3rd April 2014: Moonshine: Spotlight Ska Edition / April 2014 at Laundry Bar, The Curve! Here’s Reza Salleh, emcee and organizer.
Skudap Skudip!
Ska is all about the upstroke.
A strong groove on the bass.
Horn section!
And, of course, that ska drum beat.
Saxophone!
Trumpet.
Bijan Fx, of “We Are Not” All-Stars, also once a long-running sound engineer for Laundry Bar. He also curated the band list for the night!
Since the crowd starting moving in, I had to move in too. So I switched from my Sony Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 135mm F1.8 ZA to my Sony Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 24mm F2.0 ZA SSM because everything was so near.
His guitar strap came off.
Horn section!
More close-range stuff.
The bassist and singer.
At this distance, the 135mm would give this.
I was on the stage, next to the singer. This is what the drummer would look like at that distance.
Bijan’s likeness is also the logo.
I love the consistency in the ska bands, in terms of dressing.
They ended their set, to calls for an encore, so they played a cover of Rancid – Time Bomb. This video should give you an idea how close I was, because the crowd was pushing in.
The guitarist crowdsurfed! This was a rare occasion in Laundry Bar; it only happens during ska gigs, really, which says so much about the sorry state of the other scenes, to not be able to keep their phones in their pockets and just rock out, like we used to do back in those days.
Sure, it was chaotic, but it was also cooperative – the dudes in front made sure that the crowdsurfers did not land on the band, and they pushed back to give space. The mike would occasionally fall out of the stand, or the stand would fall, and we’d help to mount the mike back on and get the stand back up.
Or in this case, when the guitarist returned, I helped him find his cable!
Johny Comes Lately.
The horn section played the Godfather Theme.
Skinheads love ska.
I’m not even sure if he was part of the band!
Wide-angle lenses let you get in their face.
These guys had a harder sound.
I liked it!
Lost the hat.
Drummer’s still got his hat.
Oh yes!
My Sony Alpha 99 isn’t so good when focusing with backlight. Had to take a few shots. Sorry, out-of-focus skinheads!
So catchy you just have to sing along.
The bearded skinhead was pulling and releasing the skinhead in white, as if he was tied by a rope. Such fun!
I refer to them as skinheads because they are, with no derogatory notion – I think they’re cute that they stick to their guns and go out all in style, not afraid to show their identity, not affected by the hipster thing where you try to look different but end up the same.
There was even a bit where somebody asked, “eh mana hipster ni?” and the crowd booed. “Ada Wak Doyok?” More boos. He was referring to a well-known Malaysian hipster personality with a distinct handlebar moustache.
The crowd would just invade the stage. It makes me wonder if the Malaysian music scene would otherwise have this, that they’d be so outwardly enthusiastic about the music – we normally just stand back and tell the musicians that they were “not bad” even if we were mindblown.
Everybody knows the lyrics.
After a long break, came Aggrobeats.
This was a bit less chaotic. There was even a kid with a tablet!
These guys, I’d only see at Rock The World.
And yet, familiar enough.
Interesting, black bass strings.
David Gilak, also of They Will Kill Us All.
I was struggling to focus in the ever-changing light.
I think I manually focused this one.
This, too, for the enraptured skinhead on the right. These guys just bring smiles to my face!
That way!
Lefty Tele.
Meanwhile, in the upper area, a group of people obviously not skinheads were toasting.
This post was for a gig 11 days ago, and my next blog post is from exactly a week ago; thus, my backlog for gig posts has hit the 1-week mark. I consider this an accomplishment!