Shelley Leong and Az Samad were back in town for two intimate gigs.

10th January 2007, No Black Tie

Az: Aku main dulu. Harap tak pancit.

He played some new shit. Some old shit. Some refashioned shit. All good shit. Az is Malaysia’s violent acoustic fingerstyle guitarist with a penchant for alternate tunings, gentle guitar dynamics, and medleys of Beatles songs (all on one guitar, like Daytripper with both vocal lines and basslines!)

Oh, and I think it was his first public performance of Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Shelley meanwhile, upped her performance photogenicness. 😀 All that raw emotion oozing from her face, I felt like crying too. (This was before the Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan lens, shot using smashpOp‘s Sony 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 at 120mm, F6.3, 1/15s, ISO1600.)

Wah, pedal!

Open mike, and it’s awesome fingerstyle guitarist Dave Yoong! He had a few tricks up his sleeves, too.

Rozhan joins Az to jam some jazz standards. I didn’t know if it was a jazz thing for both of them to take audible breaths at the same time, and sometimes take turns taking breaths, but not related to who was playing or taking turns.

Emoticus maximus.

Now, with Alda on bass and Zalila Lee on percussions!

Zalila aspires to be a hip candid shooter while playing the percussions with the other hand. Ah, the days when I slinged my Canon Powershot A520 on its belt pouch snapping everything as proof of something.

Reza Salleh, soul/rock crooner and Moonshine and Feedback gig organizer, gets an epiphany.

Fast forward to 17th January 2007, same place, right after I got the beercan lens.

Crispness at the 210mm F4 1/60s end!

Same, but at 1/8th of a second.

It’s like they teach looking emo in Berkley. Hmmm, maybe they do.

Guess that chord! (This is a 600×898 crop shrunk in half to 300×449 to show the power of the beercan. Beer goggles beercan makes it look good!)

I’ve been meaning to catch Az do this. (No, he’s not shielding himself from the bright spotlights.)

Knock on wood.

I’ve never seen anyone so happy to be tuning his guitar.

Two plugs – one for the guitar pickup, the other to pick up the sound of knocking on the guitar!

Zach Tay plays alternative rock and shreds the blues madly.

Finally, some flare! 50mm, F1.4, 1/3s (the main factors being overexposure, wide-open aperture and having a bright light somewhat out of the frame.)

This was not combined from two pictures.

Az tunes. Everyone is happy.

More extreme closeup goodness at 210mm F4. For once Az plays the blues without going all jazzy and haram on us. Yay!

A most massive Chumbawamba-esque jam fest. From left: Two guitarists (Az and Shelley), two bassists (Loon and Alda), two percussionists (Stephanie and Zalila).

Oh, and Zarul the blowing the blues!

Yep, we’ve all seen him with Isaac Entry. Interesting change of pace, this.

Another surprise came in what Shelley called her happy blues song – Az sings the blues!

Argh I forgot her name, and her friend’s name too. She had a beautiful, slightly fragile-yet-chin-up voice. I think I’ve been exposed to too much of that unidentified Laundry Bar blogger, hence my decreasing captioning abilities.