7th May, a Saturday

I headed down to Plaza Mont Kiara for the Levi’s 501 party. Being one of the first 501 to line up, I found out just how generous they were:

There’s a noisemaker, Coca Cola vouchers, a Swatch catalogue, the latest issue of KLue, a KLue notepad, a Levi’s towel, a Levi’s 501 Day t-shirt and the coolest one – a Levi’s denim jacket organizer. People, be jealous!

So I was really there for the battle of the bands. Really.

Wow, what a pretty stage. So I met up Zack the funky cosmic expressionist at McDonalds, where his friend said I looked familiar.

“Yeahhh you had a sister who was my colleague right?”
“No I don’t have a sister…”
“Hmmm. Do you go to gigs then?”
“Nope…”
“Hmmm. Where have we met, then?”
“At the Fete De La Musique 2004? You bumped into me a few times and said I looked familiar.”
“Yeah but you did! You really do look like an ex-colleague of mine!”

How cool is that? I kept bumping into her thinking that she was familiar but she didn’t know me, to the point that I was familiar to her!

Passport in my books should not be let out of this country.

Three Flow featured Hunny of Admonition. But but isn’t Admonition also competing?

Sacred Highway, good old rocking hard rock. Prettier, bigger pictures are on Nadia‘s site. Yes I took all the pictures of their performance since she forgot to bring her camera.

The cherry-flavored colored Gibson SG on the left, an item of desire for many guitar geeks like myself.

For the non-rocker crowd they had hot dancers.

There’s a good reason why they arch their bodies like that;

They’d be pretty skinny otherwise.

I think they’re trying to prove that you can dance in a pair of 501’s. Sorry, I prefer to ogle at skirts.

Okay maybe they could sell this to acrobats. Yes they are all guys.

Urban Method didn’t quite stir the crowd. They lacked the energy of the two hip-hop/R&B bands before this.

Eternal Relief did pop punk but something was amiss. Tuning perhaps?

No that’s not Hunny in a cowboy hat for Admonition.

Media Puppets did their regular rock covers, with the band being happy that they had much more space to jump about.

Army Of Three featured Kevin‘s younger brother. Yeah the “your brother is so cute” one. Modern, heavy, riff-laden rock. I like.

They gave out sample Bugles (cone-shaped snacks) in cute cone-shaped holders. Yes I was bored. Of course I was also hungry before that.

Apparently, bored people in Starbucks play cards.

So yeah, Media Puppets won, Sacred Highway next, followed by Army Of Three.

11th May, a Wednesday

While waiting for the bus to Paul’s New Place, I found a wonderfully fast Ramli burger stall in KL Sentral, between the monorail station and the 7-Eleven. The flavor was close to the Universiti LRT burger stall, but prepared amazingly fast compared to normal burger stalls. I missed a bus while paying for the burger, but what the heck – I’ve got a burger. And two hours to burn. Eat burger. Enjoy burger. Buy another burger. Catch the same bus half an hour later. Sweet.

So I arrived at the Estranged – In Hating Memory EP launch to see One Buck Short doing some new pop punk songs. Too bad they didn’t play Led Zeppelin – D’yer Ma’ker; they only hinted at it during the soundcheck.

Tempered Mental pleasantly surprised me by playing their older stuff like Space In Time (with that riff everybody loved to sing), a regular song back when Estranged was hot in the scene (2002-2003).

Estranged had a new bassist, drummer and replacement lead guitarist. Despite 60% of the band being different, they managed to secure that vibe and sound they had when Alda played bass for them. Even the crowd was made of familiar faces which I had not seen since 2003. Of course, there was that short stint in Rock The World 4 that had a more dynamic (musically) and aggressive-sounding Estranged.

Guess what this is and where you can find it. The winner will get a mention in my blog and again, he/she will get the attention of loads of hot members of the opposite sex.

Those lights look like glowing soap. That said, glow-in-the-dark soap sounds cool. No electricity at night? You can still be soaped! It could prove to be erotic too.

Friday The 13th

I went for the Guinness Black Party, to further my study into the modern yuppie lifestyle. I bumped into Khai (who, oddly, I’d usually meet at The Loft, Zouk at that very same time every week.)

Get a steady shot on your digital camera by turning down your EV to say -2 and your ISO up to 400.

Fight fire with fire! (This is with default settings.)

Looking at this makes me want to drink stout. No wait. Looking at this makes me want to be a Duff Man myself.

I had 5 free tickets for bottles but I only needed one bottle to know that stout was like bitter chocolate, except not chocolatey. It wasn’t until the horrible aftertaste went away that the 8% alcohol kicked in, telling my brain:

*DUK* Dance to *DUK* Jungle *DUK* Jerry *DUK*

Fortunately, his mix of house music was easy to dance to; it was heavy and repetitive. (Az moment: What do you listen to when you’re at home, then?)

I met this Japanese chick on the dance floor and I asked her if she could speak English. She saw my camera and asked me if I was from Japan. No matter, we took a picture. 🙂

The crowd soon disappeared, and I walked to The Loft, Zouk, for Twilight Action Girl, those rock deejays, you know, where I bumped into Jess.

“You just came?”
“Yeah… I came from this, where I found out that stout sucks!” (I hold up my hand to show a wristband as proof I was at the event.)
“Oh.” (Jess sheepishly raises her wristbanded hand.)

I still think I prefer my good old beer lager. It still tastes bad, but not as bad as stout.

14th May, a Saturday

I woke up in the morning with Jungle Jerry in da house head. DUK DUK DUK.

I then met up with Syefri and Aznin at Bentley for Tempered Mental’s drum clinic. Okay so they performed Space In Time again, and there was an sponsor break. Then more songs. Then an explanation of the new Tama drumset. Was this a clinic? People asked. The emcee said, “oh this one is more of an introduction to the product… however, when Marty Friedman and Omar Hakim come down, they will definitely have time to teach you their tricks.”

Syefri and I shared Jimmy-the-drummer’s shocked expression.

So, in the interests of public, they had a drum geekout session after that.

I took a cab to Plaza Damas and found this shop, Carismen Dolce, selling guitars, basses and all sorts of string instruments, including a silent electric bass guitar and silent electric double bass!

So I was there to support Maximillan Lim for his “This is Acoustic! Part 1” gig. From left: Maximillan, Emmanuel (his guitar solo work is amazing and he’s Maximillan’s brother!) and Ian Chow (a guy with such an amazing booming voice he didn’t really need a microphone). Not so noticeable is that the guitars are, from left to right, red yellow and green.

Ian also plays mean harmonica.

Tracy does her thing, a bleak melancholic epic melody. Do not be fooled by her seemingly demure entries; she was describing Jackass stunts in vivid detail later at dinner.

Annette, Patrick‘s sister sings and shakes a shaker thing.

The performers that evening, from left to right: Alia, Maximillan, Emmanuel, Joachim, Annette, Ian, Tracy

Again, as usual, you could always ask me for videos, and I could tell you if I recorded one and if so how to pass it to you if you are a nice person.

And now, for the random picture unrelated to everything, to finish this blog entry:

Those damn termites have been stealing our parquet tiles. Those are expensive! What, do they think that wood grows on trees?

I will omit Thursday‘s long blog entry to make this following chunkalunk of a blog entry easier to read and remember.

Friday

I got on a Metrobus, and they had this LCD screen that was supposed to play ads and music videos. Instead, it showed the Active Desktop error ala Microsoft Windows. Maybe they should invest in a DVD player instead; it’s cheaper and they don’t have to pay Bill Gates.

This party was definitely not for the aquaphobic… or chocolate-cake-on-face-phobic. Corinne, this is what you’re missing! (The crowd was mostly her ex-collegemates from IACT.)

I met Izal, bassist of One Buck Short there, where he just returned from a gig at the International College Of Music (ICOM). I hitched a ride with Corinne’s friend’s car who dropped me off at Hartamas. Thankful I am that I did not take a taxi straight back from Ikea, because I bumped into a Sunday-school-mate at Hartamas Square.

For Friday, I had:

Plan A: Check out Ben’s B***hes at ICOM.
Plan B: Instead of drunken rockers, I’d go see the CLEO Bachelor party at Zouk, where I could meet Davina and pass her a CD.
Plan C: Instead, I forsook being bachelor #51, and went for a pool party instead.

So it would be ironic then, that the not-so-pious-now-haha! friend of mine, and her hot friend, were at the CLEO bachelor thing! (Plan B) Apparently it started at midnight (instead of 9pm) and the bachelors made 2-second appearances. Even cooler, was that her friend was from IACT as well, and when I name-dropped the names of people at the party (Plan C), she knew them all well! (And was surprised to know that the person I hitched a ride on had a boyfriend.) Oh, and Izal was at aforementioned ICOM gig (Plan A) and told me that Ben and gang were asked to get off stage.

Am I eye-flutteringly complex now?

I then bumped into Zack (dude in the middle), super-mega-rock-star-guitar-player from Cosmic Funk Express! He was also super-mega-drunk. Funny indeed, Zack is part of One Buck Short when they need a second guitarist, but not this time; he was busy amassing groupies at Mont Kiara International School, where he strutted his guitar virtuoso-ness.

The last time Zack and I were here, he was struggling to finish his glass of beer (it didn’t help that strong drinkers were pressuring him). So uh, I liberated him of the alcohol.

Now, he was a strong Korean drinker. Cheers mate. You can now hold your own, and you can even do math and pour beer evenly while dancing along to Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction! Alda, have you seen him drunk?

Saturday

No, not keyboard; digital piano! Miss Kanako Kumanomido shows off Roland Digital Pianos, with voices much better-sounding than MIDI realizations. Ask me for the video! Interesting modulation effects on trumpet and backing ‘vocals’. I saw this at Pearl Point when rushing to grab a bite before the Soft Touch EP launch at Paul’s New Place.

Mr. Harooon from Rock The World fame! Well I’ll be. He’s still as clueless a commentator. Maybe he should work as a sports commentator. Oh wait, he works for AMP Radio’s Infozone. Oops.

Saerze sings Nirvana – Rape Me and Jamiroquai – Love Foolosophy. The bass was too punchy for the latter song (and maybe the other niggling factor was that it was a bit off tune…) I wonder how she got her name cards in the ASTRO office waiting lounge though.

Lied and their angry alternative rock. Angry indeed. The way rock was meant to be, anyway. Here, Adlin does the emo-chicken-pecking-at-microphone stance.

Cats In Love rocked. From classic rock to bluesy wanderings, the Malaysian Mark Knopfler wowed the crowd.

It wasn’t until they introduced the band members that I realized why the guitarist’s guitar (what, were you expecting the guitarist’s bass drum?) was so familiar. It was the Fender Telecaster that N. Rama Lohan reviewed in The Star. It was N. Rama Lohan! Turns out the bandmates are from The Star, too. No wonder they’ve got an excellent synthy-keyboard(s)-player (who also did a mouth organ bit.) And hey! Didn’t they review that SX bass too? Cheap bas…

(Edited 6th June 2014: This was Cats In Love’s first ever gig!)

This picture does not do justice to prove exactly how cute and charismatic D-Va’s lead vocalist is. (…oh yeah she also sings, plays guitar and keyboards well.) She dances and prances like it was her bathroom, except she’s got clothes on and she’s not soaking wet. Dammit.

Double-sized picture for Soft Touch, because it’s their EP’s launch event. And because Peter Hassan Brown (the old-looking dude) finally rocks out or “fools around” (in his own words) to the hard rocking riff of Listen 2 What U C. Yes he was actually headbanging to this one, and he even walked over to his guitarist and made like a guitar duel.

Jamie Woon from the UK! With his DADGAD-tuned guitar, he crooned and melted hearts. He also played with soft-loud dynamics and tapped harmonics ala acoustic guitar heroes like Az. Except that Az doesn’t sing.

Lunarin from Singapore with some pretty progressive rock. The biting bass tone of the female vocalist complimented the hard-hitting drummer. Add a guitarist, and you have Singapore’s answer to Tempered Mental, just not as diverse and tempo-manic.

A funny scene was Saiful, the first gig otai (slang for old-timer, usually commands great respect) I met, paying cover charge to Ahmad, the first gig-regular-who-wasn’t-in-a-band buddy I met. Ironically, the situation would have been reverse every other time. I hitched a ride with Saiful, and he dropped me off at KLCC, where I took a cab, and it was ironic too that I’d meet a former mat rock taxi driver. He asked what college I was, and for some instinctive reason he asked where he could do sound engineering! I told him about SAE and ICOM. He told me how he was going to be signed to a label in 1987, but his parents disapproved. Heck, if he did, he would have been famous for a good decade. “Bila XPDC baru nak belajar double-pedal, aku lama dah buat lah…” I then told him where to pick up gig-goers and meet Md. Nor Hendrix. Rock on, mat-rock taxi driver!