Bunaken Jazz Fest

heylou evribadeh!

I went to a "festival" on October 20th. *gee, why write now?!* right?

Been pretty busy working and stuff, thousands of records to be filled so I didn't really have time to write :(

Anyway, It wasn't really a "festival".. More like a 'show' because it doesn't have multiple stages for starters, the stage is small, and it had only 3 performers in which one of 'em is the guest performer. Not to mention it was dirt cheap!

For me, this so-called fest is historical. Told ma dad that I'll be home late, then I'm off. I look for the tickets on my own a couple of hours before it began, and then troll at the mall to kill time. This was the first time for me to attend a concert/show by myself. Normally I'd go with friends and we'd comment on the event while watching the performers, or make fun of them hahahh

But that day actually I felt pretty lonely. Heh. But nevermind. At least I get to experience how does it feel like to watch a concert solo :P

As I expected, the event began SUPER LATE. They said that the gate will be open at 5pm, but then when I asked the guy at the ticket booth, he said 8pm. I went there 7pm and I spotted a side door. So I went in.

Nobody stopped me from entering and they just stared at me. Then I got to see the guest performer doing soundcheck :) It was fun! I've learned some stuff, which is the continuation of the lesson from last time "trust the sound engineer".. In this case , I learned that the performer should be a little demanding. If the sound is still not good, then don't settle!!! Don't let the bad sound influence people's judgment towards your music. That's why it is important for the performer also to LISTEN to their own sound during the soundcheck. That time, Monita--the guest performer noticed that her mic was too 'reverb-y' so she asked the engineer to reduce the reverb level.. She also asked for one more round after they set the sound. When I was listening to them, I really wanted to go to the control table and then tell them what to increase and decrease.. Because at that time, they set it in such a way that she sounded like she was having a cold. Ugh.. I mean, why didn't the engineers do something about it?

I would recommend performers to have that wireless jack thingy... It would help when you can go off the stage and then stand at the audience's place to hear what kind of sound they might be listening to during the real show.

The opening bands were okayy. But each of their bassist and drummers were FREAKING AWESOME!!! I mean. Damn. So freaking solid. The bass lines were really irresistible and groovin'!! I've got to nail 'em ghost notes. The bassists used them a lot that time, and it sounded really good.

That guy with plaids put a small paper against his mouth and start blowing it. IT SOUNDED LIKE A MOTHERFRICKIN SAXOPHONE!!!!!!! Reaaaalllyy GOOD! Even better than the guy who played the actual saxophone that night! And that guy on the keys, He was really good as well. Reminds me of Dy. My jizzyjazzin' pal back at historical city. Dy would've kick his ass.

Howkay.

That night I've found a whole new respect toward jazz genre. I've never given it much thought or attention, because it isn't really my cup of tea, and I was too lazy to bother. :P

The main performer that night was Monita Tahalea, Indonesian Idol finalist a couple of years back. Back in the competition she was already given the label 'jazz singer' because of her vocal characteristic. Boy that was right. Because she's mainly doing jazz gigs now. Jazz is what suited her best.

Her performance was mind blowing. Damn. I never really liked any female singer, but this one is different. Monita became my favorite instantly right after she sang a few lines. I don't know whether it was because the music or the voice. But I'm pretty sure it was the voice. Difficult to describe. It was like smooth-accurate-breathless. I mean, I CAN'T HEAR HER BREATHE IN BETWEEN THE LINES!! Madness. It was soooooo smoothhh I can just lay there and sleep. I felt high. I didn't even realize that I was standing for a long time because my head was floating when she sang. Seriously. Like I was on crack. I forgot how many songs she sang, but every single one of them was.. damn.. Really intoxicating. I don't know whether all slow - midtempo jazz have the same effect. That night was verrrryyyy relaxed, and Monita managed to create that friendly and relaxed atmosphere. That is a really good skill to have for a singer. I felt close with her because of the way she interact. She didn't go like "ARRREEE YOOUU REAAADDEEEHH?!?!" Instead, she started with a smile and a simple "Good Evening." The night went magical. I guess that's really appropriate thing to do.

The band accompanying her, hat's off. It was a really balanced flow, and the upright bass sounded mighty sexy hahahahah OH! no electric guitar, but a classic one instead, and the guitar guy's really good. Wait. They were all awesome. I realized that I don't like jazz songs with solos. 30 seconds, I still can bear. But more than that... Urgh. Please. Don't. For every other genre, I never liked any band with female vocalist. Well I do like some songs, but they won't be my favorite. 2 songs I can bear, but more than that.. *vomit* EXCEPT jazz. That night I doubted that I won't be able to bear listening to her all night but boy I was wrong. Maybe because It's her singing. Other jazz female singer, erm, I can't guarantee.

Well, soon after the fest, a friend gave me a hashtag to read on and I've found out that LOTS of people were disappointed with how it turned out -- including the MC for that night, and they were all bashing the one-man organizer. But heck I couldn't care less. Monita & band brought me to cloud nine and that's all there's to it :)

Involved my ass.

Guess what, we JOINED the competition. yes. Crazy? yes. I was the only one thinking that way. Oh maybe some of you too, readers?

Four days worth of practice we went. That gut feeling that normally came before a gig striked back right at the first step inside the venue. I was never more intimidated than this. Never more inconfident than this. Btw, this was the first time for our rhythm guitarist to ever join a competition.

The lions performed the day before us. Therefore, i felt a little better.

Long story short, we played badly. I stuttered during the first song so I missed one line of the chorus, and then I mentioned "check-in" instead of "check-sound" during the song introduction *although i corrected myself afterwards LOL, the syncopes didn't work out aaand the sound went nuts at the second song that one of the judge was covering his left ear. I'd say, the situation went 70% ok. I wasn't quite sorry for it because there were several bands who did worse--higher level of embarassment.

GOD how I thank You that You made it happened so that the big guns played the day before or else I'll be too discouraged to go on stage. There was 1 band who played SUPERBLY but they were on stage waaay after we played so I didn't really care :D

Oh! Also, out of the 60-ish contestants, we're in the top 20 so that didn't really discouraged me. I was even surprised.

I am fully aware that my band SUCK and this competition added more punctuation mark to our level of suckiness. Good. So that my bandmates can finally wake up!! As for myself, I would say that this competition motivated me. I am more pumped up to polish my scales, fingering, and groove among other things. I REALLY do hope that my bandmates would be as motivated as I am after all this.. For lessons during the gig, gee. Nothing significant, really. I went on stage the way I did before. Same drill. I guess I just need to choose the right words to say during band intros. Well. If I ever have the chance to do that again haha.

Now here's another thing. There is ANOTHER competition next month. I would say that this is waaay bigger than this one we just did. It's for our denomination only, but you see, this is THE most.. er.. prestigious band competition for young adults across the region. The pressure is waayy bigger and the competitors are waaayy more than before. This competition is like a pass-fail subject. When you fail, see you next semester (if you still have the balls). But if one wins this, hmph. You'll get EXPOSURE. Sweet deal. Seriously.

Let me break this down for ya. If one wins, one will be invited to most of the gigs this denomination holds, invited to play at churches/seminars/concerts across the province, and not to mention the 100% likelihood to be the OPENING ACT for any famous Christian performers when they come to perform in our province (the organizers are familiar with the word 'AUDITION' just like they are familiar with Hieroglyphics).

You might think: "Hey. Aren't you guys supposed to play for the glory of God and not to yourselves? Aren't you fellas supposed to use your talent for Him and don't care about what comes after if you win/lose?"

You see, it's a private matter between a believer and God, and people glorify God in different ways. Only God can judge, you can shut up.

Where I live now, people WANT to SHOW FACE all the time. Being asian, we don't want to LOSE FACE not even one damn time. But unlike most asians, people here don't grasp the very basic idea of WORKING HARD. The INVOLVEMENT is emphasized greatly while the process is neglected. Hence the shitty outcome. Even when it turns out bad, people will say "what matters is that you were involved."--quantity over quality. Sometimes they add "gotta do better next time" but that never really happen.

Anyway, another issue. I know how to play keyboard. In fact, I started off with that when I was a kid. That was practically the first official instrument I could play. But you see, my soulmate is the BASS!!! I feel like I can really express myself through it, and I feel that satisfaction everytime I play. Y'know, that feeling when you're pacing along with the drummer.. In short, I prefer Bass over Keyboard.

But then, I am the only keyboardist available (cuz the rest are aunties and one is out town), and my bandmates wants me to play Keyboard. Sigh. Gotta take one for the team.

We had a practice last night--a rather uninspiring one, acoustically cuz drummer couldn't make it. We had another friend to sing and based on the outcome last night, gee. I'd say: NEXT!

Sigh. It has never been THIS hard.

Stressful weeks ahead..

God, please strengthen me.

kept for long enough

I feel bad.

You see, there will be another competition coming up at the end of this month. I didn't tell you before, but i ditched the previous one last month.

Hard to admit, but I'm gonna say this anyway.

I don't believe in my band members.

I have no confidence to go on stage with them.

For a church thing, well fine. But for a competition, heck no. Zero confidence.

We are FAR from the 'ok' category. On the scale of 1 being the worst (play entirely off key, the like) and 10 being awesome, I would give ourself a 3. Yes that's how bad I think we are.

In dog-eating place, when a CHURCH is holding a "RELIGIOUS BAND FESTIVAL" *that's how they call it btw* inviting bands from churches from all around the province, especially when the word "INTER-DENOMINATION" is stated on the event ad, THEY MEAN NO SHIT. YOU BETTER BE GOOD.

Maybe you'll think that church fellas are just some goodiegoodie hymn-singing kids with absurd amount of hairgel who don't know awesome music, let alone play them. Or maybe you think that they play like Hillsong or Planetshakers at best.

Nope. I would say that the bands that join this, are WAY BETTER than Hillsong or Planetshakers.

Granted they are NOT Dream Theatre calibre, but they are still AWESOME! Even though the kind of music that they play are mostly not my cup of tea, but in terms of dynamics, balance and arrangements, they are really good. Each of the members know damn well what they are doing.

So this is what scares me. If we join this competition, we are kittens walking straight into lions' cage. It's not like they are violent. No. Most of them are really humble. But the thing is, if dive into that pool unprepared, we're just gonna bring embarrassment to ourselves.

Last time with GE and Rubberfellas, I am always confident wherever we go. Whether it is to a competition or just normal gig. Why? Because I know that we were prepared. We don't possess the skill of the Used or at least MCR. But then I am confident when I play with them because I know what we've done to get there. I was proud to play our originals. I know we worked our ass off to at least make it sound decent. Everybody was doing their homework. Even though I still have that butterflies and negative thoughts before going on stage, the peeps were there to support me *by being nervous in unison xD.

**sidenote: FYI, Oxy and Joney always looked as cool as cucumber before we go on stage, while JLT always have that "we're gonna knock your socks off" vibe*

With my band now.... *sigh*...

I can't keep a straight face whenever we practice. Normally I'd play 4-ish chords and then I'll go

At the end of the day, I went home unsatisfied and discouraged. I had to practice that 'inhale-exhale, inhale-exhale' thing throughout the practice session because of the sound we made. I felt bad that I can do nothing about that, and I felt bad that I tell them what to do too many times. Sometimes I just let them play the way they want, and halfway through I felt like I need to see a therapist or maybe stand at the edge of a cliff and scream my gut out.

I'm not a pro myself. But at least, I TRIED to polish the way I play. I TRIED to listen to what others are playing so I could come in at the right time without overpowering anyone.I made mistakes MANY TIMES and I would be happy if somebody else point it out so that I could improve!!

Dear bandmates, how long would it take for you to realize that we suck and that we need to work hard?!

douchebaggery

2 posts in a day! wohoo! I'm on faiiiyaah!!

Nope. Actually the internet connection at my office sucks so my posts were delayed. 

Aaanywaay, 

My guitarist is a super opportunistic person. He'd go basically ANYWHERE to find EOs or some people in charge for an event, introduce our band and then ask them for chances to play at their events. He has loads of contacts and knows crapload of important people. well, in our local music scene. Apparently he has connection at a 5-star hotel where he previously worked at, and we were informed that they were looking for a band to play at their cafe regularly and in short, we were invited for audition last saturday.

Another fiasco? I would say yes. But then lemme tell you the awesome things first.

The stage -- super cool. We were kind of in an elevated stage in front of a verrryyy busy area at dog-eating place where hundreds of people pass by every hour. Very public area. Very good exposure.

The engineer -- super nice guy. He catered every needs we have and he actually gave a damn on how we sounded so he tried his best to figure out the best sound for us since we were gonna play acoustically. He brought lots of stuff from their storage, no holding back. Whatever we asked, he provided. Damn nice. Oh! He was one of the 'judge' too.

Free food -- duh!

Awesome gears -- yeah. All fender amps, LP percussions.

Mind blowing vocalists -- just got to know them on that day. The guy's voice is Tom Welling-ish with a hint of Daughtry, and he's kinda cute :3
The girl's good looking too. She's a GOOD singer. Really. My guitarist said that Her bf's the best bassist in da hood. Damn I didn't talk to him that night. ugh. Bad timing.

But guess what, another slap in the face for lack of preparation and half assery. That would suffice to explain everything. when we were doing our sound check, our bassist turned up but he just stood somewhere because there was another fella playing with the bass. Our bassist waited there and then he told us he wanted to go to the store next door. Couple of minutes later, he texted : "you guys go ahead, I'll join you halfway" so we thought fine. Cuz we were informed that the hotel owner will show up at 9pm anyway. But then douchebag didn't show up till we went home. Later on that night i heard that he went out with his gf. FUUUUUUUU. In the end, me and the guy voc gotta cover for him. So we messed up. The chords and everything. *sigh*

Oh yeah. 1 important lesson : when you're trying to give a 5-star impression, WATCH YOUR ATTITUDE. Seriously I can't stress enough how important this is. My guitarist was acting like a 5-star ass that night while we were supposed to play awesomely and impress everybody so we'd be called to play again. Seriously. I wanted to kick his crotch and land a nice hard jab on his cheeks soooooo badly but then I felt bad for his wife and kid. It wasn't that he played badly, but he was HITTING on one of the hotel worker in front of EVERYBODY. PLUS, when we were loading stuff back to the storage room, he didn't participate! He just smoked around and hit on that girl!! That senior engineer's face turned black because he was loading the stuff with us while damn guitarist wave his ass around trying to act cool.

The hotel owner didn't show up. He was playing tennis with the governor I heard. So the engineer told us that he'd 'give us a call' again which I thought would be highly unlikely.

Oh! one more thing! When we play a bunch of guys came and guitarist bravely asked them if they have any request. The rest of us were looking at him like "WTH?!" and of course, the guy asked us to play any song from this one band we didn't know. When we played some songs, we made mistakes. Wrong lyrics and stuff and those bunch of guys were laughing at us. At one point, one of them called the waiter, pointed at us, and then the waiter went in to tell whatever he heard to the senior engineer, and the next thing we know, we were told to take a break. After the break, the engineer said it's a wrap cuz the hotel owner didn't show up. But his wife and kid did and she was criticizing us. She wondered why we stopped in the middle of the song and stuff. Well what she heard was our sound-check..

So that's how it ended. We scolded our guitarist on our way home which turned out to be  useless anyway.

This is all I have now, and they are the only peeps i can play together with these days.. I don't know what to do anymore..

worst.gig.ever.

worst gig ever. This is not a gig where a lot of shit happenned, but this is the worst gig in terms of preparations and how it turned out. Most of the people think that this event was successful, but in my eyes, seriously. This is effed up.

How big is the gig? MASSIVE. I'm talkin about national-record-making gig.

We were supposed to play lots of songs. That was what they told us. Days approaching the event, we've got additional details that made me wonder "why r u telling us this now?" until the day before the event we received information that we need to play 5 familiar songs, and extra 5-ish songs while the guests are eating. So we came up with 5 familiar songs, and guess what, 2 of my bandmates practiced half-assedly. No. Not even half. Less than a quarter ass!! Dammit. I wanted to kill them that instant. Granted the songs were damn easy. But even though they were easy, we always ended up playing them shittily!! No balance among the instruments (the way we play), messed up chords, and not to mention the "so-boring-i-want-to-kill-myself-for-fun" arrangements. My bandmates will prctice-till-perfect only at those part where they need to do solos or some syncopes.

That was the strawberry on my shortcake, but guess what, apparently the comittee wanted to give us free durian juice to go with it. They expected us to provide our own sound system. Okay. I felt like getting a brand new chainsaw.

Somehow the next day my friend managed to rent the sound system. Now, another problem: The setup.

You see, the sound system provider didn't even have extra jacks. Seriously. They have less than 5 jacks. The speaker is teeny tiny, and the fella didn't know how to operate things. The sound were messed up. Yes they had huge speakers but the engineer didn't have a clue. Oh! They didn't even have D.I boxes!!! Geez.
After hours of setup, the sound turned out less shitty.

We were supposed to play when the parade arrived. So there came this lady, apparently she's one of the comittee, grabbed the mic and started asking us to play some songs with her singing. So we played medley of songs we never even practiced. It went bad. Well I think I was the only one who noticed the awful mash up of chords and the rest didn't bother. Oh well. So we continued playing and during the event there were a lot of people came up to the stage to sing. So yeah. We played songs we didn't practice, didn't play most of the songs we practiced. We managed to play the remaining songs when the guests are eating.

The event ended like nothing happened, people were happy and satisfied. We even got compliments! My goodness. Something THAT horrible managed to get compliments? "You guys did well the other day!!" Seriously?

Wow. In turn I was ashamed because I know we can do better but we didn't! We didn't give our best! And I'm not satisfied. Honestly, I am NOT a perfectionist. You may think I am, but I'm not. If you see my other posts, there were a lot of unfortunate events, the sound got fudged up, etc but I was happy and satisfied with it because we gave our best! We've done our part! Even though we missed out some stuff, we noticed that after the events, learned our lesson and we know what to do next time!
I have left this town for 5 years and 2 months just to come back and see ZERO improvements. I mean, gosh, they have been to LOTS of gigs without me and NOTHING improved!!! I kid you not! Oh. Maybe I shouldn't say 'nothing' because some of them became a better show-off. True story.

Here's some lessons:

First: COMMUNICATION
Things didn't go well because we didn't receive complete informations about how things would be done. And when dealing with people from dog-eating place, one gotta chase their tails like there's no tomorrow. Ask them EVERY teeny tiny details every now and then. Or else, they'll give you a verrryyy last minute updates and info. Or nothing at all.

Second: INITIATIVE
Our youth leader is one of the commitee. I felt so damn guilty that I didn't ask him about things constantly. Well I asked, just not repeatedly that he would remember to give us the details. So you see, even though you're not the one in charge, you gotta find who is, and then make sure they don't miss out anything in the preparation. When people start to talk about you being so demanding, just don't give a damn. It's all for the event's success.

Seriously peeps, if you want an awesome outcome, then you gotta get on your Kardashian ass and work it!! When things turned south, it'll be less painful because you know you have done all you could and sometimes there are certain things that just can't be helped. Well at least that's how it works for me.



Hey OXY! See what I mean when I whatsapped you?