…..SoSuterBill…..

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BY BILLY SUTER

THIS site has a great prize to offer one lucky person today – double tickets to attend the Durban concert by Yusuf/Cat Stevens, at 8pm on November 15 at the Durban ICC Arena.

The tickets are valued at R650 each, and to win them you simply need to be a follower of my showbiz and leisure site.

It is FREE and easy to subscribe if you haven’t already done so – simply write your email address in the space provided at the end of the cover page of my site at https://sosuterbill.com/ and you will be notified whenever I post stories.

Once you have done that, mail your name and phone number to sosuterbill@gmail.com and make sure you write CAT COMPETITION in the subject field.

Please note that tickets are only valid for the date of performance as stipulated and may not be upgraded, exchanged for cash or used for an alternate performance. By entering this competition the participant agrees to the terms and conditions.

(Note: The winner was Nevilla van Dyk…. chosen at noon on Wednesday, October 18, and notified soon after).

British singer-songwriting legend and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Yusuf/Cat Stevens is touring South Africa for the first-time next month.

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of his first major hit single and debut album, Matthew and Son, released in 1967, the Peace Train Tour concert tour opens in Johannesburg with a sold-out concert at the Ticketpro Dome on November 8, and will be followed by a concert on November 9. The tour ends on November 15 at Durban’s ICC Arena.

Yusuf/Cat Stevens’s music has established him as a timeless voice for all generations and concert-goers will enjoy celebrating five decades in the company of this great musician including hits such as Wild World, Moonshadow, Peace Train and Morning Has Broken.

Good news for fans is that Yusuf/Cat Stevens will also perform songs from his newly released album, The Laughing Apple, released under his Cat-O-Log Records logo, exclusively through Decca Records, the same label that launched his career 50 years ago. The album is available locally at Musica.

The Laughing Apple follows the common 1960s template of combining newly written songs with a number of covers – except that all the covers are from Yusuf’s 1967 catalogue.

The Laughing Apple celebrates some of his earliest material, presenting the songs as he has always wished they had been recorded.

“There are some I always wanted to hear differently,” he explains. “Many of my earlier recordings were overcooked with big band arrangements. They crowded the song out a lot of times.”

Yusuf produced The Laughing Apple with Paul Samwell-Smith, the original producer behind Yusuf’s landmark recordings, including 1970’s Tea for the Tillerman, which contained the classics Wild World and Father and Son.

That multi-platinum album became a benchmark of the singer-songwriter movement, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has named it one of the definitive albums of all time.

The Laughing Apple takes listeners to that little garden where the Tillerman sat under the tree, with a charming new illustration by Yusuf. That picture harks back to Tillerman’s younger days when he worked as an apple-picker.

Yusuf also has illustrated each of the 11 songs on The Laughing Apple in his naive style, resembling a storybook – „for those whose hearts have never really grown old“, says a press release..

Among highlights of The Laughing Apple are new versions of Blackness of the Night, Northern Wind (Death of Billy the Kid), I’m So Sleepy and the title track, four songs that appeared in their original incarnations on New Masters, a 1967 album.

The album also contains You Can Do (Whatever), a song originally intended for the film Harold and Maude, that remained unfinished until now.

A recipient of The World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates’ Man of Peace award and the World Social Award, Yusuf continues to support charities such as Unicef, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Tree Aid through The Yusuf Islam Foundation in the UK.

Booking for all concerts is at Computicket. Ticket prices for the Durban performances are R1 200, R850, R650, R550 and R450.