Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Chris Chameleon Shines!
“Chris Chameleon is just a super-cool guy” swooned Denise; “Oh he is just lovely”, said Wendy; while Lenny had to just confide in him that “Boo was one of the best things to ever come out of South Africa!”, and Chris had to agree. And then they babbled away in Dutch for the next 15 minutes. All the girls are smitten!The girls pounced on him when he arrived at the SNG Peace Breaker launch last Friday, and 20 minutes later Arno was shouting out that he had just won his South African Music Award for 7de Hemel, in the Best Adult Contemporary Afrikaans category.
Chris is really an artist who has embraced his talent and given himself the freedom to create, whether through circumstances or his own choice is not important, but few artists have straddled such vastly different styles as Mr. Chameleon. Whatever the style, his colours blend beautifully.After the national & international success of BOO, he has earned the highest award for his Afrikaans contribution to our CD rack with 7de Hemel, while Shine brings out an alternative rock style that caters to us Engelsmanne!
Chris Chameleon is also one of our most difficult artists to secure bookings for – most enquirers don’t realize that he is one Peak’s busiest artists, and is booked months and months in advance! Isn’t that a wonderful sign of how healthy South African music is?
But Chris was at the SNG launch as a fan! He gave us a wonderful shout-out – I’ve heard – but the cam somehow slipped onto memory instead of camera, and so I only got a snippet…Bribing him with a SNG t-shirt to get this was all we had to do – now I wonder what he’ll want for another take…
I hope it’s not my girls…
I suspect I’d be left with a whirlwind of paperwork in an empty office (and the neighbours do so hate wheel-spins in the driveway!)…
So here is a much shortened shout-out from the Man, with a snippet of the track Nothing from his latest album Shine (RR070).
Ahhh - but I couldn't just leave you with that! So here is a vid I found some time ago of Chris recording Op Die Vootpad, with clips from Vyf Lewens, Fragment and Lied van die Lappop from the album Ek herhaal jou, in studio. Enjoy!
Labels: Chris Chameleon, music, SAMA, shout-out
