Band Watch

This week has been all about watching bands. On Tuesday night I watched two great Cape Town bands perform at The Waiting Room: Witness to Wolves & Tape, Hiss & Sparkle. Witness to Wolves is a four piece band, kind of Evanescance feel with a real nice acoustic vibe, with chello, guitar and djembe and the stunning lead singer Natalie Lucia.

Tape, Hiss & Sparkle is a more alternative folk rock band the lead singer Simon sounding like a cross between Eddie Vedder & Placebo. I like his stage presence, there's something very genuine about him. These are part of the This is your Life Sessions.

Tongight I am going to watch Madosini & Derek Gripper at Alliance Francais. It's going to be great, Madosini is the Queen of Xhosa music, and Derek is an amazing guitarist playing music from his four solo releases on New Cape Records, as well as new songs captured on his latest CD, "Rising," recorded with master tabla player Udai Mazumdar from India/Switzerland. Gripper's unique guitar style embraces the styles of Cape music, early classical music, African kora and guitar techniques, as well as global contemporary composition (Gismonti, Takemitsu) to create a new guitar music which is nevertheless firmly rooted in the Western Cape.

Finally, we have Derek Liesegang's band performing at the Labia tomorrow, Friday. It will be a night of musical decadence. He sings like Elliot Smith. What a great week of music this week, we are definately spoilt for choice!