So in our ever snowballing, wedding arrangement hunt, Friday evening saw Chantelle and myself prep Mr. TomTom and head out towards Muizenberg, Fogeys Railway House Restaurant to be more precise. And while our Internet-gleaned address for the restaurant proved incorrect, the infallible POI listing on Mr. TomTom was more than capable to fix our human error and before long we found ourselves parked next to the beautifully crafted, antique railway house building and entering what can only be described as one of the most beautiful, quaint little eateries that I have yet to lay eyes on.
For a start, the decor in Fogeys is beautifully matched to the building itself, with the main inside eating area coming across as incredibly warm and cozy and the atmosphere as a whole simply intimate and welcoming all rolled into one. Add to that some exceptionally good service and a simply delicious selection of mouth-watering food (their chips are to die for by the way) and you have a simply fantastic package that I MUST visit again!
(Admittedly their food does lean slightly towards the more expensive side, but that said, the quality certainly comes across as top notch so I guess this makes up for that then.)
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Chantelle is quite keen on having some live music playing for our guests as they wait while we are away for the photo taking session, and a chance encounter with one of her guests at the guesthouse lead to her finding out about Crimson, a local cover band that specializes in acoustic rock and are by Whammy’s admission, simply fantastic on guitar – something which actually says quite a lot mind you!
Crimson is made up of Darren Oelofse (lead vocals, rhythm guitar) and Nathan Giloi (lead guitar), with the two of them making extensive use of backing tracks, which for example utilize drums and bass, to round off the sound and in so-doing create that fullness of aural experience that one would expect from tracks whose original artists includes the likes of The Eagles, Eric Clapton, Dire Straights, Van Morrison, Creedence Cleerwater Revival, Cat Stevens, Chubby Checker, and UB40, right the way through to the more contemporary likes of 3 Doors Down, REM, Counting Crows, John Mayer, Matchbox 20, James Blunt, NickelBack, and The Script.
As I mentioned above, I was absolutely blown away by the skillful guitar display put on by Nathan and Darren (Nathan having been the guest who alerted Chantelle to Crimson’s existence in the first place!) as well as Darren’s exceptionally pleasing on the ear and extremely versatile voice, all of which came together to provide a rather phenomenal musical experience as a whole.
They put on a fairly long, almost three hour set (though they did take a rather longish 45 minute break in between, which I thought was a little bit too lengthy to be honest. However, based on the small nature of the crowd, I guess this was okay, so no big gripes from my side then) and thoroughly entertained myself and Chantelle with absolutely all the classics and the majority of the evening was spent simply singing along to all the tracks we knew and recognised (which was basically 99% by the way)
So anyway, my mind is made up (actually, it was made up in literally the first 15 seconds of them playing!) and the email has been sent off and hopefully, just hopefully, our guests will be lucky enough to also experience the crafted pleasure delivered by Crimson, truly one of those soon to be much vaunted up and coming Cape Town bands!
Keep up the good work lads!
Related link: http://crimsonband.wordpress.com