cape town

Video shoot in southern France

Last weekend, whilst on tour in the Dordogne, we shot a live video in a vineyard near Bordeaux.

We filmed two songs as the sun went down over Pujols, and the first of them – Speedway 105 – is now online at The Lightyears YouTube channel (or you can watch it by scrolling down to the bottom of this page).

Speedway 105 is a song that came out of our first ever tour to South Africa in 2009. It tells the story of a live music venue just off Hope Street in Cape Town, where we played our first show in SA. Sadly the Speedway has since closed down, but it remains a legendary landmark in the history of the band. Click here to read my tour diary about our time at the 105.

nb. No grapes were harmed in the making of this video.

Archive of tour photos now online

We’ve just posted a comprehensive archive of our tour photos on The Lightyears’ Facebook page, stretching all the way back to 1996 and covering tours to the USA, South Korea, Thailand, South Africa, Istanbul and more…

Click here to visit the archive and venture into the mysterious and terrifying world of The Lightyears On Tour. Yes, that’s right – mysterious and terrifying. If you can call photos of me gawping with my thumbs up and Danny draping himself across parked cars mysterious and terrifying.

Which I think you can.

Feel free to leave disparaging comments, or perhaps the occasional ‘Like’ for the ones that take your fancy.

And if your day is still left wanting for entertainment, mosey on over to Project Lightyears and help us reach our next target – just 2,000 more views will unlock your free copy of our live acoustic cover of David Guetta’s Titanium.

Lightyears return to South Africa

Our fourth Cape Town tour kicks off at the end of the month.

We’ll be heading back to CT to headline at the Cape Town Tens on Saturday 4 February. This has always been one of our favourite international gigs and has repeatedly proved to be pretty much the greatest party on earth (apart from those parties you had as kids where one of your chums would hire out the top floor of McDonalds in Reading. Man, were those parties ACE.)

Click here to read my previous South Africa tour blogs.

To our South African friends – we’ll see you all out there!

Why LYs fans are the best fans in the world…

When we discovered that a five-star hotel in Cape Town had erected a plaque in our honour back in January (read about it here), I think we all expected this would be the last time something like that would happen to us. Au contraire, however! After our recent gig at the Burlington Amphitheatre in New Jersey, USA, we were invited back to the picturesque town of Riverton for an after-party. The bash was being held on the legendary porch of one Maureen Murray, known well to The Lightyears during our recent visits to the USA for her propensity to ply us with Bombay Sapphire and delicious all-American breakfasts.

Lo and behold, in honour of an impromptu unplugged show we played on her porch back in 2007, it turned out that Maureen had erected a Ye Olde Wooden Plaque on the outside of her home (see photo above). Long may it hang there.

The more I think about this, the more I wonder whether Maureen may have started something here. A movement, perhaps. A mission for us to inspire plaque-hanging in every country in the world. USA and South Africa down, only about two hundred countries left to go.

Please feel free to help our cause. Erect a Lightyears plaque today. If you do, I promise to write a blog about it. And I’m a man of my word.

Our Top 20 Moments Of 2009

Christmas Time is here again and there’s enormous excitement in the air. There’s an outside chance that Rage Against The Machine will beat the X Factor to Number One on Sunday and the weather-man says that snow’s a-coming. Things literally couldn’t be any better.

We thought we’d add to the general feeling of goodwill and festivity by recounting our favourite and most memorable experiences from the past year. Most of them – whether in London, Cape Town or the USA – involved the support of our fans and we’d like to personally thank everyone who has helped us make 2009 one of our best years yet. You guys rule.

So here, in no particular order, are The Lightyears’ Top 20 Moments Of 2009:

1. Stepping out onstage at Wembley Stadium for the first time in front of 45,000 people

2. Winning over an audience of leather-clad Norwegian bikers at the Speedway Cafe in Cape Town

3. Performing a barbershop medley of British seaside tunes in front of the British Ambassador in Seoul

4. Writing a song for a national ad campaign (“Come With Me” is released on Universal Records in January)

5. Spotting our faces in train stations and on the side of buses

6. Performing for a full-house of fans, friends and family at The Lightyears’ Christmas Party

7. Playing to a crowd of thousands on a hot summer’s evening in Union Square, Manhattan

8. Working with top producers Bacon & Quarmby (David Bowie, Finley Quaye, Sugababes) on the studio release of “Come With Me”

9. Watching South Africa’s foremost FHM model Roxy Louw stage-dive into a crowd of boogying revelers at our Cape Town Tens gig

10. Being invited back to Wembley Stadium

11. Drinking Pina Coladas by the pool at the Table Bay Hotel, Cape Town

12. Seeing ourselves on TV (click here)

13. Touring the country with Josh’s Band

14. Finding out we’ve been immortalised on canvas!

15. Spotting The Lightyears in the New York Post

16. Dressing up as intergalactic space rockstars for a Forbidden Planet tribute gig

17. Selling out our latest album London, England on the US Tour

18. Celebrating the end of the Korean Tour with a Lightyears night on the tiles

19. Appearing on the same bill as Diversity, winners of Britain’s Got Talent

20. Partying with the LYs American Fan Club in Riverton, New Jersey!

We are staying in JACK BAUER’S hotel…

TUESDAY 3 MARCH, 3pm (Brass Bell Restaurant, False Bay, South Africa):
I am dressed in shades, boardies and flip-flops. I am starting to look quite tanned, having spent a decent amount of time on the beach over the past few days. I am exhuding an easy, care-free demeanour on account of the sunny weather and the leisurely pace of the Cape Town lifestyle. I am drinking a crisp gin and bitter lemon. The afternoon waves of the Indian Ocean lap hungrily at the walls of the famous Brass Bell restaurant in False Bay, where we’re enjoying a few cocktails and a plate of delicious fried calimari.

Bearing all this in mind, I find it very hard to reconcile the fact that, glancing across the road to a world news poster nailed to a lamp-post, I can read the words “SNOW SHUTS LONDON”.

That’s right – were we at home right now, we’d be building snowmen and perhaps even doing some sly a-wassailing. Yesterday London experienced its most severe snow storms in 18 years. The whole of the capital ground to a halt, which in theory ought not to have affected us all the way out here in South Africa, but as it happened we were waiting for Tony to leave Heathrow and come out to join us in Cape Town. The airport cancelled a staggering 800 flights. Only six actually left the runway and Tony, the jammy rascal, was on the sixth. Which was just as well, as tomorrow night we’re headlining at the Speedway 105 Cafe and we’d been rather relying on Tony’s presence to complete the line-up!

It’s been a wonderful few days. Aside from a few casual, sun-kissed meetings and the odd telephone interview, the business end of the tour hasn’t really started yet. We’ve made the most of our long weekend of freedom with afternoons on the beach and evenings on the town. Yesterday we took a day trip out to Hermanus, a beautiful coastal resort about an hour outside Cape Town, where we walked along the cliffside and Andy cooked us a traditional South African braai, complete with fresh steak, calimari and a dollop of local hospitality.

Yesterday evening I was interviewed by a journalist from The Argus, one of Cape Town’s foremost daily papers (click here to read the article). I conducted the interview strolling along the sand, listening to the ocean and watching the sunset. If only, I thought, I could conduct all my interviews from the beach. What a life that would be…

WEDNESDAY 4 MARCH, 9pm (Speedway 105 Cafe, Cape Town)
Tonight we are playing our first fully-fledged show in South Africa – a headline slot at the Speedway bikers’ bar – and I’m delighted to report that there’s a full house in. What a genuine pleasure it is to visit a new territory, set up camp in a new venue, and watch as the place fills with an audience of complete strangers. I’m excited about performing again and it’s great to have Tony back on the team.

The Scandinavian motorbike club from Saturday night have returned, which I find extremely flattering, since by their own admission they don’t normally listen to anything except Motorhead and AC/DC. Could be an interesting audience. Will we win them over? 

Well, yes, as it turns out. Although for a while it’s looking dicey. We decide to split the evening into two sets, starting with 45 minutes of Lightyears originals and ending with a set of dance numbers. We chuck in “Beat Alive”, “She’s The One”, “Fine”, “Sleepless” and “Emily” too. The crowd respond really well to our songs and the first official airing of “Johannesburg” proves a hit as well. During the break I’m standing at the bar waiting for a beer when the bikers’ ringleader taps me on the shoulder.

“Do you play heavy metal?”

Jings. Should I lie? Mainly we’d been planning Jerry Lee Lewis, Van Morrison and The Monkees for set two. Is there any way in which “I’m A Believer” could be considered metal? Probably not.

“Erm, d’ya know, I’m afraid to say we don’t. It’s not really our ‘thing’.”

“Come on,” he replies, throwing back his big scary Norwegian biker’s head. “Led Zeppelin! You must do some Led Zeppelin! It is the classic of all times.”

I heartily agree with him that, yes, it is the classic of all times – but sadly it’s just not in our repertoire. He’s pretty persistent though and so, by the end of our conversation, I’ve agreed to ‘see what I can do’. I have no idea what I mean by this.

Racking my brains, I remember that last year, when we were on the bill at the launch of State music magazine in Dublin, I played a set of ‘Easy Listening Heavy Metal’ on the grand piano, comprising a whole host of rock classics performed in a lounge style. And one of them was “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin. Was this a good idea? Would the bikers appreciate the irony?

Dash it all, I thought. I have no choice. This is the only thing we do that even vaguely resembles Led Zeppelin. It will have to suffice.

And so it is that, twenty minutes later, to break up the set, I make an announcement. 

“The extremely fine ladies and gentlemen in the corner there have requested some Led Zeppelin, and we’ve never been a band to let people down. So here’s ‘Black Dog’ – Track One, Side One from the classic album Led Zeppelin IV……”

I’m glad to say that the ensuing performance – although perhaps not quite what they were expecting – prompts enthusiastic applause from the petrolheads and I come to the conclusion that we’ve got away with it. This is later confirmed when we encore with “New York, New York” and it brings the house down. Andy’s brother, Dan, confesses to me after the gig that the sight of twenty leather-clad bikers singing their hearts out to Frank Sinatra brought a tear of joy to his eye and was something he would never, ever forget. 

THURSDAY 5 MARCH, 1.30pm (The Table Bay Hotel, Cape Town):
Today we check into the hotel where we’ll be staying for the remainder of the tour. I’ve been looking forward to this moment. By reputation, the Table Bay is the finest hotel in Cape Town and, in fact, one of the top hotels in the country. It’s a glorious day and the sun is beating down as we arrive outside the front entrance and unload our luggage and instruments. Spotting our guitars, the concierge immediately saunters over.

“Hello sir, how are you today?”

“I’m extremely well thank you,” I reply, absolutely meaning it.

“You’re musicans, right?” he points out, astutely.

I nod in agreement and this prompts a barrage of stories about previous musical residents of the Table Bay. “We’ve had all kinds of bands checking into the hotel over the years,” he explains.

“Who was the last musician to stay here then?” I ask, testing the water.

“Snoop Dogg,” he begins, casually. “We’ve had Kanye West too. And Maroon 5 were here last month. Plus we’ve also had Counting Crows, Robbie Williams and Michael Jackson. The Table Bay is the only place Michael will stay when he’s in Cape Town. I’ve met him personally.”

He can see I’m impressed. But he’s not done yet.

“Oh, and Keifer Sutherland. Keifer Sutherland often stays here. Nice fella.”

We are staying in JACK BAUER’S hotel. 

Rock and roll.

THURSDAY 5 MARCH, 7.30pm (The Toad In The Village, Noordhoek, Cape Town):
We are at The Toad In The Village, a bar/restaurant in the rather quaint Noordhoek, owned by legendary former Springbok captain, Bob Skinstad. We’ve been invited along to the launch party for the ‘Noordhoek Vikings’, one of the teams taking part in the Cape Town Tens Rugby Tournament this weekend. This will be our first proper experience of hanging out with large gangs of rugby players.

We turn up early and take our designated seats at a long, wooden dining table by at the far end of the room. The other half of the table is empty. It transpires that we are to be joined shortly by six or seven professional rugby players from the ‘Sports Illustrated Legends’ team, a side headed up by Bob himself, along with Robbie Fleck, another former South African international who is also involved in organising the tournament. The guys are coming along tonight to meet the rest of their team-mates and sink a few* lagers.

We’ve been there for about 15 minutes when a group of enormous blokes appear through the main entrance and head towards our table. As they arrive, I stand up to introduce myself to the guy at the front. The blood drains from his face. 

“Who are….. what is…. erm…?”. He seems shaken. “What position do you play?”

Odd greeting, I think. My next thought concerns how powerful, almost debilitating, his handshake is. He still looks a bit freaked out. Then the penny drops. Blimey. They think we’re on their team. 

“Oh gosh, gosh no. Hah! No. I’m not a rugby player. Golly. No. Imagine that! You’d probably snap me in half. I mean, look at you, you have arms like anacondas.”

Actually, I didn’t say that last bit. But I did think it. Danny later tells me that he was transfixed for the entire evening by the sight of me sitting next to a bloke whose biceps were WIDER THAN MY HEAD. I could have climbed inside his arms and made them my home. “You look so tiny,” Danny kept saying. Yeah, whatever mate. I could play rugby. I just choose not to.

By the time I have finished shaking hands with all seven of them, the bones in my right hand have been ground to a fine powder. I may never play piano again.

FRIDAY 6 MARCH (Hamilton Rugby Club, Cape Town):
Earlier this evening we sat down to a truly delicious dinner on the harbourside near the hotel. Tanned, rested and fully settled into laid-back Cape Town life, we sat round the table beaming at each other, soaking up the warm night air. John summed up the feeling most succinctly when he said: “I can’t ever remember being this happy”.

Despite being so chilled out we could almost have sat there until sunrise, we decide to head over to Hamilton Rugby Club (where the Cape Town Tens are kicking off with an evening of hardcore boozing) to show our faces and generally get a feel for the vibe of the tournament. The matches themselves don’t start until Saturday but, as the recreational side of the event is generally considered equally as important as the sport, we figure it would do us good to get a taster before things kick off for real tomorrow morning.

When we turn up we are greeted by a sobering sight – 600 huge rugby players, standing around, necking pints and challenging each other to violent drinking games. Once again we are suddenly made very aware of how much we stand out. Feeling like Year 7s who have just accidentally wandered into the Year 11 common room and are met for the first time by that bewilderingly unfamiliar cocktail of sweat, Lynx deodorant and Tizer, we head cautiously for the bar, trying our hardest not to make eye contact with anyone. 

We are mere seconds from our destination when the mission fails. We’ve been spotted. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those wildlife programmes where leopards are filmed hunting gazelles, but this is pretty much a human equivalent. Looking back over my shoulder I see young Danny Morriss being picked off from the herd by a man off such terrifying visage that I can actually feel my sphincter tightening. He seems to be trying to engage Danny in conversation, although the sounds coming from his mouth are definitely not words and his only other method of communication is to squish Dan’s immaculately-engineered mohican with his enormous hand until it’s entirely flat on his head. I am genuinely torn between the two conflicting instincts in my gut – one is telling me to stick by my friend and wade in for rescue, the other is telling me to sod Danny and run away screaming like a tiny little girl.

For the first time, I am beginning to feel quite nervous about this weekend’s gigs. These people will be our audience. Will they accept us as their own or will they weed us out as the namby-pamby pretenders we are? And if they do accept us, will we have to drink our own urine through a plastic funnel as part of some kind of dreadful initiation ceremony? At the moment, they’re curious about us because we’re quite demonstrably outsiders – but maybe once we’ve been up onstage, we’ll have more authority.

“Do you think it’ll be better once they know who we are?” I ask George, praying for the answer ‘yes’.

“No mate,” replied George, “it’ll be worse. Because they’ll know who we are.”

***

Will we survive a weekend boozing with rugby players? Will Cape Town rock to the sweet sound of The Lightyears? Stay tuned for Part 3 of my South African tour diary, coming soon to www.TheLightyears.com.

* a “few” to me is approximately three. To a rugby man, it is somewhere in the region of twelve.

Part One of South African tour diary now online

We returned home from our first-ever tour to South Africa a couple of weeks ago, tanned, refreshed and feeling ever-so-slightly pleased with ourselves. If you fancy finding out what we got up to out there, click here to visit the Tour Diary page and read Part One of my South African memoirs.

It’s all there – tales of hire-car high jinks, unruly Norwegian bikers and livin’ it up Cape Town style.

For the media’s thoughts and opinions on our performances in Cape Town, click here to visit our “Quotes & Press” page. 

Keep your eyes peeled on the LYs site over the coming week for Parts Two and Three!

The tour has begun…

FRIDAY 30 JANUARY, 2.30am (International Airspace, somewhere over Africa):
This is one of my favourite parts of any tour. I am on the plane, 40,000 feet above the ground, cruising at speeds of 600 mph. I am approximately four gin and tonics into an evening of steady boozing, courtesy of British Airways. Our hot-off-the-press recording of “Johannesburg“, finished only yesterday in Tony’s home studio, is playing in my ears. In a few hours we will land in Cape Town, South Africa, where anything can and will happen on this, the latest instalment in our ongoing International Rock & Roll Juggernaut Tour. Right now, the distinct aroma of possibility hangs expectant in the air. Although come to think of it, that might just be Danny.

The Lightyears are about to land.

FRIDAY 30 JANUARY, 7.30am (Hertz Car Rental, Cape Town, South Africa):
Cape Town is gloriously warm. Emily and Skinny meet us at the airport with glowing tans (they’ve been in South Africa for a month already), a shining example of how we hope to look by the end of our ten days here. Job number one is to sort out the hire car, so George and I saunter over to the Hertz outlet to pick up the keys.

Now, until we’re at the stage where we get to travel around in a double-decker blacked-out nightliner replete with arcade games, plasma TVs, strippers and a ready supply of mind-enhancing hallucinogenics, we are somewhat restrained by having to work to a budget. Luckily, Tony’s dad is in the motor trade and was able to find us a great deal on a nifty little vehicle known as the Volkswagen Chico. For only £11.50 a day we would be licensed to career around Cape Town looking like refugees from Staines in an automobile that can really only be described as a “chavwagon”. In other words, if you’re driving this car and you don’t have So Solid Crew pumping out of the sound system, you’re doing something wrong. 

Standing at the service desk and waiting for the clerk to finish scanning our credit card and checking our details, we begin to share a collective concern that maybe everything isn’t going to go as planned. He keeps giving us funny looks out of the corner of his eye and it suddenly occurs to me that, dressed up in shades and shaggy haircuts and surrounded by guitars, we are very obviously in a band. And would you hire a vehicle to a bunch of foreign reprobates in a rock band? Exactly.

“So…..” the clerk muses, “four guys, eh? Musicians?”

“Erm….” (no sense in lying – I mean, I could say we were ballerinas but unfortunately the evidence to the contrary is damning), “yep. Just in from London”.

“London, eh? Well, thing is, we don’t have any Chicos left”.

Bugger. We’ve been rumbled. Push-bikes it is then.

“Can I interest you in one of these?” he offers with a nod, pointing at an A4 laminate featuring a whole range of cars we couldn’t possibly hope to afford. Before we can utter an objection though, he cuts us short. “Same price,” he says, a twinkle in his eye.

Surely not. The man is indicating an 8-seater VW Transporter – our ideal car.

Throwing each other furtive glances like 12 year-old boys who have just been told it’s OK to shoot at cats with their dad’s rifle, we garble some “thank you”s, grab the keys off the clerk and leave hastily before Ashton Kutcher’s able to turn up and tell us it’s all a big joke. 

I don’t know exactly who that guy was but I can only think he must have been Santa, gripped by an out-of-season rush of altruism. For the car that he has gifted unto us is a shining stallion of wonder. A glorious, pimped-out, brand new, 2.5 litre, 4-motion hunk of beautiful steel. And it’s all ours. Out of respect, we name it “Chico”.

The tour has begun.

(n.b. Tony, who is hiring an alternative car as he’s not flying out for another few days, will almost certainly turn up in Cape Town to pick up his Chico and receive, well, an actual Chico. Which will look puny alongside our behemoth. This thought alone keeps me roundly amused for several days. At times I would even wake up at night, remember it, and chuckle surreptitiously to myself).   

SATURDAY 31 JANUARY, 9pm (Speedway 105 Cafe, Cape Town):
Our main reason for being here in South Africa is to headline at the after-parties for the first-ever Cape Town Tens Rugby Tournament next weekend. However, never a band to rest on our laurels, we have already booked another couple of gigs for the coming week at Speedway 105, a bikers’ bar in the centre of town. Tonight we are performing unplugged on the balcony and on Wednesday (when Tony has arrived) we’ll be playing a full band show inside.

Speedway is run by identical twins Dave and Paul Van Der Spuy, veritable movers ‘n’ shakers on the Cape Town scene. They’re also absolute chaps. They have the banter of Morecambe & Wise and the hospitality of saints. Dave’s wife, Janie, works in PR and is on the case with promoting “Johannesburg” to the local press, and between the three of them they have pretty much made Speedway our home from home in South Africa. The vibe this evening is pretty laid-back, and George and I are sitting on stools on the balcony, knocking out a string of acoustic tunes for a mixed audience of bikers, drinkers, regulars, friends and the rest of The Lightyears’ entourage.

It’s a great opportunity to try out “Johannesburg” on a native audience – and its maiden voyage proves successful. The song is simple and uplifting, I guess, which makes it very accessible, especially here in SA where the significance of the story behind it becomes even clearer (check out my blog “The Story Behind Johannesburg“ for the full tale). Later in the evening, Janie tells me she found it very moving and is confident we can get some good South African press on the band, using the song as our angle.

Liberated by the easy atmosphere and unplugged setting, George and I bust out some old tunes which don’t normally get an airing at LYs gigs – “Snog Song”, for instance, which we wrote years ago with our good friend Ben Scriven. It’s a song about inventing a love potion and getting jiggy with the Queen. Obviously. Try requesting it at a Lightyears gig one day – we’d be duty-bound to play it…

Afterwards things a get bit hectic when a group of Norwegian petrolheads start tearing up the tarmac with their enormous bikes. Danny, who knows a lot more about bikes than I do (not hard), explains that they are “doing burnouts”. When I ask him what a “burnout” is, he says “Wait and see – but there’ll be tons of smoke and a lot of noise”.

FYI, a burnout is essentially the biker’s equivalent of a crop circle – revving one’s engine and spinning the back tyre round in a perfect circle, on the axis of the front wheel, to leave a dark circular imprint on the tarmac. I think this a bit like when cats wee on stuff. It’s an imperial venture, in other words. It says “Me and massive bike have been here and there’s nothing you can do about it”. 

Unless you’re the local law enforcement agency, that is. Sure enough the cops have made an appearance within about twenty minutes, attracted by the noise. Driving in through Speedway’s main gates, they slowly circle the parking lot like a predatory steel shark and, once satisfied that they’ve made their point, disappear back into town.

The bikers, who personally I wouldn’t mess with, wait a cursory eight minutes and then return to the business of decorating the car park. This is brilliant! Will there be a ruckus though, I wonder? Who would you back? Probably the petrolheads. They’re Scandinavian and there are about twenty of them. The cops looked like they were all talk and no trousers. Having said that, when they return shortly afterwards and repeat their shark routine, it proves sufficient to put an end to the burnout competition and everybody retires inside to watch the arm-wrestling. 

There’s always something going on at Speedway. Gotta love the place… 

SUNDAY 1 FEBRUARY, 11.30pm (Cafe Caprice, Cape Town):
We are out clubbing in Cafe Caprice – a place justifiably known as “the jewel in Cape Town’s crown” that represents the centre of the city’s Sunday night social scene. The people in here are ALL beautiful. Big, bronzed Adonises of men and gorgeous, glowing women, pictures of youth and vitality. It’s like actually being in an episode of “The O.C.”. 

Whereas in England we while away God’s day with a back-to-back marathon of Songs Of Praise, The Antiques Roadshow, Last Of The Summer Wine and a toasted crumpet, Sunday is big business in Cape Town. Everybody parties here on a Sunday. We spent the early half of the evening at coastal hangout La Med, where local band Goldfish play a residency to an ample and enthusiastic crowd, week in week out. I mean, I say “local” – actually they are fast becoming one of the country’s hottest acts. Definitely worth a look – imagine Lemon Jelly meets Fatboy Slim. Click here to visit the Goldfish website. 

At La Med we meet Cape Town Tens organiser Ron Rutland, an absolute chap and the man responsible for flying us out to SA. He seems relatively calm on the surface; however, being only five days away from the first ever CT 10s tournament is evidently starting to take its toll on his sanity. There’s a lot riding on this and Ron is the man at the helm…

After a few beers at La Med we hit Caprice, on the advice of the legendary Dan Skinstad (A.K.A. “The Commander”), who seems to be something of a celebrity round these parts. Dan has a natural entourage at Caprice and we join them for a few bevvies to see the week out. Later I learn that, during our time in the club, George ended up in a fairly extended conversation with star cricketer Herschelle Gibbs, a member of the national team. At no point throughout their chat did George have any idea who the guy was. In fact, I believe his closing gambit was “So, tell me – what exactly is it that you do?”. I can’t imagine Herschelle is a man accustomed to being asked that question, what with him being generally considered one of the finest athletes in his country’s history.   

It dawns on me that, for a band who (Tony aside) know very little about sport, we’ve met some top flight sports personalities. Bob Skinstad and Robbie Fleck organise the Cape Town Tens with Ron and both happen to be global sporting legends from their days playing for – and in Bob’s case, captaining – the South African rugby team. Later in the week we will meet more rugby superstars in the guise of former Canadian international Eddie Evans and Italian Number 8 Matt Phillips. A couple of years ago we stayed in the same hotel as the Dutch national football team (in one particularly memorable incident, Tony stood next to Marco Van Basten in a lift and actually used the phrase “Do I know you?”). We have performed for Manchester United and Alex Ferguson, hob-nobbed with Peterborough FC director and all-round sporting hero Barry Fry and now George has failed to recognise one of the world’s most famous cricketers in a club. So all in all we could make a lot of fanatics very jealous, even though as a general rule we don’t know our silly mid-ons from our bogeys.

***

Stay tuned for South Africa Part Two – and find out what happened when we tried playing Frank Sinatra to 30 pissed-up Scandinavian bikers…

Chris Lightyear

South African media praises The Lightyears

Our recent tour to South Africa was one of the highlights of our careers so far. The gigs were superb, the crowds were incredibly receptive and, most importantly, the food blew my mind. 😉

Due to the interest surrounding our release of the song “Johannesburg”, as well as our status as INDY Award winners and our previous international touring adventures worldwide, we attracted quite a bit of press attention whilst we were out there. Follow the links below to read more:

“The Lightyears have crafted a moving indie-pop slow song in Johannesburg…” (read more)
THE ARGUS, CAPE TOWN

“Johannesburg, with it’s strummed acoustic guitars and surprisingly uplifting chorus, appears to be hitting the right notes with locals…” (read more)
iAFRICA.COM

“The real stars of day one, though, are English band The Lightyears, who’ve flown in from London to play the tournament, and blow the marquee apart with a roaring display that sees four encores, and has the police sent to check noise levels dancing in the crowd…” (read more)
RUGBY365.COM

“When The Lightyears hit the stage after Saturday’s rugby and played that first song, I thought the roof of the beer tent was going to fly off! It was without doubt the best party I have ever been to in my life…” (read more)
ROBBIE FLECK, FORMER SA INTERNATIONAL, INTERVIEWED AT CAPETOWNTENS.COM 

“The Lightyears are an internationally-renowned pop-rock band…”
PEOPLE’S POST, CAPE TOWN

“The best band in the world!”
BOBBY SKINSTAD, FORMER SPRINGBOK CAPTAIN

The Lightyears’ International 5-Star Hotel Breakfast Richter Scale

As you will probably be aware if you have been following our band for a while, food is incredibly important to us. We just got back from a storming tour of Cape Town, South Africa, and the many hours spent anticipating, enjoying and rating the various breakfasts on offer has prompted me to create something which I really should have dealt with a long time ago – The Lightyears’ International 5-Star Hotel Breakfast Richter Scale.

Man cannot live on chord sequences alone and when you’re out on the road it is imperative that you are adequately fed, lest your capacity to rock serious ass is threatened by low blood-sugar levels.

In short, eat your heart out Lonely Planet – this is the intrepid explorer’s real guide to eating abroad. Venues are listed in top five order, with number one representing the crème de la crème of hotel breakfasts:   

5. Somerset Palace, Seoul
The Somerset was our first experience of 5-star hotel breakfast-buffet eating and as a result will always hold a special place in our hearts. It has a simple elegance to it and is the only hotel on this list to offer live TV news during your meal. It opens early, at 6am, which is obviously of no use to us until the morning after the gig, during which we have become infamous for turning up at 6am on the dot, still suited, for a post all-nighter nosh-up before crashing into the jacuzzi and, eventually, bed. Pastries are reasonable, eggs are adequate and the bread-toasting machine is a pleasing little gadget, almost Wallace & Gromit-esque in its inventiveness. Slightly suspicious of the little sausages though. Always gotta wonder about the sausages.

4. The Laguna Beach Resort, Phuket
The Laguna scores points early on for effectively being outdoors. It rates highly on the Yoghurt Counter too for variety of flavours and from what I can remember also serves decent baked beans. Beans are often a problem when one is abroad – some hotels consider themselves too chic to serve baked beans (this is obviously ridiculous) and others go for a sort of posh bean medley containing butter beans, kidney beans, mung beans and the like, which I’m not averse to per se but which if I’m honest only over-complicates a classic breakfast staple. The Laguna also turned a blind eye to us appearing for our morning meal dressed only in matching hotel bath-robes and sunglasses, for which I believe the staff deserve a special commendation. Oh, and where else but in Phuket are you joined for breakfast by a dancing, juggling, harmonica-playing elephant? Mind you, I requested “Love Me Do” and received only a blank look in response. One-trick pony, if you ask me. 

3. The Table Bay Hotel, Cape Town
Like Thailand’s Laguna Resort, the Table Bay boasts the accolade of being one of the “500 Leading Hotels In The World”. However, it inches ahead of it’s Phuketian classmate by the skin of its teeth, thanks to a few high-class cherries on the cake that might surprise even the most discerning traveller. How imaginative, I thought, how recherché, to serve freshly roast duck in hoisin sauce for the opening dish of the day! The sushi was a pleasing touch too, although I couldn’t quite stretch to oysters. It’s one of my many travelling mantras that one should avoid eating anything that closely resembles phlegm for breakfast. Oh, and Michael Jackson, Snoop Doggy Dog, Kanye West and Jack Bauer have all dined here (although I doubt Bauer got much eating done – he was probably too busy uploading government schematics to his PDA and de-wiring suitcase nukes using only his eyelids).

2. British Airways Business Class Cabin, International Airspace
Yes, alright, this is technically not a hotel; however, I feel it warrants its place in the Top Five because we had to sleep in it and nice ladies bought us whatever we asked of them without once ticking us off for being immature and in that sense it mimicked my experience of hotels precisely. Plus I have stayed in hotels with less comfortable beds, believe me, and none of them faced the challenge of being 40,000 feet above the ground and hurtling around at 600mph. The thing about this particular breakfast experience was that, well, the attendants had furnished us with fine champagne before we’d even sniffed a soupçon of the food on offer. And a day that starts with champagne can never, ever be a bad day. What followed was a preposterously sumptuous smorgasbord of delights that included quails’ eggs, salmon roe, truffles and fillet steak. And I got to watch The Big Lebowski whilst I was eating. Everybody left happy. 

1. The Grand Hyatt Hotel, Seoul
And so we have a winner. As a hotel, The Hyatt may not have the flare of the Table Bay or the easy charm of the Laguna, but by George it steals the breakfast crown with flying colours. It has a carvery. It has pastries that will melt your face with desire. It covers every corner of the juice gamet. It boasts a view of the entire city. When we ate there we rubbed shoulders with the Dutch national football team. It has everything – and, most importantly, the Hyatt has Eggman. Eggman stands solemnly by a majestic breakfast hob, awaiting instructions, weaving his yolky magic on request as if it were the easiest thing in the world. He is a mythical figure, very much like Zeus or Agamemnon, except that Zeus couldn’t simultaneously flash-fry five immacuate omelettes whilst also scrambling a cheese, chive, pepper, bacon and egg combo to perfection. He has nothing to do with John Lennon’s eggman, who as far as I know was never employed by the Hyatt hotel chain and in any case can’t speak fifteen languages like Eggman can. He is our saviour. He is Eggman.

And so there you have it. Next time you visit one of these locations on tour you can dispense with your over-priced Rough Guide and instead simply heed my words. For it is impossible to feel sorrow when God bestows upon you a plentiful and resplendent breakfast buffet. 

Munch it down. 

Chris Lightyear

Next Page »