FREEDOM FIGHTER liberates TSWANE!!
Catch this hip new talented band in Tswane…in the words of the muso’s themselves: “if you could imagine leonard cohen rapping to a dub beat or screaming jay hawkins jamming with the velvet underground it’s DEADLY! completely original… a bit like the first time you drank Handy Andy – washes everything else away – leaves you SHINING” Fresh from their two performances at the N…ational Arts festival in Grahamstown that were described by critic Anton Krueger as “magical”, FREEDOM FIGHTER now tackle Tshwane. VENUE: University of Pretoria, Kapel (Chapel) Theatre, Lynnwood Road, Tshwane TIMES: Tuesday 19 July – 20:00 Friday 22 July – 15:30 Saturday 23 July – 17:00 for more information contact Jaqui 082 880...
Review: Heineken Global DJ, Bassment Jaxx etc
Our girl Panda held on tight at a very windy Heineken Thirst DJ’ing final and was delighted to meet the man in the picture, her hero Felix from Bassment Jaxx – Looks like we missed out – here’s her take: The Heineken Music Thirst team has been very busy since 2002 scouring the globe for the finest DJ talent. The global final at Cape Town’s castle was a culmination of a series of… elimination rounds. On Saturday 7 January 2006 the best upcoming DJ talent in the world was put to the test with a challenging twenty minute set in front big names in music who would determine the champion. Amongst these brave young men (unfortunately there were no women in the finals) was South Africa’s own DJ Budda – aka Sibusiso Mnyandu from Durban. The proudly South African crowd cheered loudly when his name was read out. He was to go first. Other regional finalists were from Indonesia, Denmark, Morocco and Mexico. Probably the most prominent guest at the castle that night was a rather violent South Easter which was blowing drinks off tables and tearing at our hair. The cloud was thick on Table Mountain. It must have been intimidating playing the opening set with the crowd cold and mostly sober. Budda opened smoothly. Just as the music was picking up momentum, the ungracious wind lifted the vinyl off the turntables and the set came to a rather abrupt cacophonous end. Fortunately almost all the other DJs were playing strictly off CDJs (except Basement Jaxx who were somewhat concerned about the possibility of the same happening to them) and the competition continued regardless. Next up was DJ Adhe from Indonesia. I was picturing him playing to large young audiences who hit the backpacking trail to “Indo” for great beaches and surf and with ideals of finding themselves. They’d be lucky to find themselves sweating on a dance floor played by Adhe. He is good at what he does. Enter Hak’X from Morroco. He started with dramatic sirens and picked up the pace, track through track, faster and faster harder techno. The crowd loved him. Then Ronin from Denmark stepped in, keeping up the pace although his style was different entirely but mixed it over seamlessly. He had a marked electro influence which I had never heard before in a house music environment. Thankfully, music is always evolving. I realised in hindsight it would be natural for house music to pick up on the recent surge in popularity of electro music and the eighties revivalist scene. The result is fabulous. This innovation, his natural interaction with the crowd...
Review: Christina Aguilera and others. Mhhhm
This kind of review makes everything worth it – three representers give you their take on the Unite of the Stars and Christina affairs: First off it’s LEV – he went to the media gathering and was not at all impressed by his colleagues who seemed a little starstruck: SHUT UP, STUPID. What’s it like being at a shit-hot press conference featuring Christina Aguile…ra, Westlife, Deborah Cox, Diana Ross and Lucia Micarelli? I’ll tellya. I’m going through the audio collected from the big Unite of the Stars press conference. I’m disgusted. Really, this was the hottest set of stars we’ve had in the country since the last 46664 and, as ever, the South African media blew it. Typically, at one of these press conferences, each journo has one question. One shot. That’s it. Unless you’re one of the “favoured” journalist, in which case you might get two or three per celebrity. That in itself sucks, since the favoured journalists are more often than not sycophantic thicko’s. And what do said thicko’s choose to ask? “What inspires you?” Or, in the case of Christina Aguilera, “how was the kiss with Madonna.” That was 3 years ago! She’s answered that question a billion times already! It may seem like I’m being petty, but I desperately think that we should demand more of ourselves. I really don’t mind if they’re wasting their own time, but when it comes to a press conference, where we share the audio, stupid questions waste everybody’s time. Screw’t, guys! Raise the bar. If you can find it out on the internet, if there’s only one possible answer (“What do you think about South Africa so far?” Who’s gonna say, “actually, it’s f*ing awful!”), if it’s just your attempt to suck up to a star (“How do you stay looking so young?”), or if we’ve heard it before, shut the **** up. The celebrities went into auto-pilot, reading off their internal autocue (and who can blame them) and the South African media (for the most part) stood there dazed and breathless and wasting not only my time, but the time of all newspaper and magazine readers, radio listeners and TV viewers. One way to minimise the chance of suckiness would be to invite more of the alternative media. Let the mainstream use the audio. I’m sure the altpuppies won’t mind. And everybody will have a better product. That said, well done to all the organisers and the publicists for setting up this opportunity. It was slick and tight and classy. Cheers. Hopefully next time, the media won’t blow it. — Lev David is an independent writer and media...
LEXMARK RESPONDS – Consumers know your rights!!!
UPDATE: Well – they tried their ‘best’ – but there doesn’t seem to be a solution. So we’ll be packing the old boy up this afternoon and taking him back to the SHOPS – Say GOODBYE!!! I think it’s important for consumers to be aware of their rights and to do whatever it takes to get some decent service – so many people, particularly those that are not in a position or too scared to speak up, ofte…n don’t. We spoke up and we were heard. Our posting of the bad service we received from LEXMARK was finally replied to today, only after it being viewed by people from LEXMARK throughout the world. Funny enough the guys at the top of the corporate ladder in Europe responded first, asking the guys in South Africa to please take care of the matter. It’s a pity South Africa didn’t respond first. But anyway – we will now see if they will help us or if we must simply ‘take the item back’. Here’s a quote from the redress email: “We at Lexmark have very high service standard and if this is the way you have been treated then I would like to know who is giving this misinformation to you. I have advised our entire department of this issue.” Here’s the scoop: Someone warned me about LEXMARK printers and Faxes but I did not heed their warning. We were desperate for a Fax machine and GAME were having a great sale and we were suckered in to buying a LEXMARK. No wonder they are on sale. The machine did not work as it was supposed to, and we spent hours and hours on the phone trying to get some customer support and client service from LEXMARK SOUTH AFRICA – no luck – they just brushed us off and told us to return it to the shop. We will be returning it to the shop – thanks for that great Customer Service tip – must do wonders for your brand – but we will never buy LEXMARK again and advise you to stay away too… pay a little more for another brand – You cannot get worse service. It’s not...
An invitation to join the PETROL resistance
We often receive weird and wonderful email initiatives, circulated on the net to try and make a difference to people’s everyday lives. This one is all about the petrol price… Check it out! DISCLAIMER: Represent does not support nor negate the initiatives of this posting – we simply publish it. This is about petrol prices and an invitation to join the resistance. GBy the end of this month petrol prices are set to soar even higher. If we want the petrol price to come down, we all need to take some intelligent, united action. Last year there was a “don’t buy petrol day”-but the oil companies just laughed at that because they knew that we would “hurt” ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than a problem to them. But, whoever thought of the ideas, has come up with a plan that can really work. READ ON AND JOIN THE ACTION!! By now you probably thinking petrol priced at about R4.50 is cheap. It is currently at +- R4.60 for regular and unleaded. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations (the bullies like US and Britain) have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is cheap at R5.00, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that buyers control the marketplace……… not the sellers. With the price of petrol going up each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their petrol. And we can do that without hurting ourselves. How? Since we rely on our cars, we just cannot stop buying petrol. But we can have an impact on petrol prices if we all act together to force a price war. Here’s the idea: For the rest of the year, don’t purchase any petrol from the two biggest overseas oil companies (which are now one), SHELL and BP… (Local is Lekka – So buy Sasol / Engen / Excel) If the overseas companies are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact we need to reach literally millions of petrol buyers. It is really simple to do! Now, don’t wimp out at this point…keep reading, and all will be revealed as to how simple it is to reach millions of people. COMMENCING 14th June 2005 DON’T BUY BP/SHELL, go and support SA Brands SASOL, EXCEL – our currency and...
We will be back!
