I wonder what goes on in every performer’s mind – is it “I hate the lights.”
I love the lights, though sometimes they could be pointed at them heh.
Here’s a random transcription from a rare track. Tell me where you’ve heard this before!
“Like I said, if I could only see your faces. The like, the hate, I don’t know, but just enjoy the music. I hate the lights. I hate the lights. It makes me a star. I’m no better than anybody else.”
“Arrreee yooouuu readddy to perform?”
Jasemaine Gan, long time no see. Acoustic with a kick of a trilingual ballad!
I somehow really like the geometric cuts in this shot. She has been taking some nice shots too so head over to her blog!
I am jealous of the innate ability of females to automatically take better pictures to begin with.
Spoiler. This jazz diva is wearing a flowing dress.
Sue on violins!
Izzy Mohd!
She introduced me to Indomee. For that, I am eternally grateful.
Nick Davis and a violinist. Not the same violinist.
I am beginning to wonder if violinists and saxophonists are more common than bassists and drummers. After all, we see the same bassists and drummers in many bands!
I went for the Indie Youth Fest 2008 at 1 Utama New Wing a certain 5th of July 2008, only because there was a Rubik’s Cube competition!
I asked around. It was 2pm already, inside and outside there was no booth for Rubik’s Cubes or anything. So I asked around, got directed outside, then inside, outside, and inside and uh, outside again. Until I found somebody who took another entry form and cancelled out the title, writing “Rubik’s Cube Competition”.
And so I was the first on the list. 20 minutes later, a gamer clan had joined! I was afraid. These guys looked serious. I thought I could walk away with a prize seeing how little publicity this event got.
Then I saw the cubes. Cheap plastic ones! Not the official ones. I tested one of them. Two of the cubies (that’s what you call the parts) were superglued together! So that was a disqualified cube.
And so, we convened to the stage. There were 9 of us, so we split into 2 groups. The person with the most colors on a face solved after 5 minutes would win!
(Well, you’re supposed to solve the entire thing, but I guess the organizers had more realistic expectations.)
I finished my cube, all 54 colors on a face correct, and then I took pictures.
The poor guy on the left did not know that he finished an entire face, as it was not facing him. Hehe!
So after 5 minutes, two of them handed in cubes with 8 colors on a face, and the other two, 6 I think.
During the next round, this girl suddenly walked into the scene. Ooo, she said. “Can I try?” And she knew her stuff! She finished everything but she could not remember how to swap and orient corners.
Because she did not put her name on the participant list, I guess she didn’t win anything. 🙁
The second round finished with two dudes getting 7 colors on a face. And then they had a showdown. Well I don’t remember the exact details, this happened four months ago!
Third prize winner wins a game.
Second prize winner wins a game.
First prize winner wins Guitar Hero II for the XBox 360!
And so I hung out backstage with my new plastic guitar. Finally, an electric (or rather, electronic) guitar I can call my own!
The black pants are the closest I have to skinny black leather pants.
And now, for some real rockers…
Darren Teh of An Honest Mistake!
They had a legion of supporting fans!
Yes, I shot them all with my Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan.
Gotta love what it did to the flowers!
Ambient bits and then hard bits. Straight out, solid emo.
Challenging backlight, so I cranked up DRO on my A700. After some minor mucking in Photoshop there is just a bit of cross-processing.
So back to the Rubik’s Cube. Nobody knew, and those that were good at it were over in Subang. Some yo-yo event. You’d have a high chance of getting a yo-yo player to solve a Rubik’s Cube, apparently! (With the exception of the exceptionalKJ.)
So back to Guitar Hero II. I contemplated getting an Xbox 360 just for the game – after all, this is the kind of game I’d buy a console for. And I’d never had a console.
Of course, Uncle Google and Uncle Syefri told me that I could just plug my electronic Gibson Explorer via USB cable to my PC, and download Frets On Fire, a PC emulator. It could even rip tracks from the Playstation 2 version (which, thankfully, Amir had, and I must thank him for lending it to me.) Each song took about 2-3 hours to rip, with over 50 songs.
And, just like Dave Mustaine, although I could play guitar, I totally sucked at Guitar Hero the first time I played it.
Dave Mustaine playing Guitar Hero II on Game One
Anthrax Guitarist Scott Ian Sucks at Guitar Hero
The guitar controller eletronic Gibson Explorer is pretty much like a joypad – I even tried to play Quake 3 on it. There weren’t enough buttons to bind to all the movements, even!
I feel like picking up Anthony Kiedis’ book, Scar Tissue. I saw it in Borders, picked it up, and read until my legs went numb. While standing. This man was a poet and he had the methods!
I feel like making some real gritty art.
I saw Marilyn Manson on a Channel V special, and Googled if he was married. Indeed he was, to burlesque superstar Dita Von Teese. And they’d break door hinges in loud hotel romps.
Apparently, she never failed to turn him on. And yet, he had an affair with Evan Rachel Wood. He also says she wasn’t supportive of his lifestyle (I suppose, the drugs.) He was a painter. He directed a movie. His artwork was bought by quite a few, including Anthony’s bassist, Flea. Watch any other rock band these days and you see some pu–y video where they are standing around in a studio (or hangar). I believe all of Nickelback’s videos are shot in such fashion.
At the same time, I tell myself that I have no time to make art. Making art needs a setup. You can’t just Photoshop your way to everything.
Speaking of Flea, I’d been enqueuing Red Hot Chili Peppers – Show Me Your Soul into my Winamp playlist every now and then.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are my inspiration in more ways than one. See how Flea bobs his head? That’s how I bob my head when I’m playing air-bass to some bass-popping song. Heck, that’s how a lot of bassists bob their heads. There’s also that thing Anthony does with his hand (poking the air, but you know what it is… right?)
And yes, the song has got the cure to fever, it’s got a lot of cowbell!
Oh and Flea also appears in James Brown – Sex Machine. Flea’s distinctive head bob appears in 1:51-2:03. And there’s “take it to the bridge” which isn’t a Timbaland line. The Godfather Of Soul said it first!
Do me a favor; if you know me personally, watch the video. If you think I’m just a metalhead, really, no, I thrive on funk.
I was having breakfast at the cafeteria near my office and they play an enjoyable dose of rock kapak. I heard a honky blaring guitar tone. I remembered this most recently when I heard Jack White’s collaboration with Alicia Keys on the James Bond soundtrack. I remember making this awesome, raw, elephant-like sound once many years ago, with my Creative SB Live! EAX sound effects and my (sister’s) Yamaha F-210 guitar, with a cheap microphone sitting in the soundhole.
My soundcard since died, I think. The recordings sit in my hard disk. The only physical pedal I have, a Jimi Hendrix wah pedal, is with my cousin who would send me the occasional recording he made. And he would always astound me as he’d always explore new sounds. Last one I heard had better sounding drum machines than the last. Maybe it’s the former Malaysian music reviewer in me talking but we tend to compare everything to an international artiste (as reference, and so we sound cool) so I’d say I’d like to believe that he is sounding more like Depeche Mode and Daft Punk. Simply because I enjoy them so much, and few people make music as progressively cool as they do.
I’d meet him about 3 times a year during family gatherings. I used to meet him on MSN but I don’t go on MSN anymore. It’s just very counter-productive; I feel like I cannot get anything done when Alt-Tabbing between chat windows and Photoshop or anything.
If fate led me to rocking out properly (like passing that exam and buying that yummy butterscotch-flavored Ibanez) I might’ve been a rock star.
When I hear music so unique, it makes me wish more people tried to copy these bands. Sly And The Family Stone. Prince. Red Hot Chili Peppers. Faith No More. Daft Punk. That’s why when I hear somebody who sounds remotely like that, I’m like hey check these dudes out.
Who is the most copied band of all time? Nirvana (and their Seattle scene.) Great, pick the least technically adept of all bands to adapt. Maybe we could also call Green Day a template to be reused.
I watched every video on “Tales Of Mere Existence”. Each video hit me. I know this, I thought. I could do this, I thought.
I remember that I could draw. I still doodle during meetings. My colleagues can see various robot warriors if they were sitting on my side of the table.
Most recently, my simple drawing of a clamp adaptor got itself a slot on Flickr: How to draw a diagram.
I always wondered why people could not draw simple things like cylinders and cubes correctly, with the right perspective. I don’t expect people to solve the Rubik’s Cube, but drawing it properly would do it justice.
I feel like doing some good classic DIY. The last proper thing I did was a tilt-shift, but the one I’m most proud of is my infrared Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens camera. You can’t call it a SLR because there’s no mirror. Screw Micro Four Thirds, I was there first! With a Fujifilm somemore!
To this day, when I walk into YL Camera, those that have seen the infrared camera tell the others how ingenious I am. I miss that feeling, of being ingenious. It’s one thing to walk into a camera shop toting the latest Sony Alpha 900 and HVL-F58AM rotating flash, and another thing toting a tiny camera that does infrared and has a superb telephoto range.
And there are those I’d like to share this sense of pride with but they won’t come with me into that shop and hear them speak praises of me. There, in those camera shops, I am a rock star.
I don’t have a yearning to be the best. I just have a yearning to be unique, to make something nobody else has thought of. I’m sorry, I do not think that getting a 100% is an accomplishment. All it means is that you can adhere to a standard with no mistakes. A standard somebody else has made, some examiner.
When I ask my children if they have done something useful in their life, I mean to ask if they’ve invented or conjured something that nobody has thought of. I’d be more proud if my son was a conman who came up with a clever, never-heard-of modus operandi, than if he was an honest stockbroker who played it safe.
I was in a pretty crap mood at work and instinctively loaded up some cleansing/destressing thrash/speed/death metal on Winamp. For some reason I itched to find more Sly & The Family Stone stuff (having been hooked to If You Want Me To Stay for a whole week) and I got here and I haven’t been able to pause the playlist and go back to the metal I queued up.
So cool I found out all the original singers for all these songs I’ve heard before! And I’ve heard alternate (or perhaps original versions) of James Brown – I Got You (I Feel Good) and Wilson Pickett – Sugar Sugar. I don’t know how to tell it to play just ONE artiste though, but I’m happier with the selections than any other online radio that promises to give music in a similar vein, such that I can’t hit Skip.
Oh, and Bill Withers was so widely covered and yet I’d never heard of him before this.
For some reason, a lot of songs remind me of Davinaaa!
A certain 25th of July 2008, I stepped into a bar…
…all too familiar. Or not too familiar.
There was loud music rockin’. This band? Meh. I shouted Freebird! and they didn’t play it!
Yep, it was the reopened Jamasia.
Ah, such wonderful memories of sitting in front on the wooden floor. Note that the bar moved to where the sound console was last at, and the sound console moved into a corner of the stage, and yet it seemed much spacier, with room for a snooker table at the back!
This guy single-handedly brought me to places which I wouldn’t or hadn’t been to in ages. I had not been to The New Paul’s Place, after it got raided one New Year’s Eve for “black metal”… until Khai had his screening of Ciplak there.
Likewise, I hadn’t been to Jamasia for months until he sent us all invites on Facebook!
Ironically, the first ever gig I’d been to, Good Golly, It’s A Gig! at the original location of No Black Tie (where a backpacker’s lodge is now) was organized by FYI Entertainment, of which he is a part of.
Meanwhile, they painted the guitar on the wall anew! All the signatures and autographs were gone!
Yes, that’s what Peter Hassan Brown must’ve thought, too…
Fender Stratocasters don’t have 23 frets!
Beer bottle slidin’ with Rollin’ Sixers. (Yes, formerly known as Triple6Poser.)
Henry doing a Slash.
Eddy… OHMYGOD EDDY! Where are your trademark long locks?
When I first entered, I saw him, grabbed his shoulders and went NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Yes, everybody heard it… it’s like a part in a comedy where the character screams and the camera zooms out into outer space.
