Kings Of Leon

The photo Jared tweeted the day before the concert: "This is my view for the day. Hopefully there'll be a few more folks here tomorrow night".

FINALLY.

All the Kings Of Leon concert pics have been edited (Yes it took me a while, they are shitty photo's. Damn that stupid no-cameras-allowed concert policy!)

Let's begin, shall we?

When tickets went on sale last year, I was a KOL fan, but they weren't at favourite-band status for me, and so I bought a general standing ticket along with the rest of my friends. 

The concert was supposed to have taken place earlier this year in March, but they postponed their show due to an operation that Nathan needed on his bicep. 

Little did I know that this seemingly unfortunate event turned out to have such a positive effect in my life.

Sometime in February, I managed to get my hands on all of their music, and as the year progressed I realised that I absolutely love their music, and they subsequently became my favourite band in the world. But by that time, Golden Circle had already sold out.

With this new-found appreciation for the band, and after just seeing Coldplay perform live on 5 October, I was actually bummed that I would not be standing in Golden Circle to see my favourite band perform live.

Thank God for 5FM though!

For about two weeks my friend Nawal, my sister Farhana, and myself had been listening to 5FM, hoping to win Golden Circle tickets to the Kings Of Leon concert that was to be held on 26 October 2011 at the Cape Town Stadium

We kept our ears close to the radio, waiting for the right moment to call in and win that so desired prize. 

Then the evening of Wednesday 12 October, whilst listening to the Rob Vember show, I sat with my phone in hand, and as soon as I heard him say "someone's gonna win those tickets just after this", I hit redial (the studio number was already programmed into my phone by that time), and my sister did the same on her phone.

Bummer, someone already got through before us.

LUCKILY, the competition was between 3 contestants, and I got through as the third caller.

Completely stunned by the fact that I even got through, and subconsciously worried that I'd get cut off, I quickly yelled out "HI, THIS IS RASHEEDA FROM CAPE TOWN!" like an idiot.

With all of my family listening to the radio, voice shaking and sweating like nobody's business, I had to sing along to the chorus of 'Notion'. ON AIR.

Kings Of Leon - Notion:

The other 3 contestants were completely boring. I sang like my life depended on it. I even sing the instrumental parts with  no lyrics. LOL. 

When Rob announced I won, I, along with the rest of my family, SCREAMED. It took me a good couple minutes to calm down and give them my contact details. 

Several minutes after my celebration, I got an SMS from someone to say I gave my cellphone number out on air, not realising that we were still live at that time. LOL. Totally worth it though!

The prize included 4 Golden Circle tickets, along with a Nokia E6:

Yay!

Here's what went down after that:

Farhana and I promised 2 tickets to each other should either of us win. So, essentially I had 2 tickets and she had 2 tickets. I gave my other ticket to Nawal, whilst Farhana gave her 2nd ticket to her friend Fareedah. But a week before the concert, Nawal's hardrive crashed. All her work from this year was due the following week and she could not get an extension. Because she had to redo a year's worth of work, it meant she had to forgo her ticket.

My friend Zaynab turned 18 this year, and because I still owed her a present, I phoned her up and told her to start learning some KOL songs, because she was going to the concert, even though she barely knew who they were.

Ecstatic and excited for the show, two days before the concert I received a phone call from a representative of the competition to say that the tickets they had given me were printed incorrectly. This meant that they were invalid as they would not scan at the turnstiles which borders the entrance to the venue, and so I had to pick up 4 new tickets.

The big day finally arrived. The day we had been waiting an entire YEAR for. 

We met up with a couple of friends that we're also going to the show and headed to the venue.

Because we had Golden Circle tickets, I wanted to be right in front, so we queued from 11am outside, even though gates were only to be opened at 5pm.

There are several barriers one has to get through before finally reaching your actual 'seat' in the venue.

First you have the queue before the queue. This shadeless space is where we spent majority of the hot day. Because Zaynab is in Matric and is writing her finals, she brought her Maths notes with her and spent a large portion of the day studying.

(Serious dedication right thurrrr!)

Studying Maths at the KOL queue

Boredom struck.

Whilst we waited, a couple of friends that live in town came and chilled with us at the front of the queue.

The second barrier to go through is the bag search. Another hour was spent waiting for this barrier to officially 'open'. After the bag search you go on to collect your Golden Circle or General Standing arm band by presenting your ticket.

Sometime during the day, I explained to my friend Zakaria that I had an "extra" ticket in my bag, one of the invalid tickets I brought along, just to test out. I told him it would get him an arm band because visually there was nothing wrong with the ticket, but that it wouldn't get him INTO the actual venue. He said he'd give it a shot nevertheless.

Zakaria

Once we received our arm band, we had to queue another hour for the turnstiles.

At this point I was a little annoyed because we had queued for long, but because of the various barriers, many people got ahead of us. But, what are you gonna do? I just told myself that once I passed those turnstiles, I had to run like the wind to get to as close to the front of the stage as possible.

Which I did.

Sort of.

After sitting ALL DAY, some of us (me) could barely run after a couple of metres. I ran for as long as I could but my God, if there were ever a day that I was gonna die from running, that would have been the day.

Surprisingly I made it. Ahead of everyone else (say "whaaaat?!"). Got to the front. Sat down, back against the wall, and booked my leg and bag space for my KOL-mates.

For some reason this walrus of a chick (yes I'm being rude and exaggerating, but she pissed me off) decided to stand between my legs, crotch in my face, and refused to move. Some time during the concert she elbowed her way in between me and my neighbour. HOW she managed to fit in is a theory only scientists can figure out, and I spent the rest of the night feeling like this:

*Sidenote: This same girl told me that her brother works as a rig operator at the venue, and at the Coldplay concert he managed to get her the towel that Chris Martin used to wipe his sweat with. She generously shared with me that she has never washed the towel and sleeps with it every night*.

Ross Mathews does not approve.

MOVING. ALONG.

After my friends finally found me, Zaka came and told me he got in! The ticket didn't work at the turnstile, and so he was sent to the Computicket booth. After a couple failed attempts at scanning his ticket, they let him through anyways!

Suddenly I was sitting with the option of getting 3 more people in to see my favourite band. Unfortunately Nawal had the 3rd ticket, and she was away in Stellenbosch for the day, so I only had 2 extra tickets.

I advertised on BBM if anyone wanted a Golden Circle ticket and explained that the tickets were at my house near Kenilworth, so if they wanted it, they would have go and get it there.

Zaka's brother, Issa, was all set to head that way when my cousin Hasena told me she was in the area. So she picked up the 2 tickets and met up with Issa in town before coming to the concert, where they went through the same situation as Zaka but eventually got in. WHOOP!

Essentially that's 8 people 5FM gave Golden Circle tickets to. 

Gotta love that station!

With regards to the photo's, let me just quickly explain something: 3 devices were used to capture the concert.

1 - Ipod Touch:

It has a shitty shitty camera. Those photo's are the poorest quality = LOTS of editing used.

2 - Nikon Coolpix:

This digital camera takes somewhat decent photo's in good lighting. But once it hit night-time, I struggled to get some good shots, because they were often blurry.

Also, less than half-way through the show, I ran out of space on my memory card because someone forgot to take their high school photo's off; and to delete one photo took too much time, so that was a FAIL!

3 - Nokia E6:

My LIFESAVER.

8MP camera.

Got some great video footage (not so great with being able to zoom).

Most of the photo's I took using this little bad boy. So I really have to thank 5FM (and Nokia) for more than just those tickets!

Jon Savage MC'd the Cape Town and Johannesburg concert.

Check out what Jon came up with for the Johannesburg KOL concert:



I saw photographer Jordi Matas at the Coldplay and Kings Of Leon concerts. My friend Hanim is somewhat obsessed with him.

Jordi Matas. The Bradley Cooper look-a-like photographer

See the resemblance?

Jordi took this photo below. My sister looks like she's in heaven. 

You can check out Jordi's Kings of Leon concert photo's here. As well as his photo's of the opening bands here.

Yes, there were 3 opening bands. Caleb said to Jon after an interview that this was because people had paid a lot of money for this concert, and that he wanted them to get their money's worth. 

The 3 bands, Shadowclub; The Black Hotels; and Die Heuwels Fantasties, were pretty entertaining. Shadowclub are only gonna get bigger because their music is quite catchy.

The Black Hotels are kinda creepy, almost vampire-like. It's a random, weird bunch of people. The music is al right. Their song Natalie is catchy.

Afrikaans rock band, Die Heuwels Fantasties were rather enjoyable to watch. They brought Francois Badenhorst (from Fokofpolisiekar [which means 'Fuck Off Police Car', just btw]), and the always entertaining Jack Parow with them.

Jack Parow and his infamous cap

Francois Bardenhorst

Shadowclub

The Black Hotels

Die Heuwels Fantasties

DHF and Jack Parow

Fareedah

This photo is my wallpaper. LOVE this.

Check the Jared hairdo

So close to the stage, yet so far!

Someone's gonna be hurting.

*Nacho! Nacho! Nacho!*

NACHO!

Nacho doing some tuning

After several hours of waiting, the main act finally took the stage sometime around 9pm.
I will never forget the moment I first saw them live, in person.

Jared, you sexy beast!

Barely got to see Matthew 

Matthew

Hardly saw Nathan AT ALL.

Nathan

Pyro

 

Jesus. Aka Nathan.

Another former wallpaper of mine.

Fireworks!

Blurry, but it's the only one I got of all of them together.

Caleb, thanking his people.

And in a flash, they're gone.

Zaka and Issa

Rock 'n Roll Gods

My sister took a bajillion photo's as well, using my iPod:

The largest crowd KOL had ever played to. Their words, not mine.

Thanks again 5FM and Nokia

Throughout the show, the guys from the band each threw out their guitar picks (or drum sticks in the case of Nathan), and one of Caleb's happened to fall in front of me by the barrier. I got one of the security guards to find it and give it to me. I was not leaving that stadium 'til I got that pick!

Caleb's guitar pick

Even though you have a sucky job, you served an actual purpose that night, so thank you!

After the concert had ended, I bumped into an OLD primary school friend that stood 3 people away from me the entire concert, and learned that he managed to get Jared's signed guitar pick! What are the chances of that happening?

By the end of the night we were all starving and exhausted. We walked over to get some KFC before heading home (some people had school the next day & I played chauffeur, so no after party for me).

Post-concert events:

The band had stayed in Cape Town from the Monday till early Saturday morning. The concert had been on the Wednesday, and on the Friday night Hanim and I tried to go catch them at their hotel (The One & Only). Using our CSI brains, we'd figured out that that's where they must have been staying based on these photo's:

SUCH a cool pic!

The only reason we went to the hotel that night was because Jared tweeted in response to a follower that he was considering going (next door) to the Aquarium (my workplace) for their Halloween party (it was Halloween weekend in Cape Town). 

Camera in hand, we jumped in a car and raced towards the hotel. We got there and chilled out in the lobby for about 2 and a half hours, constantly checking Jared's twitter page and trying to convince him to come down.

We spoke to the waiter who told us that we'd just missed them, and that they normally come down for meals, and usually hang around and allow fans to approach them (even though they're surrounded by bodyguards), whilst having a smoke.

DAMMIT!

Sometime around 12:30am, after no Jared spotting, we gave up and decided to head home. 

On the highway, I read someone's tweet saying that the guy's from KOL had just entered The Assembly (night club). I actually screamed out loud, and after shouting out to Hanim what I'd just read, she found the nearest highway exit, turned around, and sped towards The Assembly. 

We got there, but after asking a couple people (including  the ticket girl), I realised that the tweet was just a ploy to get people to come to the club.

Completely disappointed, we headed home once more. 

Just as we reached my house, I read (and saw) a photo tweeted by someone at Trinity (night club) showing that Jared had actually gone there instead.

We realised that if we'd stayed at The One & Only for 20 minutes more, we definitely would have seen him.

DAMMIT!

Annoyed and tired, we made a plot to go super early to their hotel the next morning to catch them at breakfast.

The plan was to get there by 7am, but Hanim overslept! We only arrived at 8:30am, and after drinking tea and coffee, we learned that they had checked out by 6am in order to catch a flight to Johannesburg for their next gig.

*SIGH*

Oh well.

One day I'll get you, Jared!

Nevertheless, it was still a fantastic concert.

Two fantastic international bands in one month? Damn Cape Town, you're stepping it UP.

Got to see my favourite band play live. Doubt anything will ever top that.

All I can say is, Rocktober, what a month!

SETLIST | Cape Town, SA (26 Oct 11)

• Crawl
• Taper Jean Girl
• Four Kicks
• The Immortals
• Fans
• Revelry (!!!)
• Back Down South
• Arizona
• Radioactive
• My Party
• No Money
• Molly’s Chambers
• Mary
• Notion
• Be Somebody
• Pyro (<3)
• Closer
• On Call
• Knocked Up
• Sex On Fire

~ Encore ~

• The Bucket
• Manhattan
• Use Somebody
• Black Thumbnail

There really is no such thing as a bad Kings Of Leon record, so I'm game for them to come back and play the rest of their songs!