Linkin Park (& Kongos)

As you all know by now, Linkin Park  were here.

Linkin Park!

Here!

In Cape Town!

Finally!

When I heard LP  were (FINALLY) coming to Cape Town, my High School BFF's and I immediately formulated a plan to get us tickets to the show.

Normally we wouldn't really hesitate to buy Golden Circle tickets to see a band / artist that we really love, but for us, R690 was a bit too steep of a price to pay, especially seeing as we had waited at least 8 years to cross them off of our to-do list, so by now we were only really interested in seeing their old stuff.

Nevertheless, I knew that I HAD to go see them because my 15 year-old-self would never forgive me if I did not. So I gave my money to my friends and they stood queueing in the computicket line at some crazy hour in the morning the day tickets went on sale.

Soon afterwards Kongos were announced as the opening act, much to my excitement as I ADORE them and kept missing their gigs in SA as I was always out of town or the gigs were too far away.

At the time I was a little annoyed because had I known Kongos were going to be the opening act, I would have bought myself a GC ticket for sure. Both Linkin Park AND Kongos in one concert? I would have paid good money to see either band on their own, so the fact that they were performing on the same stage was a serious bonus for me.

Finally the day of the concert arrived. I popped in the CDs I had burned of my favourite LP and Kongos tracks, picked up my friends, and headed to the Cape Town Stadium, before we managed to find ourselves stuck in traffic on the highway less than 2 hours before the show was set to start. 

Seated tickets, here we come!

Come oooooooon.

Eventually after making it through the snail-paced traffic, and after fighting against some cray cray wind (which had actually caused the Lucozade scaffolding to collapse, sadly injuring several people and shockingly also ended up killing someone too) we managed to make it inside the stadium with only 10 minutes to spare, and boom Kongos had started 8pm on the dot, before I had even reached my seat.

Jack Parow made another surprise appearance, performing 'Come Together' by The Beatles with Kongos.

Kongos' 30 minute set was just too short!

Preshina, Kouthar, Kelly

Presh & her sister, Yuvika

Kelly & her brother, Kurt.

Such a cool T-shirt!

What rock concert is complete without a dick-shaped condom balloon?

Then, after 8 years of waiting, Linkin Park  finally took the stage, opening up with 'Faint'.

I don't know who started the rumour that he'd lost his ability to scream like he does, but you best believe, Chester has STILL got it. 

The visuals were just insane. The entire concert was like watching a Linkin Park music video.

"...So for one last time, Cape Town, MAKE SOME NOISE!"

Apparently some people were new to concerts as they had no idea that an encore was still to come, and had started leaving after LP had performed 'One Step Closer' and had left the stage.

LP came back on to close the show with 'Burn It Down', 'In The End', and then finally 'Bleed It Out'.

Thank you for FINALLY making a dream come true!

And all too quickly, it was over.

After the concert, we tried to head to McDonalds but the queue was just way too long, so we headed to the one in the Waterfront which was just as full. After reaching the front of the queue and discovering that the line we had been standing in for the past hour was closed, we gave up and headed to the One & Only  to kill some time as we waited for traffic to clear, and to possibly try and stalk the members of Linkin Park  (which failed to do btw).

I completely forgot that I was meant to spend the following night talking to people on the phone, and had screamed my voice away. So the next day I pulled a diva move and wasn't allowed to talk to anyone as I had to 'rest my voice' all day.

Even though LP didn't perform 'Crawling', and some of us were feeling daunted by the fact that they had exams / work in less than 6 hours (not me thanks to my crazy night-owl schedule at Amazon), LP had played mostly their old songs, so we ended the night feeling windswept, tired, hoarse, hungry, but pumped up and completely thrilled that we had finally gotten to see a band we had talked about seeing for such a long time. 

For the complete LP CT setlist go here.