hey!! Well, it happened. Half of it, anyway. We managed to wangle 2 free tickets to last night's Nude Girls (5 guys, actually) gig, and it took an hour of standing outside in the freezing cold waiting for them to issue the tickets of the pre-booked people who were no-shows on the night to get the remaining 2 of us in. Phoned the club yesterday afternoon to find out if we could get any tickets and was told that there will be several dozen no-shows, just like every night, and that the previous night's Nudies gig had 100 such no-shows. Pitch up and wait and you'll probably get in, they said, although no guarantees. And we got in! Claire, unfortunately, was not feeling so hot yesterday at work, and opted to not even bother standing in the freezing cold till 10.15pm hoping for tickets. She is still a bit ill today, in fact, and actually went to bed last night early as a result. So the almost-date unfortunately turned into a not-at-all date, which was disappointing, but man, what an awesome, awesome gig! Unfortunately, the SNG never managed to break world-wide, although they do have a largeish ex-pat following in the UK (where there are almost a million South Africans under the age of 30 living and working) and Australia (much the same), so if you click on the "Listening to" link up top of the entry, the Amazon search will come up with nothing. But... you can pop along to http://www.nudegirls.co.za/mp3.htm and listen to samples and be wowed by their utter godlike brilliance and stuff. The tour was called Goddank vir Klank, which is basically "Thank God for Sound" in Afrikaans and is their 10th anniversary tour and also the name of the re-released Greatest Hits album (formerly called "The Fat Lady Sings - Best of SNG 1995-2001). It is all in English, even though they are Afrikaans boys. The best ones, IMHO, are Lonely, Little, Giant Love Affair, Blue Eyes, and the uber-smash Bubblegum on my boots, a track which must be experienced live and loud to be believed. Download the samples. Be stunned. Be inspired. Then mosey along to http://www.amazon.co.uk and type in Springbok and they have the album there as The Fat Lady Sings. It's kind of post-modern punky metal with fairly abstract lyrics. That's the best way I can describe it. Man, they played every hit on the greatest hits album except the new track, Lonely (well, it was the new track on the first release of the greatest hits back in 2001, so not so new anymore), as well as a brand new track and saving the 4 biggest hits for the encore. This is a band who have played to packed stadia and arenas opening for overseas bands (INXS and Lenny Kravitz) and they have their 10th anniversary tour in a tiny club which can only hold about 400 people, so it was really intimate and awesome. I was right at the back and still only about 10 metres from the stage. And it was announced yesterday that they will open for The Offspring on their SA tour in September, so there is another opportunity to go see 'em. Crawled in at 1:35am this morning, through the pissing rain - so bad in fact that most of Cape Town was flooded yesterday morning after 8 hours of cloudburst downpour - a very happy lad. In fact, Goddank vir klank just about says it all. -D-