Thursday

The hunt for Titus Blues Avenue was on. Supposedly the last blues joint in town, this seclusive place was found on the road opposite Kemayan ATC college. Surprisingly, I could not smell the ambient cigarette smoke. It was even well ventilated!

I was there at 9:30pm to catch the blues man Julian Mokthar in action. Unfortunately he had pulled out, but replacing him was Tok Ghani of Blues Gang.

I don’t know about you, but there was something about the way he looked and played that was just so awesomely cool. Plus he was using a guitar slide, something I’ve only seen live on Butterfingers at Rock The World 4 and in my own inaccurate fingers.

Aznan Ali was playing along and singing. His voice was WHOA bluesy. It reminded me so much of Jack White of The White Stripes – I call him a Kurt Cobain who played the blues. Even he sang with different vocal tones, it still reminded me of Jack. Watching the duo play was inspiring. While I only recognized their cover of Cream – Strange Brew, every song was familiarly a twelve-bar-blues. Still, the gig was very inspiring, and I couldn’t wait to get home to screech some unison bends on the guitar.

Friday

I proved to Shaz‘s expectation that it was a small world.

Saturday

I first went to Woh Fatt to hunt (there’s that word again) for a Dean Markley acoustic guitar pickup (as seen on Azmyl Yunor‘s guitar) for my friend. Negotiations failed, so I headed to Do Re Mi to get myself a cheap transducer as seen on a busker’s 12-string:

Easy mounting! Haha. Now, if only everything was easy mounting in life.

I’d still have to peel off the protective covering for the double-sided tape, but because of my fear of commitment, I put regular tape on top of it for my ukelele:

The Dean Markley Promag Grand was better – you can’t see it, but it says “The Original ‘Instant Mount’“. Hot damn! Now, if only everything was instant mounting in life.

There it lay, instantly mounted, with my non-committal transducer. The sound? Excellent, but not as noiseless as claimed. Or perhaps my SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 couldn’t handle such high-quality. I liked it because it didn’t pick up everything unlike my old cheap mikes. The transducers were another matter – they were so hissy (probably because I didn’t commit to peeling the tape!)

Oh and in between Do Re Mi and going back to Woh Fatt to buy the Dean Markley (and test it for my friend) I went to Coffee Bean, Telawi area, Bangsar. Met Thescarfer and Fazri there and forgot my books. Elena was inside too. Horny man with sunglasses so black you’d think he’s blind came later. Later still came a walking talking DNS server, a not-so-sleepy-dude and a dude with photogenic hair.

Sunday

“And on the seventh day, he rested.”

Monday

Happy birthday, you old fart! Now you’re technically as old as I am (until December 19th that is.) See, I can be as shameless about self-promoting my birthday. Haha. You even got me promoting it. I just hope you get a free lunch at college, so be a good girl and don’t skip class.

On a side note, if I ever get a piercing, I’d want a small tuning fork. That way when I hear the sweet 440 hertz sound, my ear will vibrate. I could then claim I had perfect pitch. 🙂

Saturday

I headed down to the newly-relocated Bleu Bar (the old Mcities place in KL Plaza) for a tribute to Metallica gig. After 2 hours of absorbing cigarette ash during their soundchecks, I left because it the smell was just too pungent. (I justified myself, knowing I had a driving exam on Monday!)

Metal rockers sure have cool guitars; left has shiny decals all over, while the right is a headless Lazer (the tuning heads are at the bridge).

Sunday
I needed to do my time in bed for the early Monday.

Monday
At 8 am, many young eager behind-the-wheelers stood around waiting to be called to their Kancils to be tested. For some reason, I only had to retake the road test (and not all the circuit tests!) Perhaps my instructor had pulled some strings.

I was the first person to get in that car with that particular examiner. How fortunate to not have to wait much! My engine died upon starting but that did not cause a monetary setback on my part. And so, I hobbled on, pissingly slow, only reaching third gear once… to the point where the examiner asked me to take the highway shortcut. (Shortcuts are reserved for hot sunny days when the examiner’s patience has run thin.)

I passed. I passed!

Well, better to be penalized for using the wrong speed than to hit something or panic at the tricky downhill turn back into the driving school. After all was done, I left the driving school at 9 am. 9 am! Hardly time to go home.

I can no longer brag that I don’t have a “P“. 🙁

To celebrate, I called many, but one hailed my call – Dustyhawk. We’d meet at Ahameedia’s with Fazri for cheese naan at noon.

By then, I had reached Central Market at 9:30 am, and so I opened the newspaper I bought for the anticipated wait. No buskers were in sight. 🙁 At 10 am, Woh Fatt opened. I walked in and saw this older shopkeeper dude shredding classical music! He was probably in his sixties, doing what Yngwie Malmsteen would do, minus the slow parts! I bought the one impulse item I had been wanting to reward myself with for ages – a cheap RM50 4-string Ukelele. The younger shopkeeper dude tuned it up a lot (meaning it was hanging there, strings loose) before putting it in its free gig bag. (Yes free gig bag and pick! 🙂 No strap though…)

I sat down in Central Market again, eager to learn the tunings; it was in GCEA (where guitars would be EADGBe). If you did your math you’d know that GCEA is relatively the same as DGBe, meaning you could play it like the first 4 strings of a guitar. (A bass guitar is the last 4 strings of a 6-string guitar, an octave lower though.) Of course one kink would be the 4th string; it was one octave higher, meaning if you fretted it at the 2nd fret, you’d get the same note same octave as the open 1st string.

By 11 am, Dustyhawk came, and he agreed that it sounded gay sissy-ish. (Yeah I haven’t been politically correct for a while.) The nylon strings (or was it the body?) had very little sustain. This meant no long rock chords or vibrato held for more than half a second. A cool side effect was that palm-muting was unnecessary, and muted, percussive chords sound great. 🙂 It also had high action, and I wasn’t used to slippery nylon strings so I couldn’t exactly do a blues solo on the spot for some money.

Notice that on the guitar, the 9th fret is equivalent to the 1st fret size on a ukelele. I could practice accuracy with tiny fingerings in smaller frets than my guitar would allow! Also, I could claim that my hand could stretch one octave. 🙂

Fazri brought two friends for cheese naan and Low Yat after that. Picture has been artistically recolored; credits go to Dustyhawk for the picture-taking, and the original can be found on his blog.

After a tiring afternoon of playing catch up in Bintang Walk, we all met up again at Starbucks Times Square, where Dustyhawk and Fazri had a flash fight between their cameras – a Canon Powershot A60 and A70 respectively. One two three shoot. The loser, or flashee, would see white; the winner, or flasher, would see the slower camera. There was even a draw.

In the evening, I stood sat corrected, drinking what was just apparently sweet Teh Tarik at Maju Curry House, Masjid Jamek. Was I the only one tasting the cinammon in it? Freaky. Surreal.

We parted ways, and I met up with Syefri at Paul’s Place, Uptown. We saw:

Cosmic Funk Express (!!!) Majorly cool funk, and they played a majorly cool rendition of Super Mario, complete with sound effects! You know the bassist, Alda, the band slut. 🙂

One Buck Short

Uh, I missed Side Circle because everybody was trying out the ukelele. In the hands of Syefri, it became East Malaysian ethnic music; in Az‘s hands, he showed me that it was possible to hammer-on-from-open-string on it. Saiful even shredded on it! Heck, the taxi driver who took me to Uptown expressed interest in it. Amil said it was cool. I could not agree more; to me, it was the anti-hero. It was rebellion against steel string and piercing-attack guitar. It was sissy and unconventional. And in some cases perhaps gay; Freddie Mercury sang over the ukelele chords on Bring Back That Leroy Brown.

Dragon Red featuring Kime (the guy in red). I didn’t expect Adam to look menacing in an Xfresh T-shirt, but somehow he looks rugged and built in it. Zack, the guitarist of Cosmic Funk Express, even asked us for a new T-shirt after that!

I reached home and tested out the ukelele with my computer mike on distortion. It sounded… chirpy, sweeter than a steel-string, with little sustain, but definitely not sissy-ish. I found the sound addictive.

Tuesday

I went to Paul’s Place again; this time it was Y2K. Ah, memories of my first gig at No Black Tie – the first people I’d ever met through gigs were Khai (playing inverted bass) and:

Hermano Grande. Their masks (and uh punk cover songs) have gone a long way, and it was the first time I’d see a Y2K drummer in a mask.

I finally got to see Ahmad‘s band! This dude I’d meet at many gigs, and we were stranded in KLCC on New Year’s Day 2003 after Rock The World 3. Well rather, Ahmad and his Kapok guitar.

Ahmad borrowed Paul’s Vax SG (yes Vax like the brand of cheap 7-string guitars.) Members of Triple6Poser filled in.

I finally got to see Triple6Poser; Khai’s old humor-laden ska-punk-funk band Khaimano was what got me into going to gigs. I wanted to see how different it was. I was pleasantly surprised; sure, it was less funk and ska, none of Khai’s trademark humor in his lyrics, but there was more rock and roll, and solos!

Paul and gang has some funky lighting set up. Khai is a rainbow-flavored-colored Paddle Pop head.

Flip Rotation ended the show; they had an excellent lead guitarist. The vocalist was cool too, punching in an aggressive line in an otherwise slow ballad.

Last Saturday 28th August 2004, 0200 hours, after Friday’s Mont Kiara Jazz Fest, I got a call from The Agent. He needed me to go for the advanced screening of The Bourne Supremacy at Midvalley at 1030 hours in the morning, thus ruining my plans of getting sleep to go out in the afternoon for a screening of Space Balls. Since he had sent all his agents to Genting (with him) he had practically noone to go write a review for this screening unless he wrestled some agents out of God. Fine then, I went, and I called upon the accompaniment of someone who insisted on calling this movie The Bourne Legacy (he had watched the prequel, The Bourne Identity). He was fashionably late. We watched and I was blur and yet entertained.

Legacy Man (I’ll call him that from now on) brought me to lunch in his funky legacy (auto)mobile. We then set out to find this elusive place where Space Balls was to be shown. Unfortunately, it evaded my memory, and at 1400 hours The Agent called again. This time, he bumped into an old friend (also a hot chick) who wanted to meet me badly. He even passed the phone kidnapper style to me, so I could ascertain yes she was indeed female, but not long enough for me to ascertain the identity of aforementioned hot chick. “Get your ass down to KL Sentral“, he said… “Her limo has to go already! She wants to take you on a tour around town, and she might even go for the Jazz Fest tonight so maybe she could drop you.”

The Agent knew that I was intending to go to the Jazz Fest’s finale on Saturday, at 1800 hours, with Steve Thornton‘s clinic.

And so, Legacy Man set a plan only rogue nigger cops in cop movies do. I’d go into Castell, a fancy restaurant near Malayan University, and ask for a map. “Can I have a map please? My boss wants to eat here.” They gave me their leaflet with a map on it. Alas, the map was too simple; our intention was to get an insight of the roads within Malayan University, so that we could enter from Jalan Universiti and exit at Pantai, way nearer to KL Sentral.

We drove coolly past the guardhouse, but they asked us to pull aside anyway. “What’s the plan, man? Whadda we do?” “Chill man, I got a plan.” There was a detailed map nearby; he would inspect it. I would tell the guard that we were going to pick up a friend from Point A (near where we parked) and send him to Point B (near the Pantai exit). I injected a little drama by calling our invisible friend. Timely indeed, that The Agent would call again while I was pretending to ask, reminding me to hurry.

In nigga cop movie style, Legacy Man forgot where he was supposed to go from the map. We made a circle before escaping into Pantai. On the way to KL Sentral, I received an SMS – the screening would be in Mont Kiara on Sunday instead. (Now I wasn’t sure if it was even supposed to be on Saturday to begin with!) While we did not get to watch Space Balls, he did learn a shortcut he would find useful in his everyday life.

I was greeted at KL Sentral by The Agent… and the genie. Still a hot chick, but yes, I fell into his trap. Dammit. There was a van waiting for me. Foolishly, I got in.

There was an Indian man sleeping inside. Junior, he was called. There were other people in the van, but their lethargy showed that they, too, were reluctant to go to… KLIA. Once there, we met North the boyband from down South. On the way, I complained about The Agent and how he tricked me! He conned me! That conniving liar!

It was 1800 hours and the show was far from over. I was getting restless. It was not until 2030 hours that we returned, and I rushed to Mont Kiara. I took photos of:

KC and the Thornton band. Or rather, AfroAsia with Steve Thornton. Or AsiaBeat?

Left: KC on 6-string bass. Right: Steve Thornton makes music with his belly, looking at the saxophone player, probably wondering, “why is KC stealing our show?”

KC was awesome. He played a hollowbody electric nylon-string guitar without any soundholes or pickups under the strings. (If I had a guitar without anything under the strings, I’d put 36 frets!) When he played 6-string bass, there was no guitarist. Being a guitarist myself, I was more interested in his act than Steve’s African beats. Add to that his voice; it was comfortably far away from diva and far away from Eddie Vedder as well.

I bumped into the Indian man again, as well as a sister of an owner of a cute, shiny, tangy orangy Picanto that Smashpop and Warmpaw have been drooling at on its Flash site:

Oh and on Sunday I watched Space Balls. Happy ending.