Anti-crime march

Covered this for Die Burger, a South African daily, last week.

The Bibliomancer's Dream: Dream On

I really liked this installation which I discovered by chance in the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Conceived by artists Alinah Azadeh and Willow Winston, visitors were invited to select a line of text "with the help of chance". They then had to write it down in one of the blank books, so that "a new endless poem will emerge".

Ultravox @ Hammersmith Apollo

Kath and I covered the Return to Eden Part 2 gig for Glasswerk in April. I only know a few Ultravox songs including, of course, Vienna (which I once played to death on a pool hall jukebox). But I recognised more songs than I thought I would, and I liked all the rest. Fantastic concert. They were on top form. It probably even made it into my top 10 gigs of all time.
Ended up chatting to a guy on the tube who caught one of the drumsticks, and he gave it to me because he's "more into football stuff". It's not worth anything, obviously, but this is quite possibly one of my top 10 random cool events of all time.

Arno Carstens (ex Springbok Nude Girls frontman) was the support act. It was good to hear some of his new stuff, but I do miss the Nudies.

The Parlotones @ Electric Ballroom

I reviewed this gig for Glasswerk.co.uk about a month ago. I didn't think I'd need anything wider than 50mm. Got that spectacularly wrong.

Turning heads

Nick Brandt's magnificent animal portraits often look like paintings, so why not go a step further and make an actual painting of one of them? You can't charge what he's charging, of course, but it seems you can get at least half.

Köszönöm szépen, Sunday Times people!

I bought the South African Sunday Times while I was on holiday there recently, and noticed a competition in the Travel section called Been There, Done That. Readers were asked to send interesting photos of their travels, and each published pic would get £50. I sent this shot of my brother, Rudi, doing (Palinka-induced) cartwheels on Budapest's Heroes' Square (Hősök tere) just after midnight, and was obviously delighted to hear the photo was published - mainly because I'd already spent the money.

Jack Parow - dik heavy uitgeskollie

I recently discovered Jack Parow, a new South African parody-rapper. Everybody in South Africa was talking about him (and new zep-rap trio "Die Antwoord", which got rave reviews at Coachella this year), so you couldn't really miss it. Parow’s popularity was mainly fueled by the cult success of his song "Cooler as Ekke". You don't have to be a fan to enjoy the very entertaining lyrics; but you definitely have to be Afrikaans.
(Something along the lines of: You think you're cooler than me/because I drink Klipdrift, you drink Peroni/You have friends in Sweden, I have friends in Benoni/I’m original, you’re a copy; I’m a flashdrive, you’re a floppy/Jack Parow, the life of the party/You only wear fucking Issey Miyake, etc.)

I was quite keen to find out what the fuss was about, so went to see him at one of the Stellenbosch Woordfees Events at Beyerskloof, at the beginning of March.

And this is basically the effect he has on most people - something between hilarity and disbelief:

The Black Cat Bones did a cover of a Valiant Swart song, which made them really, really angry.

But Andries (Roof) Bezuidenhout was probably my favourite act as I'm a big fan of the man, and his music.