The Sunday Mail
For the first time since 2010 when he released “Non Stop”, Suluman “Sulu” Chimbetu went below his usually high standards when he launched his fifth album at the upmarket Maestro Restaurant in Highlands on Wednesday evening.
Choice of venue
Whoever advised Sulu to use the flashy but crammed space of Maestro Restaurant did a great disservice to the flamboyant Dendera musician’s profile.
The venue was too small for a launch that was guaranteed to attract hundreds of people (invited or otherwise). To make matters worse, the setting was poorly ventilated for a summer event, creating all sorts of problems for revellers, VIPs included.
Parking was a nightmare while those that managed to get inside the venue had nowhere to sit as there were only about 80 chairs.
Time keeping
This area proved to be a challenge for the Orchestra Dendera King’s camp.
Officially, the launch was billed to start at 6.30pm, but in reality things only kicked off no less than two hours later.
Invited guests were kept waiting in the hot marquee after signs of poor-time keeping had already started showing the previous day when the Dendera team arrived late for a luncheon they had organised as a pre-launch event.
DJ D-Train (Ronald Chiwanza) had a hard time trying to keep his audience occupied as Sulu’s team ran around aimlessly at the venue.
CDs
When an artiste launches an album, expectations are that he brings complete copies of his project on the day. But on the day in question, Sulu’s team brought limited copies of their work, which were also not properly packaged.
What made the situation worse is that some of the copies that were sold had tracks that were mixed up — the order of the songs was different from CD to CD.
Some of the delegates who attended the launch ended up leaving the venue without copies of “Gunship” as demand exceeded supply. This development raised fears that the artiste was going to be out-manoeuvred by music pirates inasfar as supply and demand is concerned.
Organisation
Many invitations were issued verbally with some guests saying they only learnt of the launch through word of mouth.
Further, the seating arrangement was haphazard. The ushers appeared clueless and did not know where to direct their VIPs.
A bit of music during all the waiting could have helped improve the mood but instead people chit-chatted and those fortunate to have chairs fidgeted impatiently.
There was no laptop — the engineer played music from a cellphone whose cable gave him a tough time.
One hopes that the content on the album will help rectify the shortcomings that characterised the launch.
