Pete Tong @ The Reserve, 04.01.13

After Pete Tong’s gig was cancelled at the V&A Waterfront due to high winds, house lovers were hoping to catch him again for his 2nd scheduled gig at the Reserve on January 4th. But once news got out that tickets were R550 that dream was squashed.

I was lucky enough to be offered tickets to the event and so I popped in on Friday night. I’m not a big house/techno fan but I am a BBC radio enthusiast so I was keen to see the legend himself. I don’t often frequent the house scene in Cape Town because I find it very contrived. Unfortunately, I was still correct in this thinking. So here’s the good and the bad of the event:

GOOD:

• Great sound – There’s nothing worse than attending a dance party with poor sound. This was not the case at the Reserve, it sounded good.

  

• Great venue – I love parties in old Cape Town buildings. The Castle, City Hall and now the Reserve definitely have their own charm is mysticism, it was great being at the Reserve with high ceilings, old school lifts, large stairwells, it’s a beautiful building.
• Great decor – Pete Tong projection mapping looked awesome. There great lighting and lazers, the ambience was fired and ready to go for a PHAT party.
• Over all, a great production.

BAD:

• God awful people – this is meant to be a party, not an attempt at an FTV promo video.

  

• It was a corporate! They kept stopping the music to play a Samsung promo video. And tables were sold for 12k per table. This is ok! Just wish I’d known that before going.
• SLOW bars – There were 3 of them but I only managed to get 2 drinks in 3 hours. Pretty bars, pretty barmen, clearly did not finish high school. (A barman stopped in the middle of my order so I deliberately walked away from the bar and watched how long it would take for him to realise that he didn’t charge me. He never did. Luckily for him I’m an honest person and left the money on the bar for him…not that he knew what it was for when he found it. Good luck staying in business with these staff members!)
• Pretentious, pretentious, pretentious. – Only 10% of the people actually cared about the music. Whether the music was on, off, high, low, no one changed their body language LOL! They may as well have played metal because people were ONLY there to be seen, they had no interest in the art what so ever.

  

• Contrived – The “party” literally felt like a production: cue sparklers, cue glow sticks (which were all Samsung branded), cue video…I actually don’t have anything against a well managed event but when you have an audience that’s there to be seen and not there to focus on the music, it means the ambience is MASSIVELY affected.
• Pete Tong was meant to be on at 1am, he only came on after 2am.

Basically, it was a successful, corporate event but I went there thinking I’d be in a room filled with enthusiasts about Pete Tong and it was the furthest thing from that. I’d support another event hosted by G&G Productions as the infrastructure was fantastic…but when I start saying things like, “It’s times like these that I wish I’d brought eye drops for my drink” then it’s best that I stay away from the house scene. Big ups to Pete Tong for taking the money, I’d also charge a fortune to work in an environment like that.