you two look so good together

Contrary to the claims (or, denials, rather) of alcoholics and addicts at large, it’s not a clean line or a dirty cocktail that lights the night.

Especially when the creeping cold glues us to our couches. And even though Cape Town has come home from the contentious and much coveted SAMAs  with no less than a dozen of them for the Mother city mantelpiece, fireplaces and feather duvets have suddenly become hot property (quite literally).  So despite a slightly more dashing public image, live local music may have to work a little more cleverly to get attention this season, rather than harder. (It’s hard enough, after all, to get a good song circulating beyond a Facebook fan page player.)

A good gig takes a good band; but a great gig takes a great combination. Get the setting, the sound and the souls right, and you have a great night on your hands. If your heart is holed up like most people’s hearths were until last week, try a little pairing up this season. I’m talking musical coupling, yeah? Sorry to say, but co-dependency isn’t healthy any other way.

This Friday while the faithful walk to their holy houses in the rain, and the unfaithful walk to their unholy houses in the rain, Cape Town is cutting it clean with some of the finest combinations since Lindt got balls. Take a sniff of

Joshua Grierson and Mr. Cat And The Jackal – @Dorp Straat Teater. heart strains and pirate stains tumbling over each other unapologetically.  (Bonus - the venue is as quaint and cosy as its performers are not).

 The Sleepers and Foto Na Dans @ ZULA. Dark rock and arte rock to revive the listless and ground the restless. Think contemplative and incendiary. Think sirens and soul mates. Think Le-Roi and Sy (see pic above) No, don’t think. You won’t need to.  

 And if you’re just in it for the party, and you like it in the Ass   (embly), you’re still in the right city. Pull in (ahem) to Our petal ploys (ag, boys), Magic of Pegasus  - who may or may not be taking the piss (watch this space)  .  As Friday unfurls, they will pull on their spandex and flex their skinny screams to deliver you a bubble bath of pseudo-electro cum glam cock sexiness (or is that pseudo-sexiness? Or Speedo testiness? You’ll never know if you don’t get down there. ahemagain). Next to their cotton candy tonguing cheekiness, bruise your heartbeats on the muddy cuts and cutting chords of Tigerstrike - electro energy; analogue emotion. Even if you don’t like it, you’ll probably dance to it.

Sadly, most of us now know that Nothing is no more. Mama Know Nothing, yes? No.  The untimely undoing of the city’s best looking (there, I finally said it) folk-funk-blues-babes (the boys too), means that there is one hot coupling that won’t happen. Ever.  I wanted guns and mamas, pretty nothings, swinging blues, slow bleeding fusion. But no, all we have to look forward to now is the official release of the dirty post mortem. There’s a story behind it, of course, and I’ll be telling my version of it shortly. But beauty (and brilliant shooting) aside,  substitutes will never suffice the real thing, so I guess I’m just going to have to get over becoming an aural orphan of the Mamas, and keep gunning for the Guns. (Speaking of which, have you joined the union yet?) That’s hotstix ma’Lucas’s not-so-little side project.  Listen a little here , you might like it.

It's sobering that in the midst of mourning, the music goes on. We’ve lost the lovelies, but they’ll come up with a new combination, no doubt. We’re still very lucky to be complaining about some of the sorts of couplings that come about on a Friday night, even if other ones disintegrate like powder.