Category: Music

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Interviews Music

For Prime Circle it’s all or nothing

“It’s time to not be so negative about everything in life,” offers Ross Learmonth. “It’s time to just rock ‘n roll.”

Prime Circle’s frontman has reason to feel amped. Backed by a new manager, fresh record deal and expanded line-up, his band have just released their third album.

Produced by Springbok Nude Girls guitarist Theo Crous (“He brought a lot to the party in the sense of making the guitar sound like a huge wall of guitars”), ‘All Or Nothing’ is easily their best work: more powerful, more accomplished, more melodic.

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Interviews Music

Zebra & Giraffe collect memories

Greg Carlin sighs. It’s the question he’s been asked most since galloping onto the South African music scene as Zebra & Giraffe: ‘What’s up with the name?’

“I have no decent story,” he relents, the easy-going guy next door sounding just a little exasperated. “I wish I had a cooler story but I don’t.”

A far better tale is his rise from “obsessed” pre-teen Dave Grohl fan to the one-man band behind South Africa’s debut album of the year.

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Interviews Music

Sour but sweet: The Lemonheads’ Evan Dando

Evan Dando is not a fan of his band’s biggest hit. “I don’t really like that song ‘Mrs Robinson’ at all,” he grins at the irony. “How sad is that?”

But the sole constant member of The Lemonheads is not one for regrets. When the band he formed with friends in 1986 hit it big six years later, Dando’s photogenic looks helped him become, alongside friend Kurt Cobain, one of the poster boys of the indie music scene. But even as People magazine put the singer on their “Top 50 Sexiest Men of 1993” list, a 20-something from Pennsylvania began self-publishing the magazine ‘Die Evan Dando, Die’.

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Music Reviews

Seether return home as heroes

Seether are an LA-based band whose last two singles spent close on six months at the top of the US rock charts. Less than 10 years ago they were wannabes from Centurion who couldn’t even win a battle of the bands competition.

Frontman Shaun Morgan Welgemoed is keen to remind local audiences he hasn’t forgotten. From the South African flag (on stage and tattooed on his arm) to name-checking Barney Simon to playing alongside the childhood friend who taught him guitar, their Cape Town show is a wild celebration of their origins.

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Music Reviews

‘Hard Candy’ well past its sell-by date

Timbaland is a bit of a slut. Since relaunching Nelly Furtado’s career two years ago the producer has worked with everybody from Bjork to Duran Duran. A project with the Smurfs is probably in the offing, provided Papa Smurf can front the cash.

Now Madonna is the latest in the long line of clients that, in just the past two years, totals over 30. And therein lies one of the biggest problems with ‘Hard Candy’ – Madge is usually at the front of the queue when new music trends come along.

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Music Reviews

Elton John gets down to business

Elton John has a bit of a reputation for being, well, difficult. Once, when staying in a hotel in America, he phoned his management company in London and shouted: “It’s too f***ing windy here – can you do something about it?”

But onstage in Cape Town he’s an absolute gentleman, a consummate professional. Maybe too professional. He’s impeccably dressed, his stylish black coat complementing his red-tinted glasses. And impeccably punctual.

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Interviews Music

Seether’s Shaun Morgan can’t fake it

“You should know that the lies won’t hide your flaws / No sense in hiding all of yours.” More than just lyrics to Seether’s swinging hit ‘Fake It’, the words reflect a way of life for the band’s frontman. That’s startlingly clear when I come face to face with Shaun Morgan Welgemoed. What you see is what you get. There’s nothing fake about him.

He doesn’t even bother to hide his vulnerability: “The bigger it gets the more I realise I wasn’t cut out for the fame part of it.”

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Interviews Music

Fatboy Slim is big on beats

“Dance music isn’t at its peak at the moment,” Norman Cook says, rather wistfully, from his Brighton beachfront home on the south of England.

“Five years ago it was breaking rules and turning people on who didn’t like dance music – rock bands wanted to get involved, and people were excited.”

“Since then we’ve kind of lost our momentum a little bit. When big beat came around in the ’90s it gave dance music a kick up the arse, with groups like Daft Punk and Chemical Brothers,” adds the man better known as Fatboy Slim.

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Interviews Music

Karen Zoid living in the present

“It was the best time in my life – I was so carefree,” remembers Karen Zoid of busking on Melville’s streets as a teenager. It certainly beat her grade 10 weekend job as a Mr Delivery call centre phone operator, earning R3.20 an hour towards an amplifier (“Nobody ever knows what they want, they always change their mind!”).

Out on the pavements she could perform to an audience, playing Rolling Stones tunes to 50-somethings, Smashing Pumpkins hits to students, sad Tracy Chapman ballads to loners.

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Music Reviews

James Blunt calls ‘All The Lost Souls’

Poor James, he’s had a tough life. At the posh Harrow School he was called a rude word that rhymes with “Blunt”. After training at Sandhurst (the very same academy that would later welcome Princes Willy and Harry) he was sent to keep the peace in Kosovo – virtually single-handedly – as every press release is sure to remind us. And even when the singing soldier’s debut album ‘Back To Bedlam’ was bought by 11 million people (allowing him to buy a villa in Ibiza), he was derided and ridiculed by millions more.

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