Stevie Wonder has a twin, sighted, brother...

and his name is David Gray. DG's out in SA just now, playing concerts in Jo'burg, Durban and Cape Town and we went along for the Joburg show on Sunday night. I don't know DG's music all that well, aside from a few of his more popular tracks (Repo Man, Babylon, etc) and went along thinking that it could be a pleasant way to spend a Sunday evening rather than on my comfy couch in front of the telly. The fact that the show started off with local DJ, Alex Jay, doing the MC work and opening the show with the line "Welcome to the first sit-down concert in the Dome" should have told me to leave there and then. However, I persevered, thinking that he was probably just having a go at the organisers and not at the content of the show. The opening act, a fashionable twenty minutes late, was local band, Watershed, who tried to perform about five of their more popular tracks. Unfortunately, the sound system, or maybe it was just the guy's voice, didn't do much for the vocals and it was difficult to understand the lead at times. As I commented to Steph, he was trying to do strange things (like pronounce words in an American accent) with his mouth like Ed Roland of Collective Soul does, but it didn't work for me. An hour later, they left the stage to somewhat muted cheers from the crowd, probably about 15,000 strong by then. A brief intermission later, time to give about four guys and two girls time to have a pee, and the lights dim. Parts of the crowd start wailing, though I'm not quite sure why anyone would want to cheer the lights going out. Maybe it was a highlight of their night...I dunno. A solitary spotlight opens up on centre stage, while David Gray appears stage right, and the light swings across to him. The crowd goes wild as the rest of the band appear behind him. With instruments plugged in and tuned, DG launches off into some of his older works ("Alibi", I think was one of the tracks) and it's good foot-tapping stuff so now I'm starting to enjoy myself a bit more. Three or four tracks later and I'm thinking "I am so fuckin' bored. Why the fuck am I here, when I could be in front of the telly watching a good movie in the comfort of my comfy couch and not this plastic garden chair that's cable-tied to the two next to me watching this wannabe Stevie Wonder?" And wannabe, he is...actually, he's like a cross between Stevie W and one of those nodding-dog things you get in the back window of tattoo'ed fuckwit's cars. The middle of the set is really boring, with some (apparently) new stuff from his latest album (see the website for details on "How to put insomniacs to.....zzzzzzzzzz", otherwise known as the "Life in Slow Motion" album). DG must have been bored as well, as he ended up hinting to the audience "Ok, this is where you get out of your seats and dance along to the tune", to which the sheep promptly got on their hind legs and started swaying to the rhythm with their front hooves in the air. A few songs later and DG and the band disappear off stage to cries from the audience like "Get fuckin' back here", and "We know you're coming back, so stop fuckin' around", and the like. What must have been a quick towelling down of DG's sweaty head later, he and the band return to the stage to greet the sheep on their hind legs again. For the encore they played five songs, all oldies and, surprisingly, four of which I knew including the final song "Babylon" (like the audience didn't expect him to play that one...doh!!) and that was the end of it. Time to go home and have a coffee...thank fuck. We get back in the car and I put on some Nickleback...aahhhhhhhh...decent rock music... Not the way I would have spent the evening, but I figured that afterward I could at least say "Hey, I stood on my hind legs watching David Gray live in Joburg in 2006". I should have listened to Alex Jay, right up front...