Read the open letter from OKGo for more info on the whole situation with the Label and YouTube.

Please reblog this, tweet it, post it to your facebooks, myspaces, email it around and get the word across. Cassette is the only band that spoke up about anything relevant and important such as the elections coming up in a few days. Lets allow Red Jumpsuit Apparatus to hear our voices.

Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Coca-Cola Zero Fest 2009 is finally here this weekend. Thousands of fans are expected on Friday, 10 April at the beautiful Riversands Farm in Fourways Jo’burg, and the picturesque Lourensford Wine Estate in Somerset West on Monday, 13 April to enjoy a full day of high octane rock. Heavy weight artists OASIS, SNOW PATROL, PANIC AT THE DISCO, DIRTY SKIRTS, ZEBRA AND GIRAFFE, CASSETTE, FOTO NA DANS, aKING and ONE DAY REMAINS are going to give fans just what they have been waiting for-a rock spectacular with no compromise!!

BIG Concerts, the organisers of Coca-Cola Zero Fest 2009, regrettably announce the cancellation of Bullet for My Valentine and The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus who were scheduled to perform at the festival this weekend. Both bands, who have concluded performance agreements with the promoter and have received payment in lieu of their performance, decided at the last minute to withdraw on their commitments to Coca-Cola Zero Fest 2009. The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus cited personnel changes, which impacted on their ability to perform at the Coca-Cola Zero fest, while Bullet for my Valentine cited studio commitments so they can complete their new studio album.

BIG Concerts CEO, Attie Van Wyk said, “We are absolutely devastated by the cancellation of these two bands. Not only have they not fulfilled their agreements with us, but they have let their South African fans down in the biggest possible manner. And all at the last minute, leaving us in an unfortunate position of not being able to find suitable replacements at such short notice.”
Zayd Abrahams, Coca-Cola™ Strategic Marketing Manager, said: “Coca-Cola Zero is disappointed by the withdrawal of The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and Bullet for My Valentine; we are however looking forward to the awesome performances from Oasis, Snow Patrol, and Panic! At the Disco and some of the best home brewed talent. All concert experiences that have been planned are going ahead and consumers can still expect a world-class production. “

Bullet For my Valentine apologised to their fans in South Africa. Matt Tuck says: “We’re absolutely gutted to have to cancel these shows, we were proper looking forward to it, but we are really getting stuck in with writing new songs and we have a busy schedule to get everything prepared for recording the new album ‐ which we are all really excited about!”

Fans have an added bonus this weekend, OASIS, SNOW PATROL and PANIC AT THE DISCO will play extended performances at Coca-Cola Zero Fest. The Fest has loads to offer this weekend – Big Sound, Bold Artists, Zero Heroes, Mist Angels, Chill Zones, Guitar Heroes and Zero Zones.

Hi Editor,

You won’t know me – I’m a big reader of 2Oceansvibe and was referred by a link there.

Anyway, I’m going to take a flyer here – just drop a little bait and hope for a bite…

I’m a music producer at the moment, studied at UCT and now living in Johannesburg trying to hit the big time. My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album. In the mean time, though, we decided to record a couple of live videos of him doing some covers of cool and interesting songs. Basically it’s just a way for us to get word out, create as much of a buzz as we can. We’ve had an incredible response to them so far and I thought I would share the videos with you:

www.youtube.com/user/TimothyMoloi

Now, I’m sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos. My favorite is the One Republic cover (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4fiPe4U_Ow&feature=channel_page), but feel free to have a browse around and prove me wrong! All the artists on the videos are South African – hope you’re impressed!

I’m not too sure what to say from here, man. I won’t beat around the bush – obviously it would be in my best interest for you to actually cover us on your blog and for that I would be incredibly grateful, but if not, a simple personal reply would be fantastic – another viewpoint to see what we’re doing right!

Look forward to hearing from you!

Let me break down the above email in to sections/reasons why I was taken by it and responded immediately.

References

The email references 2oceansvibe, I know I have a link in Seth’s sidebar and therefore know (or feel) a little bit of legitimacy from the email’s author.

Hope and a wish

The author openly admits that he is taking a chance. He isn’t being too presumptuous and assuming that I will obviously respond and act. There are no orders coming from the email, there are hopes and requests.

Know the blog

James (the author of the email) clearly went and read SA Rocks. He knew that I liked local music, liked to help promote local artists and liked to support an underdog. So he appealed to these attributes with: “My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album.”

Play on my field

Multimedia and new media content are integral to my world, it’s how I make my living and how I interact with people. So it’s a good thing James didn’t tell me that he hated the internet and would never release any of Timothy’s music online for the world to swipe. In fact, he did the opposite. He sent me links to a YouTube video of Timothy vocalising the hell out of a song I knew “Apologize” by One Republic. He had dropped the bait in my lake and I was not only staring at it, listening to it but chewing on it as hard as I could.

Play to my Ego

The crème de la crème, my ego. James played the game perfectly by stating the following: “Now, I’m sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos.”

How could any self-indulgent blogger possibly say no to a line like that? James got my, hook, link and sinker.

End the pitch

Do not linger, do not be verbose, do not become pedestrian and cliched. Write what you want to write, get it out, close it down and end the email. Do not linger. I hate it when I have to sift through ten paragraphs of shit to get to the point of the pitch. Say what you want and leave me alone.

And here I sit blogging about James and Timothy and will be meeting with them very soon to see how I can help them in any capacity I can think of.

James, well played. And to anyone who is trying to pitch to bloggers that might be reading this, take note: A good pitch will be responded to immediately and will have the bloggers commitment from the word Go.

The above is precisely what is eating away at the soul of the music culture in South Africa and providing our youth with the misconception of what it is to be famous, young, successful and funky. This is a discussion that I have been having for years and years, since I was in a band back at university. We tried very hard to be local, have flavour and maintain bits of our heritage or at least we thought, as much as we could. It’s tough though and I will give muso’s that much, it’s tough to be local.

But is it really that tough? Is it so tough to be local that you mimic American artists down to the background colour of your music video, your caps, baggy shoddy denims and “bling”. Why are our young rappers trying so hard to be American? Everyone hates America and the only person who could change that perception is Kenyan? African is cool, can’t they see that?

And what’s more is that Rattex claims to be proudly South African:

Rattex is now at the forefront of the new school of proudly South African rappers who understand that Hip Hop, more than any other musical art form, is about addressing important issues and representing where you’re from. It is therefore not suprising that Rattex is one of the pioneers of the ‘Spaza’ movement, where lyrics are performed in a combination of isiXhosa, English and Cape Flats slang.

Rattex has always been a true Cape Flats soldier, representing Khaltsha (Khayelitsha) wherever he performs. His music has also been on heavy rotation on community and campus radio stations (such as Zibonele, Bush Radio and UCT Radio) across Cape Town and the Cape Flats. Noteable performances include the Fire on the Mountain festival, Drudge Dialect II, the Hype Magazine Live Session and the Planetary Assault launch party. Rattex has also performed on Channel O’s number 1 rated show, Mzanzi Ridez. Most recently, Rattex supported legendary Brooklyn-born super lyricist Wordsworth on his tour to South Africa.

Read the full bio at his website. What goes through the head of an artist who claims to be from the flats, to embrace South Africanism and then puts on a music video feature his hommies, big cars, bling, scantily clad women and a distinctly western flair to it.

I am sorry but I cannot believe that any artist who produces this sort of tripe can claim to be proudly South African.

Have a look at a couple of “big rappers” in the following music videos from the States:

Spot the difference. Just like his name, I think that Rattex and this Americanised-afro-wanna-be culture confusion is poising poisoning the music and culture in South Africa.

Downloading tracks from so many different sources means that a lot of the time I’m missing album art or genre, or album info or something. It kills me.

So I found Tune Up Media. I couldn’t help myself and bought a lifetime membership (risky in the current online platform I suppose) but for all of $20US you can sort organise and download your album art for your entire music collection.

I did have some trouble initially with the program. It wouldn’t open, it wouldn’t play, it wouldn’t let me register and all of this after I’d forked out the cash.

But a simple email to the support staff and I had an almost permanent member of the TuneUp staff helping me. I was asked to do a few things (very laborious work) that would help sort the problem. It didn’t work. I then tweeted my problem and was incredibly surprised to receive contact from the CEO of the company who instructed me to email him personally and he’d have it all sorted. Low and behold today, TuneUpMedia is working and I am sorting through all my music/album art as we speak!

Your options if you have tickets:

1. Hold onto tickets for next year’s Virgin Festival, as they will still be valid;
2. Get a full refund from Computicket;
3. Or attend the Virgin Mobile pre-show instead, which will be cheaper, so you will also be entitled to a partial refund of your original ticket price.

Here’s the press release I received:

Virgin Mobile announces postponement of Virgin Festival

Johannesburg, 30 October 2008 – “Changes have been made to Virgin Festival by Virgin Mobile in order to ensure an even hotter line-up, and one that will make South Africans proud,” announced Peter Boyd, CEO of Virgin Mobile.

The festival has been postponed to early 2009 in order to secure the international line-up that is more in line with what Virgin Festival stands for throughout the different countries. “Our criteria for a successful Virgin Festival are a great Greenfield venue, an impressive and eclectic international line-up, a huge local line-up, the Road to V bringing local unsigned bands into the mix, and some quirky brand activations for the crowd from Virgin. Four out of five of these are on track, but we’re not entirely satisfied with the international line-up,” said Boyd. “Some of the bands that South Africans kept asking for were simply not available at that time of the year.”

He went on to say that Virgin Mobile and Big Concerts will work hard together to achieve a line-up that will show South Africans what a festival of this nature is all about, and one that will make South Africans proud.

As a platform for the Road to V winning band, three concerts presented by Virgin Mobile will still be taking place. On the 13th December in Johannesburg at Coca-Cola Dome, 14th December at Durban’s ICC and on the 17th in Cape Town at Grand Arena at Grandwest. Maroon 5, One Republic, The Parlotones and Goldfish will be lighting up the stage together with Road to V’s winning bands. The grand winner will still open the Virgin Festival by Virgin Mobile when it goes live.

“International acts Maroon 5 and One Republic will still be coming to South Africa, therefore existing ticket sales will still be honoured, only now the concert will be a curtain raiser for Virgin Festival 2009. Unlike the festival it will be indoors, but the dance arena will still be included,” explains Attie Van Wyk, CEO of Big Concerts.

For those who’ve already bought tickets, there’s no need to worry. Current ticket holders have three options:
1. Hold onto tickets for next year’s Virgin Festival, as they will still be valid;
2. Get a full refund from Computicket;
3. Or attend the Virgin Mobile pre-show instead, which will be cheaper, so you will also be entitled to a partial refund of your original ticket price.
“We are confident we have arrived at the best solution for music fans, and it will be worth the wait for Virgin and South Africa.” concluded Boyd.

Yes, it’s true. I’ve mentioned this fact before here on this blog but only sporadically. There is a music video, there are mp3’s. In fact there are two of our songs in this very post. So go ahead and have a listen.

The bands name was Thus Far. I played with some fantastic musicians over the three years we were together. Thus Far shared stages with The Parlotones, Prime Circle, Arno Castens, Albert Frost, The Finkelstiens, Evolver, Airship Orange and a host of other bands who travelled through Grahamstown, the Eastern Cape and played at Splashy Fen.

I’m not really sure why it’s taken me so long to blog about this, but it just has. So there you go. I will be adding some of our more refined stuff at a later stage but for now, here are two songs.

The first one, Strongest Star, was written by Terence Hatting – the phenomenal bassist and song writer of the band. The second and more soppy of the two, Falling Down, was written by yours truly in all his emo, downtrodden and depressing days!

Krugersdorp – A schoolboy who stabbed a fellow pupil to death with a sword in Krugersdorp on Monday morning was apparently high on drugs, saying Satan had told him to kill the children…
Krugersdorp councillor Alex Raubenheimer said school children on the scene told him the boy was high on drugs and was dressed like Joey Jordison, a drummer of the band Slipknot.

source

I really enjoyed Chris Roper’s post on the topic.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen the movie “Primal Fear“? If you haven’t, you should. Ed Norton and Richard Gere are fantastic.

The basic premise of the movie is that an alter boy kills some people and uses his innocent, god-fearing “nature” to defend himself. This coupled with his apparent schizophrenia gets him off. He walks free.

This isn’t the same thing as stating that “the devil made me do it” ofcourse, but the premise is the same. It’s the same as saying I am incapable of making decisions on my own so I blame the devil. The devil is intangible and doesn’t exist therefore I need to make the concept real so I tell you that heavy metal is the devil’s music. I can therefore blame the heavy metal for my actions and by association, blame the devil.

{The way I see it (and I think this might ruffle some feathers) is that the devil does not exist. So in theory this is where my article should end, but for the sake of debate, let me continue.}

Is this some sort of twisted philosophical logic that I just don’t grasp? Why don’t we blame the parents, the school system, the child, the child’s friends and their influence on the child’s life and actions? Why do we have to make it about themusic and single the music out as violent, aggressive and possible of warping a perception so much so that the child becomes warped in action?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that an under-age child should be listening to music or watching films that promote violence, sexual promiscuity or any other illegal or dangerous action. But that is for the parents to regulate, you can’t tell the music to stop playing itself if it thinks the child is under-age. That’s just ridiculous.

Furthermore, music can be intense, aggressive, cutting edge, loud, banging and harsh but that doesn’t mean the lyrical content reflects that. I am deep in to rock music, old, new, heavy, soft, refined and raw. I love it all. But it doesn’t all dramatically influence my action, choices, decisions and life. It provides me with insight in to what other people perceive the world to be.

Let’s step back 50 years or 40 years or 30, 20, 10 years in our history. Think back to The Beatles, The Stones, Queen (is the name a reference to homosexuality possibly?) and heaven forbid Elvis the once banned rocker and now the king of rock ‘n roll forever. These bands all faced adversity in their time. Why? Because parents, teachers, headmasters, religious pundits and many other groups couldn’t take responsibility for their actions, their children or their children’s actions. Basically, blame the music for the uncontrollable and rebellious nature of our children.

I thought we were meant to learn from the mistakes of our past? Are we not just repeating the actions of the ignorant and blind from the past by condemning the music and inadvertently pushing our children towards the messages that we are trying to protect them from?

When I was about 11 I got in to Skunk Anansie heavily. I loved them. The lead singer was a bald black woman by the name of Skin. Skin. Do you honestly think that my Greek Orthodox (then) father was going to tolerate it? Not a chance. The first song on the album featured the lyric “Yes it’s fucking political”. Ha! I didn’t stand a chance. Or did I? I made sure that the first thing I did when my father stepped out of the house was play that song. I credit that song alone for my political interest and for my degree in politics from Rhodes University. That Damned music, it ruined my life.

Here’s a Skunk Anansie cutaway:

No wonder I’m so messed up. This is what I was listening to at 11/12 years old and I haven’t killed, maimed, harmed anyone….yet…dum dum dum dum

All that my father’s harsh actions, forced law and pushy intention did was make me crave the message, the content and the music more. Get real, kids are smarter than we give them credit for. Nothing you do is going to make them stop listening to that music.

I’m not sure if you’ve looked around lately, picked your head up out of your bible, book, “reality” or life and noticed how liberal the world has become. Take your blinkers off. They are playing “the devil’s music” in clubs nowadays, they are playing that rock-metal-death-rap-craziness on the radio. The world has moved on. So why don’t you?

One murder happens involving teenagers and it immediately becomes anti-religious (as if the only thing that can save our children is god/religion) and name and blame towards the musicians. I listen to Slipknot, I have 16 year old female cousins who listen to them too, they aren’t suicidal, on a murderous rampage or intent on harming others. In spite of their personal lives they are actually very well balanced cousins who make me proud. The music they listen to gives them perspective on the world not insight in to the devil’s mind. This was one incident that occurred amongst a sea of socially uncomfortable youths who do not choose to murder. Let’s look at the one case, not clump the entire youth of SA and their music habits as satanistic.

I am not saying the research doesn’t oppose my argument, it might, I don’t know. But to be honest I am more than satisfied with blaming myself for my actions, my societal influences, my friends, parents or experiences but not the devil and his (her) music.

Last point, if you want violence, turn on Carte Blanche on a Sunday at 7pm, turn on SABC 1, 2, 3 and e-tv news at 7am or 7pm every day, listen to the radio broadcasts about war, dishonesty, crime, violence at home and abroad, cheating politicians world wide and more. Music, let me tell you, is a fraction of our problem today.