryan: "I wouldn't get it...it had maggots." (Dead pan)
Me:"you serious"
Bryan: "Yes...I mean no. Haha it was good"

From that moment on I knew he'd be my best friend, because it seemed that we shared the same wicked (okay...more like retarded) sense of humour, very Monty Python (to this day, besides the Rambo’s, Monty Python’s - The Life of Brian still remains one of our favourite movies of all time ever). The next day he followed me home from school and never left; since then we've been tearing it up and doing all sorts of crazy things,...with the underlying premise: for him to try and kill me.

Seriously , for example there was this one near drowning experience we had, because we thought it would be a good idea to take out his new inflatable blow up, less than sea worthy, made for the pool, rubber duck, into 15 foot swells armed with only paddles (no motor); through the most hectic shorebreak in PE, called Doughnuts mind you. Also once against the cautionary advice of the NSRI (National Sea Rescue Institute) we paddled out to go surfing and got stuck in a really hectic rip, only to get sucked out to sea and then back towards the shore to get pounded by some seriously big waves, against some really massive rocks. There have been a few more close Darwinsim Award incidents but it would take a while to go through all of them...

The most memorable one however, is one that still lingers and hassles me from time to time. I have a pretty serious shoulder injury which I'm still carrying, from a stupid skate boarding accident. Basically what happened was my mom for some reason, forbid us not to go skate boarding one particular day, but knowing better we went anyway; but as luck would have it as I was turning the corner, coming down a seriously steep hill at full speed, I wiped out.

While I was sliding across the road my arm got caught in the rain gutter and the impact, completely dislocated my arm. Instead of going to the hospital which would have probably been the wiser of decisions; we thought it would be a good idea, for Bryan to just yank it back into place - we were scared if we did go to the hospital, my mom would have found out we went skateboarding...she may be small, but you ain't never seen an angry Chinese mom before.

Anyways at least our stupidity and the experience has now been immortalised in one of the Finkelstiens songs.

I've found that once you've had so many near death experiences with someone you become a lot closer to them. I can highly recommend sharing a near death experience with your spouse or significant other, should the two of you ever feel like you are drifting apart. Screw Dr. Phil for relationship advice; come to me, I’ll fix them...fix them good!

Bryan went on to start a band called the Finkelstiens, where he changed his name to Wang (don't ask), which became relatively successful. We even formed our own posse whenever they toured the country, much like in the series Entourage , but instead of him buying me a cool Aston or Ducatti (South African Rock band’s don’t earn quite that much), he'd make me fund his Paddle Pop ice cream habit.

At the height of their success they played along bands such as The Offspring, Metallica , Collective Soul, Simple Plan etc etc. And I remember at one of the Coca-Cola Colabs in front of 10 thousand odd people, he publicly declared that I was a "Douche Bag". The irony being that, that is a pretty "Douche Bag" move in itself, seeing as there was no way for me to retaliate, with him comfortably being behind all that security. Knowing Bryan he probably plotted and strategised his whole life for that one moment just so he could “get me good”.

Just as testimony of how lame we actually are, the lads from Simple Plan thought we'd be excellent guys to party with, but instead of showing them around and partying with them. For some reason we thought it would be more entertaining to see if we could fit me into a little Coke fridge, which was actually a lot of fun… until I almost caught hyperthermia and once again almost perished.

Sadly the band is no more, however he's gone on to set up his own recording studio and music production label called Drop and Roll and I've been listening to his new project Don't Panic, if you're familiar with the Finkelstiens...Don't Panic, in which he writes songs, performs and produces himself has a more mature, grittier rock sound and is well worth a listen.

I'm hoping this blog will start taking off...just wait till I get my five minutes of fame…then it’ll be my turn to “get him good”.

Sleepless in Cape Town

I had one of those nights last night where, you know you’re tired and you just want to go to bed, but for some reason you just can’t fall asleep because Mister Sandman missed the beat. It’s was probably because of my over-active imagination again and probably because I had way to much stuff going on in my head…

So what better to do than to put on some really chilled tunes; and relax to the sound of some soothing melodies by the king of chill himself Jack Johnson? I whipped on his new appropriately named “Sleep through the Static” album and as I began to listen, all my thoughts seemed to disappear as I floated into a deep slumber.

I initially bought the CD, to help keep me occupied on one of my long solo road trips…Although come to think of it, it probably wasn’t a good idea…because in hindsight the album is pretty mellow and it could have caused me to fall asleep at the wheel, perhaps causing me to swerve off the road, colliding into a group of dairy-bearing cows, thus causing an even greater shortage of dairy in an already under-supplied market, and thereby propelling the dairy prices upwards in an astronomical fashion…it’s a bit of far stretch, but it could have happened! (Now you know what keeps me up late at night)

As much as I enjoy the CD though, I must be honest and say, compared to his others, this is probably my least favourite. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that I was expecting too much …but to me it loses some of it’s Jack Johnson feel because this album seems a little bit over-produced and the songs seem a little bit repetitive. However with that said, in good ol’ Jack style, he still delivers a pretty solid, all round, easy listening album…