okelah. Must be grateful!!

Pls don't mind the unaligned paragraphs kay. Still getting the hang of this bloggerdroid thing

Last week me and Bruy--bassist here at dog-eating place met a couple of guys who run 4-wheeled bike rental place. They wanted to build a blues community but due to less demand, they decided to have an acoustic jamming session every satnite at that place instead. We were introduced to him by our drummer. So Bruy and I played just now :)

Just a normal "whatever u wanna play" kind of session, very flexible, and light. Sometimes we play, sometimes they play. Pretty fun even with humble sound system. Lots of people passed by, and stopped by for the ride, and while they are queueing they may enjoy the music.

The guys are just desperate to play, and according to them, this session was created for people with the same desire. So this is the platform, and hopefully it'll grow bigger, with better equipments and more people to come and play.

Humble beginning which marked a whole new chapter of my gig life.

Ahhh. Thank God~

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now here comes the big ending

no. no. I'm not closing this blog.

I got a gig with the escapes back in October 1st and this was the last gig for me here in chicken rice town. Yeah cuz i have graduated and now i'm back at dog eating place. Not-so Happy 1month-since-my-last-gig Anniversary!

 

The gig was a mixture of art (Photohraphy and paintings), film, and music festival. Lots of artist from other countries. There were lots of foreigners there that i felt like i was in another country. Outnumbered. Like we came all the way from asia to perform hahahhah

This was by far the coolest gig i have ever played at. Well the crowd weren't really hyped up cuz it was sunset when we played and moreover the booze weren't out yet hahhah. But as the night went on, damn. There was this electro band which was really cool. They are called 'Like Silver'. I am not really a fan of those kind of music but these fellas got me as well as everybody else.

That shirtless dude on top were singing like 'aaaaaaaaaarrrgghhh gyaaaaaaarrrgghh' and went 'grroooooooooohhhhh' on the chorus when they played earlier on. Pretty wicked. But later on, he joined the crowd 'shakin-that-thang' along with the thumping beats from the electro fellas. The organizer did a splendid job. Hat's off. The performers were varied from alternative, rock, grindcore, erotic-grotesque, c-pop, laptronica, club music, etc. Not to mention free Nasi Lemak for the performers!Oh! One of the artist made us a logo as well :D 

Oh btw, we were the first to perform, and we asked Reno to sub for bass for KeeMO. There was a minor accident when we played 'I do'. The screw for the strap in Jlt's guitar got loose so the guitar fell off him when we enter the instrumental part!!! So he played it like a cello haahah! Thank God there was a score stand down the stage right in front of him that he could place his feet there and support the guitar. Damn. But then Reno had to sit down and play afterwards.  The sound crew were damn efficient. Verry helpful as well. This time i got to learn that i should trust the sound engineers. During the event i couldn't hear myself clearly even from the monitors.. At first the PA guy asked me to max my volume so i just trusted him and i didn't tweak a thing on the keyboard like i normally do. The sound turned out well when i watched the video. Obviously i don' t have extra travelling ears to hear from off the stage so there's nothing much i can do other than to trust them. When we got to play KeeMO as our last song, damn. It became emotional to me as i sang the last 1/2 Eight. Like i'm singing it to myself as i go back to the dog-eating place and move on with my life. Let's not discuss the specific "whys", kay? Oh! It also felt like i am singing that part to the fellas, i was wishing that they would continue making music and perform no matter what because they were all so good and passionate at what they do.  

Alrightiamgettingsadthishastostop.

Have a nice evening, and pizzout.

here's a piece of my mind

========  glass shattered ========

past midnight random chat

I want to buy a new handphone. AP set (approval product) instead of the original authorized one. So I asked a friend whom I think might know the drill better. Until the conversation went south xD

 

Good night :)

Look Ma, a wedding gig! AGAIN!

Finally another gig with the Rubbers! :D Well kinda sad Manu can't play with us >.< so i gotta play keyboard and we asked our friend Garrett to sub for bass. As usual, lots of lessons learned.

First, be tactful towards hotel's sound engineers. We asked to connect the guitar and bass' amp to the PA and the fella said that we gotta pay extra 200 bucks for extra connection. Rid0nkul0us. After reconfirming the management, apparently no extra bucks needed. =.="
 
2nd, be polite to them. Don't boss around. Use the basic 'please' and 'thank you'. Well, engineers are human too and they are also part of your performance. Don't mess with them unless you want them to mess with your sound.

We've prepared 17 songs. We thought that those would be enough and guess what, before they did the toast we already played more than half of the songs! Before the whole thing ended we ran out of songs. Thank God they are christian family so we can play worship songs -.- So the 3rd lesson is that you gotta have LOTS of songs in the bag.

4th, go listen to oldies hits. Yeah that might not be everyone's cup of tea, but in a wedding sometimes there will be some uncles who request for old songs. We were pwned by the song 'wedding day'. But thank God that song sounded like it used 3-chords only so we kinda just wing it messily.

5th you gotta have contacts of car or van rental services if you're transp0rtless. Y'kn0w, to get to the venue and to put your gears and stuff. 

 

6th learn songs in different languages especially if you are in a multi-racial country, and make sure you get the pronunciation right. It may offend some people if you get it wrong. We performed in 3 languages that night x.x

Last one! it would be nice if one of you have a smartphone/ipod/ipad/anything that can go online. We don't remember the lyrics of those impromptu songs we played/asked to play. So I used Oxy's phone to google it. But if the venue has no signal, then congratulations! You're screwed ;)

kyuuut! xD

We were d0ing s0und check f0r this m0rning's service when this little fella came in. He just st0od behind th0se chairs l0oked at us playing a s0ng. His eyes were glued to our drummer, barely blinking. Maj0r amazement detected xD.

Man. Y0u sh0uld've seen his face. I wished i c0uld take a picture but i was playing the keyb0ard. So, too bad.

Then he walked towards the b0ngo beside me and started hitting it f0ll0wing the drum beat. Mad awes0me.

iabaskos! rice is good.

Somewhere between May and June, I had an amazing experience back in the land of the m0st amazing rice. I stayed in a village, and I've the privilege of teaching keyb0ard to a c0uple of guys. They were from different villages. 

Don't ask me how did I end up teaching them or why was I there in the first place. The amazing part is that out of 5 fellas, 2 of them speak 2% English, and s0metimes when I talk they just l0ok at me with0ut saying a w0rd. I smile, they smile. I ask them 'do y0u understand?' they smile. S0metimes they n0dded, laughed or just stared at me. It was a challenge and because there was only one keyb0ard available, each shared an octave and it was just en0ugh for 3 pers0n so i taught them from the fr0nt so i need to play with my fingers upside d0wn. One of them had the basic ch0rd kn0wledge while the others had n0ne. Oh! Btw they d0n't use C D E kind of ch0rd, but they use Do Re Mi etc which was similar to what we use at dog-eating-place. It was less than 3 h0urs for 2 days but it was well spent :) I h0pe they will still remember what I taught them th0ugh.

One thing that I've learned is that music unites people. I was amazed that the guys can get what I meant when I hum. Also they are all strangers to me and we d0n't speak the same language so music kinda broke the ice, especially when one fella play the C ch0rd with his fingers f0rming the image of a chicken's feet. It was also hard to keep a straight face when one of the guys asked me how to play Soledad - Westlife xD Another example of why music unites people, here.

Oh mayn. I want to post their pics sooooo badly. But I am not allowed to. So, yeah. Damn I miss those fellas. I hope that they'll keep playing >.<