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Back in August it was announced that The Killers would come to South Africa. I’ve been a fan since first hearing “All these Things That I’ve Done” all those years ago in a club. It’s hard not to fall in love with the song, the catchy chorus “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier” gets stuck in your head, and makes itself at home for an extended stay.

Every time there’s a music festival in South Africa, I held thumbs that one of the announced bands would end up being The Killers. And every time I ended up disappointed on that wish, although we did have some stellar performances by some of my other favourite bands, so that didn’t turn into a huge bummer.

So imagine my joy when I saw the announcement that they are heading to our shores. This started the initial wait for tickets to go on sale, and then the agonising wait of months for December 4 to arrive. Eventually the weeks passed, and the big day arrived.

We arrived early at the venue, first to catch a early dinner, and then to join the Golden Circle queue. We were fortunate enough to be the third group in the queue, which pretty much meant we would be getting standing space at the rail

After a 3-odd hour wait in the queue, the doors opened and the mad rush for standing space commenced. Luck was on my side, and I managed to secure a rail position, right in front where Brandon Flowers would be performing. My biggest complaint of the whole evening would be that getting the rail position meant that we couldn’t see the whole stage, but this is hardly anything to complain about. It did mean that most of my photos I managed to snap focussed on the lead singer and the bassist though.

The support band for The Killers were Zebra & Giraffe. I’ve seen them once at Joburg Burning II, and enjoyed them. Being in the presence of such a big international act must be quite intimidating though, but they managed to pull of a decent performance given the circumstances. They’re a talented bunch of guys, and with the right exposure they could go far.

And then the time arrived for The Killers to come on. Their arrival was signalled by the sound of wind coming through the speakers, and then they were there. The crowd went crazy and the band played on. The performed all their biggest hits, and had the crowd eating out of their hands. By the time they played their mega-hit Human the crowd was in a frenzy! I can’t recall the setlist, I was swept away in the musical performance, and it all merges into one huge happy memory of the evening. Favourite moment that pops into memory was the crowd singing “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier”, bringing me full-circle in my love for The Killers. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

This has definitely been one of the best shows I’ve witnessed this year, and is currently fighting Muse’s performance at Coke Fest for best act of the decade. It’s going to take something special to top that!

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A quick post, with more detail to follow later.

Last night we went to go see The Black Hotels and The Parlotones.

The Black Hotels played first, threw in some new songs along with the old in their 30 minute set, they’re really tight now with the new line-up.  Then Parlotones came up, and as always, they were 110% awesome. They played two new songs, and according to Kahn the new album should be out before the end of the year, they start recording in June/July.

One thing’s for sure, I’m really not cut out of late mid-week evenings anymore!

More details and pictures to be posted over the weekend.

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