Friday

I bumped into the-one-annoyingly-eager-to-leave-Malaysia at the hitz.tv Blast Off. Later, outside, I heard some Indians saying how f***ed up the sound was. Suddenly, a crusty-voiced Indian exclaimed, “it was damn f***ed up!” That distinctive voice could only be my celebrity “because-I’m-Indian” buddy, Jayaram. There, he’s finally mentioned in my blog. 🙂

Saturday

I met up Ed and YK at Bintang Walk. YK acquired 5 big Transformers that day. I acquired this:

Reduced Size Multimedia Card my a**. On the left was my new 512MB RS-MMC card; on the right, my old 128MB xD Picture card. The xD was only slightly bigger!

I then headed to The Disco for the gig I promoted earlier.

No, I was not stabbed by any protuding objects here. The Disco has a very nice setting, with a huge window light letting the sun light the stage naturally.

I met Jayaram again; this time, as usual, he was a HELP-ful emcee. Picture has been double-sized to make up for his lack of blog appearances despite the times we had bumped into each other.

Nightshift was an enjoyable old-school thrash metal band. Every old-school thrash metal band should do a Metallica cover and this was no exception, doing For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Brainhead was next with some alternative rock, and their alternative take on Incubus – Drive.

Insulyna gave us crunchy grunge, and a light growly take on Cranberries – Zombie.

Indka from Kuching featured Alex, the drummer from SingleTrackMind and Soft Touch. I wasn’t sure if it was progressive rock.

Zero Gravity threw in Deftones‘ tones, and the energy of KoRn helped with my enjoyment. I particularly the band’s showmanship, especially the bassist’s style.

Ziel played hard rock. Can someone else agree with me when I say the vocalist/guitarist would look like Brandon Boyd, with dreadlocks on?

Republic Of Brickfields played reggae, with a few Bob Marley covers. Peter Hassan Brown (if you’re as underground as you say you are, you’d know the man) was skanking to it, legs kicking the air! Never have I seen so much energy in that rocking (grand?)father. Yes, the metal-lish guitars looked misplaced; were some of them from Koffin Kanser? (I know Aru the vocalist is…)

I recorded videos for most of the bands (512MB maaan, I’m invincible) so ask me on MSN if you want them.

I stayed back to be a roadie. 🙂 We then went to Stadium Merdeka to drop off the snake cables (a giant power extension cord).

Aiyah, nothing to see. Jay Chou ciao already. (It was that night!)

Ever craved Chinese food after converting to Islam? Tupai Tupai serves the bestest lemon chicken and halal versions of Chinese food. It even has big round tables and servings done Chinese style, but with (get this) leather tablecloths. The outside of the wooden-plank-raised place was the woods, where we assume squirrels live.

Friend: Why do they call it Tupai Tupai? Do they serve squirrels here?
Me: Yeah, I’m sure that squirrels could eat the food off the table as they like.

I felt a sense of pride, knowing that Alda and I would carry on the corny humor of Az.

On the way back, a bunch of us rode in the back of a Mitsubishi Storm. *cue Jim Morrison whispering “Riders Of The Storm“* With that, I can now change my Friendster picture to something that attracts less gay guys and girls with headscarves.

Oh, and to mark, who posted a comment in Santa Was A Telekom Engineer:

The PPPoA option is available in the setup program on the CD. I’m not sure if the option is available when you Telnet your router.

Self-explanatory. The New Paul’s Place (I’d rather it be called Paul’s New Place) was behind Asoka, a club opposite Pearl International Hotel (near Pearl Point) on the Puchong side of Old Klang Road. I came, finding out about the gig from the MENSA email newsletter. However, upon arriving I found otai Saiful collecting entry donations to this Tsunami charity gig. “Huh what MENSA gig? If there were smart people here, I wouldn’t be here…” I was intimidated by not knowing who I could hand an unsolved Rubik’s Cube to, in the crowd of unusually old people. (They could be Julian Mokthar’s friends!)

This would be the first time I’d see Ariff Akhir perform. Interesting voice and guitar.

Second time for second act Kohl.

Julian Mokhtar and Chris the fiddler on the roof. (Well the new Paul’s Place was way at the top, in a spacious attic…) They did wickedly cool covers of Led Zeppelin – Stairway To Heaven, blues style, and Julian said, “I’m going to murder Metallica next.” (He did Enter Sandman, and Chris’ fiddling was inspiring Apocalyptica-ly.) Ask me for videos!

13-year old Eve sings about life in a Simple Plan kind of way.

Karen Nunis and the dudes were cool, despite Karen being sick. It wasn’t till a guitar string broke that Chris took over the stage with his tasteful fiddle shredding.

One of the dudes had a 3-piece-body Ibanez. Sweeet.

A guest dude would be the drummer – Paul himself!

This would be the first time I’d see the eccentric, zany, brooding 360 Degree Head Rotation as a band and not just one Rafil screaming his head off. The old people left, and I knew then that those were the smart bunch.

Special attention was paid to the lead guitarist Jack. He put the melody to the blaring fuzz of Rafil’s guitar.

Drunk Ben took to the stage, with an acoustic set featuring CK on distorted nylon guitar. Ben’s B***hes dissed, pissed, cursed in verse, and entertained.

Tempered Mental had to be the odd one out with their progressive rock.

So how?

I didn’t meet up with any MENSA people. Yellow bellied I became.

On January 4th 2005, the Songwriters Avenue 2 broke the tsunami’s no-gig silence. Like its first instalment, it was at Le Bernardin. This round, Shelley Leong, Az Samad and Reza Sallehuddin played. Shelley’s guitar playing had noticeably improved since last year in songs like Crime (yes, I’m still not over the last-year jokes). Az however had a fever and did a lot more ‘haram‘ notes than before, but managed to take jazz-ic license by improvising.

Reza deserves a paragraph to himself. I saw Tracy‘s heart melting, mesmerized by his voice. Plus he had excellent guitar sounds too, ranging from rock to hearty jazz to ballad.

The sound monitor (not TV mind you) made an excellent tripod.

This is what happens when you mistakenly use a yellow cloth as your custom white balance reference. Pictures with flash turn blue!

Photoshop saves the day.

If you want videos I recorded, ask me! I quickly exhausted my 16MB SD card and the 32MB SD card Jenifer lended me, so they aren’t that long, but at least they have sound.

From top-left, clockwise: Sui Lin of Her Reverie, Yyan (with weirder tunings than Az), Alda (on bass, covering Az’s Latah Setinggan, accompanied by Az himself), Izzy (the reason why I wanna dye my hair white), Lisa, and Yee Meng who did a killer tribute to Az and Shelley (with a very Az-influenced song).

After that was Rafique Rashid from former gig-place No Black Tie and a guy from Cameroon.

The most notable star, however, was the guy who wrote and sang the Malay equivalent of acoustic singalong More Than Words (by Extreme). Manbai sang Kau Ilhamku.

Oh, and I’ve updated my Quotes page with:
“There are unisex toilets in every home.”

I felt like a genius when I came up with that.