Open Mic @ The Venue #2

Open Mic @ The Venue #2 – Hosted by Az Samad, 29th October 2012. Here’s Az Samad, emcee and organizer.

Here’s Khairil M. Bahar, one of the featured acts of the night, with a very, very cool T-shirt.

Here’s Kiss Kill Mary, with disco funk rock. So this is Jenn!

Sani, also from her other band, with hair quite like my old hair. I quite miss it.

Alloy, the beatboxer.

Liyana Fizi, featured act!

Guitarist Izaad Amir.

Normally I’d shoot stage performances like this with the Sony Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 135mm F1.8 ZA, but occasionally I switch it up to a Sony Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 24mm F2.0 ZA SSM for a wider perspective. Plus the lights were pretty!

Liyana is always cute as a button, down to her cough.

The very hardworking Yin, who does PR, photography and videography.

Tasha is backed by Alloy.

Serious Shaneil Devaser is serious.

Angie, singer-songwriter.

Markiza, of Peter And Markiza Brown.

Peter, the backbone of the singer-songwriter scene, who started one of the early singer-songwriter rounds that got many others starting their own.

As all musicians, theirs is a weathered tale.

It does not stop them from singing songs about the environment – ironically you’d have called them activist-y then, but it’s now accepted as a song subject.

The Venue with all its great lighting, great sound, great sound engineers and great contribution to the scene, unfortunately no longer exists, replaced by another bar.

Az is proud to present the next performer…

Khairil M. Bahar! Here he is doing a stand-up comedy routine, instead of rocking out. Even when he does rock out, his band is full of entertainment value!

Another alternative is Nicol, reading spoken word poetry instead.

The venerable Rafique Rashid, with the cleverest of lyrics over familiar songs, did not sing this time. I didn’t take any other pictures of Rafique because I was busy recording video instead on my Sony Alpha 99. I could’ve brought my Sony Alpha 900 to take pictures while the A99 shot video, but I wanted to travel lighter.

He got Alex to sing his songs, like Schizophrenia and Death Of A Urban Middle-class Post-adolescent Indian Relationship.

Reza Salleh, who also runs an open mic.

The old-school boys of Jumero!

Also, for a change, featuring Natallie Ng…

…and talented keyboardist Melvin Goh.

The Morkuthi Sisters, with Naveen and Matt Chor behind. They did covers of Leonard Cohen – Hallehujah and John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John – Summer Nights.