I’m sitting in my office with my headphones on. The sounds of Pendulum’s ‘Slam’ are pulsating in my ears. It’s going to be an awesome RAMFEST, 2010 weekend! Cape Town’s renowned for her mad trance parties, but I’m a rock festival girl at heart. It gives you time to chill and be real, instead of bouncing off the walls using the same MDMA trip. Trance parties attract swarms of ‘Trancies’ or hippies and sometimes it makes me wonder what Trancies do between weekends. But as Hunter S Thompson would say: “all these savage beasts are disguised as people lovin’ hippies”.

Yesterday’s Pupil – a band everyone’s talking bout. All I can say is a hot lead singer and an energetic performance. The last act, their rock-indie lullabies certainly didn’t put the girls to sleep. I know this because at about 6am, I woke up to sneak a pee next to my ‘tent’ (a shade cover with gaping spaces either side) and was welcomed by a group of metal heads hiding in the early morning shadows and a lonely photographer delighted to have captured the splendour of my wake up call.

Friday night: Fokofpolisiekar, The Narrow, Yesterday’s Pupil and Kidofdoom….just a few of the acts gracing the RAMFEST stages. Fokofpolisiekar translates in English to “Fu*k off police car”. The band’s inception was in 2003, known locally as Fokof, they had come together as a mock to the long-standing conservatism renowned under Afrikaan culture. From there developed a new wave of music and a new style of Afrikaan rock. Fokof is renowned for putting on a crazy live show and they pulled through for all of us. Fok Of Polisie Kar!!!

A band without a vocalist, Kidofdoom always amazes me; these guys are something special. Trade in a keyboard and hype stage presence and you won’t miss any such scrambled syntax. With Kidofdoom, The Music does indeed speak for itself.

Saturday. I’m cut for space here, so I’m sticking to the highlights.

River talk. It was all playful splashes and 10 second dunks until I got told that some faulty dude shat somewhere downstream. Apparently this was all warm-vodka-OJ-mix nonsense talk, but that was the end of my murky rendezvous. Great vibe up on the river bed though. It happened to be the place where all my disappearing friends had vanished in wonderful oblivion to.

Band talk. Right – Jack Parrow, Isochronous, Lark, Boo and PENDULUM…boom!

Jack Parrow – Afrikaans Rap, need I say more? He’s a parody of pretty much everything and wears a hat as long as his arm. Check out youtube for some insight.

Pendulum!!! Slammed and crammed, everyone had planned to ‘meet everyone else at the front’. I’ve been to Reading and some other UK festies, and aside from the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s and 2 Many DJ’s, Pendulum seriously blew me away. The only way I can describe their performance is that it was as if they were playing their first every show, just for me. Their professionalism, tightness and true appreciation to be in Africa resonated throughout the 1.5 hr set. These guys are masters at hyping up a crowd, and my God, I’d love to see them again in a small, underground venue.

A few days of unrivalled silliness is an addiction one just needs to feed at times. Myself? Well, I couldn’t have picked a better time, or place, for some reckless behaviour. Nothing like the present hey? Such like right now. It’s time for my designated smoke break. You see, you have to remember kids; I am, after all, just another human “caught in the rush of the city of madness”.







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