IceCreamMan
excellent player , watch the final tomorrow night.
arjunmenon
True. I watched the bit that came on the day before and was maybe a little disappointed.
What he played was very nice, but, to me anyway, it felt like there was a lack of flow/direction in what he was playing.
And i also thought he should have given the delay a miss and should have used a looper rather.
But hey, the guy's on TV and it takes balls to play to a national (dare i say international) audience.
So, more power to him!
Keira-WitherKay
yeah +1 Arjun to what you say that he's on national tv doing it yeah ...........
no need to be critical the boy is up there doing it ...
and hey sure if any one of us were in his shoes we'd be also critisised by other players...
heheh jealousy makes you nasty ...
i never get how guitarists seem to be so competitive and cut throat with each other ... "that i coulda done it better or so and so could do it better....."
so lets not be critical, he made the final and all and blessings and power to him to do well ........ so yeah hope he does well....
Manfred-Klose
His name is louwtjie rothman, go check out some of his stuff on facebook. the delay might not be impressive to guitar players, but the audience cant get enough of it. seriously how many 18 year olds would be able to do that? he is from cape town........maby i should invite him to our next gfsa jam? i think he might just win.
Danie
He plays lead guitar for a Afrikaans band calld Ben-nevis
diesaadman
Hi Danie
you serious mate? is that the Ben Nevis band guitarist?
shweet
sepheritoh
I thought he was great. I really think he would go places. Hope he wins this contest. 8)
A bit of entertainment tricks (like the Autumn Rush bit) never hurts to get the crowd going. ?
Jaen-Pierre-Dowling
This is a rather interesting, yet controversial topic, one that has been fought on Facebook about a lot the last few days. There has been comments that he's got an ego, that he's just playing random stuff to look good and that his playing lacks composition, rhythm and technique.
All of these may be true, but there's few things that catches the attention of the uneducated (guitar-wise) public such as speed and something weird-sounding, (the delay in this case), so +1 for using that to his advantage! There's nothing wrong with impressing the crap out of the people that will be voting for you (especially if 90% of them don't even know how to fret a G).
I've attached some clips of his playing, and yes, fault any-and-everything about it if you will, but he's 18, doing what he loves (pretty damn well), and entertaining each and everyone watching him, (be it in a good way or a bad way), so I feel he deserves being in that final!
(Just for interest's sake though, the Martin he played monday in the semi's was apparently acquired a week ago from the lovely staff at Marshall Music, Cape Town. As the story goes, he phoned them for a quote, which apparently was around R10 000, and he ordered it. When it was collection time, they apparently gave him the wrong price, with the correct figures in fact being R37 000. Due to professional practice, they ended up giving it to him for R10 000, resulting in the receptionist probably loosing his/her Christmas bonus haha! This sounds pretty ridiculous in my opinion, but I heard it from one of his friends, so please don't quote me on this haha). ?
Vick
Saw ben nevis live once...that dud is sick...im gona give him a vote or 2,just coz he had drinks with us after the show ? o and mabe coz his a awsum player 2,haha
arjunmenon
Keira WitherKay wrote:
no need to be critical the boy is up there doing it ...
and hey sure if any one of us were in his shoes we'd be also critisised by other players...
heheh jealousy makes you nasty ...
i never get how guitarists seem to be so competitive and cut throat with each other ... "that i coulda done it better or so and so could do it better....."
so lets not be critical, he made the final and all and blessings and power to him to do well ........ so yeah hope he does well....
Call it what you will ? I was just stating my thoughts.
The boy can definitely play. And sure, there's nothing wrong with wanting to impress people.
And if the delay and speed get him votes, then bravo!
DonovanB
I finally saw him last night.
There's a funny thing. If nobody had told me about him, or made a fuss I would have thougt he was great. However, because I had heard such a fuss about him I looked critically and while he is good, I picked out Andy Mckee from his composition and a few others.
This is odd because we are watching him through tainted glasses. Lets say a GFSA member were to be there, we would have a very different attitude.
I have to put my prejudice aside this time. I liked it, but I would like to see how he uses his skill in more than a minute performance.
chris77
Hehehe, yeah Donovan, I also scored him low. I told the missus he's all bling and no gold, cheap trickery played to impress the masses. To which she replied: Jealousy makes you nasty hey... And if I actually think about, aint that the truth! So hats off to the young man, well done.
RobK
It's a pity that the performance was so short. It seemed like a mish-mash of different styles and nothing really sounded very connected.
Maybe if he played a single full length piece I would have rated him higher, but I wasn't very impressed.
Squonk
To be fair to the dude, he wasn't trying to impress us guitarists, he was trying to win R250 000 by impressing the general public.
I thought he did okay in the minute and a half he had.
Incorporating a bit of african and Andy Mckee worked wonders, he was all flash on the other nights, but that's what got him through.
He is 18 and in the middle of writing exams!
Give him a break
RobK
I'm not saying he is bad, or did badly, just that I wasn't impressed. I understand what he was trying to do and great that he made it to the finals, so kudos to him.
I just didn't find the performance itself very impressive. Seemed like he was just trying to do different things at once - maybe a bit too fast for my brain ? Just couldn't figure out where he was going with it.
Also, I consider myself more of a joe public than a guitarist and I wasn't watching or criticising his skill.
As joe public, that performance wouldn't have gotten my vote.
