RAMFEST 2011

CAPE TOWN: Nekkies Holiday Resort, Worcester: 4 – 6 March

One South Africa’s Ultimate Rock Festivals.

“The healthy being craves an occasional wildness, a jolt from
normality, a sharpening of the edge of appetite, his own little festival of
Saturnalia, a brief excursion from his way of life.”
Robert Maclver quotes

A weekend of REAL ALTERNATE MUSIC! The CT leg of Ramfest V was a monster winner!

Pre-sale people kicked off the killer weekend on Thursday already surrounded by masses of tents, foodstalls, plenty booze, band merch and the lush river-side views and drunk people!

It was the valhalla of festivals from a logistics point of view! One can't emphasise the excellent organisation enough! For the entire weekend there were clean toilet-paper filled bathrooms with hot and cold water showers. Woop! Woop! Personal favourite: Hydration station! -And the sprinklers at all the bars (where you hardly had to wait to get a drink!)

The stages were ready to roll on Friday afternoon after some refreshing in the river or pool.

The fifth year of RAMfest boasted 3 stages and a bigger dance floor than before. Much talked about were the two international bands: Alkaline Trio (USA) and Funeral for a Friend (UK). Also local legendary acts like Die Antwoord, Van Coke Kartel and Zebra and Giraffe play in all the cities.

Cape Town got the very best Ramfest line-up, made complete by absolutely killer local bands! On the Main Stage Mr Cat and the Jackal and their giant head replicas rocked the party with a carnie folk take on rock. The Great Apes sexily smashed and crashed their way around the mainstage in true rock'nroll style and notably brilliant performances by Not My Dog, Zebra and Giraffe, Isochronous and The Sleepers cemented the idea that local bands this year absolutely thrashed the imported acts. Alkaline Trio was by far the most disappointing act of the festival. There was quite a lot of hype about the two international acts and neither of them blew me away. I did enjoy the Funeral for a Friend set more purely because of their ego and energy. Clearly they were digging themselves. (Perhaps a bit more than the crowd who hardly moved (though there was a fair bit of hand-raising near the beginning of their set). Still, they were decent. A very pleasant surprise was how tight Van Coke Kartel were! They really had a great show and the crowds knew it! Die Aantwoord carried on in their own very special way thrilling fans and offending critics like they fokken-terrets-se-poes always do.

The Alternate Stage was contrastingly buzzing with energy. Metal minded musos like Mind Assault, Symphonic Schizophrenia, Juggernaught, Enmity (who threw in a most phenominal cover), and A Walk with the Wicked had the metal tent rocking like a hurricane, windmilling and moshing. Tartan-clad wild-hearts Haggis & Bong had their bagpipes and balls to the wall making some interesting noise. And then there was Sabretooth. One of the clear highlights of the festival. Lightning-fast guitars, drums and keys. Vocalist Mauri Moncada on top form rocked Van Halen's 'JUMP! 'and (after a roaring call for more) a Steel Panther cover! The band had the crowd going mental!

“'Rock' [music]. . . is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to
Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the
experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their
defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental
force of the universe.”
Pope Benedict XVI quotes (German Pope(2005), baptized Joseph Alois Ratzinger (b.1927))

The Pope clearly hasn't heard of the electro stage. When all the hype and hysteria of the main stage and alternate stage came to an end the Electronic stage kept the dance beats and epillepsie lights pumping right through the wee hours of the morn with winners like Toby2Shoes, Ill Tastic, El Gordo, Haezer, TOM DELUXX (FRA), and more. It was a vibrant space pulling crowds of fucked people towards the lights.

An epic festival! Well organised, well attended, well worth it!
Metaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal!

Rock’nRolling in the doh!

‘The laws on our tablets are simple: Sex.Drugs. And Rock’nRoll.
Money hadn’t quite made it there originally but if there were to be a Rock’nRoll New Testament it sure as hell would be in there!!”
-Dani Diamond

Rock’nRoll has those vital idols. The monster that came to suck all the free love and love of music out of Rock is not drugs or alcohol or rave even. Its money. (Monymony! Monymony!) The simple hunger for money and being rich has well overshadowed the desire to rock and to roll. When kids think Rock’nRoll they’re thinking superstardom, mansions, big cars, golf courses, limos. Come on! There’s nothing Rock’nRoll about golf or a limousine! They’ve pretty much turned Rock’nRoll into the Kardashians.

Where’s the ‘we crashed in apartment blocks full of crack-whores and scabby-faced writers’ Ala Anthony Keidis? or ‘we shared one bed and didn’t eat because we couldn’t afford anything except our drugs and guitar strings’ Ala The Rolling Stones?

Still, the pivotal role of cash can’t be denied. Even Iggy Pop is drving jags and playing golf. Rock’nRoll is not just a genre of music anymore, It is an industry. It’s a business pimping brands, pimping merch, selling you a lifestyle, ideals and music. (Just threw that in there right at the end in case you forgot its about the bands and their music).

With the copying and downloading laws as loose as a pornstar’s vagina, musicians embraced the downloading trend. Billions of killer tracks are ‘illegally’ clogging up our PCs and being enjoyed by fans. The sharing factor has its highs though because through networks and easy distribution of illegal (and some legal) tracks, many more people are exposed to tunes by bands they haven’t heard before. Potentially this could be a great thing for bands all over the world.

With all the production, engineering, manufacturing, cropping, styling, designing and pimping involved in the grand money-making ploy that is Rock’nRoll, we are advanced enough to turn even shocking vocals into radio-play. We can all think of hundreds of examples… I’m tying to think of the one that is least likely to get me sued. I’ll get by with a little cash from my friends. Oh here's a winner: Joe from that reality show 'the real housewves of the Orange County' bought herself a recording contract:

The Arts Industry in South Africa is quite neglected. It is much harder to write protest songs with a knife in your hand on a train than a pen in a limousine ala U2.
It is also much harder to write what you want as opposed to what people want to hear if you just need to make some money.

Cape Town is brimming with talent and culture but sadly not quite as much money. It is rife with opportunity. The small market for specific tastes and genres like metal and rock are hugely eclipsed by our highly praised trance scene for example. Yes, with our aids rate one might assume that the average joe was totally in to sex, drugs and Rock’nRoll, but no, in fact the average joe is digging Kwaito. Even pop people have banded together in the form of Idols SA to try and get all the local celebs to unite in support of one effort. The whole idea being that there would be more buck$ behind the brand.

Limited funds and resources in music is like a pizza with too little cheese. When its all piled into one place there will be dry, crusty bits with very little going on in other places! The alternative is a bit of an unappealing tasteless pizza with only a tiny bit of cheese on each slice and no one slice of thriving music industry. There are limited places for bands to play and limited funds to pay them. Quality musicians are driven overseas on a quest for money. Not to make starry-eyed millions (though I’m sure that would be epic) but even just to make enough to live with music as their job.