Bacchus loses his music

2007-10-18 09:14

Danél Blaauw

Pretoria - The Afrikaans singer Bacchus Nel has had to borrow and beg musical equipment from friends after his instruments were stolen in Johannesburg.

"Nah, we didn't lose any gigs," Nel said on Tuesday night.

"I know enough people to get what I need, to carry on."

Nel, who's from Pretoria, was in Johannesburg on Sunday night when his Volkswagen minibus was stolen, along with the equipment worth about R42 000 packed inside.

The singer and his sound engineer Fritz Blitz, who's also a member of the group Swartskaap, were visiting the Bohemian pub in Richmond.

Music video

They were with friends, listening to Brixton Moord en Roof Orkes (BMRO) do a recording of Vis for a music video, when the thieves struck.

"We were 'kuiering' (visiting) from about 16:00. After 21:00 I asked Fritz to move the Kombi closer to us, because there had been so many cars in the street earlier.

"Someone had already moved it for us / beat us to it," he said dryly.

The police later found the empty minibus in Soweto.

"Fortunately, the kombi has a Netstar tracking system. They said they could track a vehicle within an hour, and they did too."

But the three guitars, speakers, monitors and microphones were gone.

Nel said most of the equipment belonged to Blitz.

"The one guitar was mine, the other two belonged to Fritz."

Insurance

"The damage is about R42&nbnsp;000. I'm busy getting quotes. We just hope that the insurance will pay out."

BMRO lead-singer Andries "Roof" Bezuidenhout was still feeling dejected about the theft on Tuesday.

"We were busy recording the music video, and the guys just came along for the party."

Bezuidenhout said he hadn't heard of any other crimes in the area that evening.

"The only damage we suffered was a drinks bill of about R1 600" he laughed, with a note of relief.

- Beeld