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| DECEMBER 2000 Friday 1 December - The Best of Abelarde 2000 Awards at Abelarde Sanction. The house was packed and everyone was in serious party mode, with representation from most of the bands who had graced the tiny stage over the previous 12 months. Following furious and undemocratic balloting by e-mail, the winners of the Awards were there to accept the acclaim/ridicule of their peers. Playing live were Left of Centre, a nice grrl folk rock outfit (with a female following to rival our own) followed by Damn the Icebergs (Band of the Year 1999). They delivered a great set, showing why they were the incumbent title holders. In between the bands, the winners were announced. Zen Arcade cleaned up, taking Best Vocal Performance, Best Drummer, Best Alternative Band, Best Bassist and Best Groupies (Annette and Jo - go, girls!) To emphasise the point the band delivered an absolute killer set. This was followed by Sharkbrother, winners of the Band of the Year title, who delivered a slick set, accompanied on one song by Andy. Everyone very trashed and happy - a great end to the year and a fine way to launch the imminent tour. |
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| D-BASS DIARY |
| DECEMBER 2000 THE ZA TOUR - Friday 8 December - Sunday 17 December For a full account, see the Roadkill Diaries, under ZA Tour section of this site. To return to this page, go to the Tour index page and click on the yellow blemish at the bottom right hand corner of the broken CD cover. A hidden button will bring you straight back here! For a full unabridged version of the Roadkill Diaries, go to the Tour index page and click on the black hole in the trashed CD... |
| JANUARY 2001 The band worked on remixes of Up, Not About You, Ode and Take Out the Trash, with Neal Snyman at RP Studios. A fairly frustrating process - we clearly didn't capture the lushness of the original three tracks demo'ed, a mixture of fatigue and flippancy in the original mixing session. Transferring the tracks to Neal's computer enabled us to perk up the bass and drum tracks (a new snare was triggered for Up - much better). However the digital compression couldn't hold a candle to the compressors of M2 Studio and as a result the guitars sounded a bit thin. Swings and roundabouts. For weeks afterwards we would debate endlessly about about which versions to use on the EP. Eventually we settled on the "clean" ones as they had the best sound across the aural spectrum - tops to bottoms. FEBRUARY 2001 Saturday 3 February - Zen Arcade played with The Carpet Crawlers and Slugs of War at The Big Easy, Kensington. The occasion was Big Easy co-owner Gail's imminent birthday on 5 February. After a month out of the spotlight, the band was hungry to play, delivering an uncompromisngly hard-hitting set, taking full advantage of the excellent sound system courtesy of the Crawlers. The reworked version of Jammez, a popular song on tour, got its first Johanesburg airing, to noisy approval. Afterwards, the partying got hard-core, ticking over into my birthday at midnight (how did I get to be 36 f'chrissakes?) and continuing until much later. The Slugs were great fun - semi-Celtic rock and mayhem, with one manic geezer running through the crowd dressed up as Spiderman. |
| Friday 16 February - Back on home turf, the band played with Damn the Icebergs at Abelarde Sanction. An uncharacteristically difficult audience - maybe we played too late or there was something in the air - like my fight with my beloved ?... Anyway, it was fucking hard work, and the band responded with an aggressive onslaught of noisy bludgeoning. We gave the brand new Gunston Tease its first public airing - premature in fact, but it didn't sound too bad nonetheless. Generally, not a great evening - we'd need to get our groove back for the next day's gig. |
| Right - Dave "Dan" Smegma on vocals and giraffe skin trousers. |