FETISH FRIDAY THE 13TH

Oooooh! Ghouls and goblins and ghastly gargoyles! But enough of my mates, how are you all doing? Been avoiding walking under ladders and allowing black cats to cross you paths?

Hope so.

Don't want any of you to have any excuse to miss tonight, would we? For tonight Fetish grace the stage at Mercury. For the first time in a decade we are going to have a chance to relive the glory years and, for those of you unlucky bastards out there that missed out - to be introduced to a truly special and significant band, one that contributed more to South African alternative music in real substance than most. They did so in an almost subversive, perversely coy way, ensnaring the listener with subtle layers of musical mystery and the fragile, torn, velvet voice of Michelle Breeze. That is, obviously, until they decided to ball-gag you and whip you up into a frenzy of forbidden delight, all the while never quite giving the impression that they were going all out, always leaving you wanting more, always allowing room for unfulfilled exploration. In the end, it was never an end, never enough, and something precious and precocious, something haunting and hollow, that indefinable infinity of longing for something you couldn't quite put your finger on...

If it sounds like I'm suddenly channelling Paul Morley, then you're as surprised as I am. If you don't believe me, go and see for yourself. This will be the last chance for you to experience the sheer brittle, beautiful brilliance of arguably the greatest band to have come from our country.

THAT'S quite a claim. Now you have to go see for yourself...

I know, I know... today's supposed to be Irreverent Friday. You're all expecting me to waffle on about road head or road kill or something else roadworthy. I promise, after this monumental week of musical highlights I'll be back to my bolshy self again. Maybe I'll even write about some deep insights into the human psyche. Or maybe I'll just leave that to my resident expert, Neal Goldwyer...

NGDG: "Six months of hard work, overtime and frustration have resulted in something I can be proud of. Something promising. Something perfect. Something that someone, somewhere in the company will fuck up dreadfully. Go team!"

And remember to come along to 'Symphonaire Infernus' tomorrow night - you'd be equally crazy to miss out on that.

Spread The Love. "Love From One Side Is Not Love It's Obsession..."