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The Visitor |
Recollections
G's Up Ho's Down
 Around the time I finished my finals at Uni, I found myself with a good month in the city of London with no responsibilities whatsoever: no more rent, no more studies, not even a play to produce and write. I'd spend my days skating in the park nearby trying to ollie a twig (pathetic, I know), watching movies and getting ripped beyond compare.
A week before I left I had a good head of hair, and felt like doing something drastic to it before I left.
"Laura," I asked, "do you know how to braid hair?"
We sat in front of the television and Laura brought out the candles. What the fuck? It turned out the wax would be used to close the braids. Fair enough. I had no idea how long this would take, I just sat back and let the woman do her duty.
After watching JFK, Back to the Future, and halfway through the MTV awards, Laura was still braiding my hair. And the wax was killing me.
Droplets of wax would miss the hair and end up on my scalp. Whilst this may be kinky to some, it was absolutely gruelling for me. For the rest of the week it looked like I had a sever dandruff problem, and my 'dandruff' looked like dried semen remnants.
But I did look kinda dope, in a Kris Kross kinda way. Before I left, I shaved the fucker off, and discovered that my hair was in little organized rows of spikes where the braids used to be.
In retrospect, I should've done a mohawk too whilst I was there. I kinda regret not ever having a mohawk. One day...
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Nosebleed.
The adrenalin has taken over, even though my stomach still has a slightly achy feel, interspersed with gastric problems of an audio-scentio nature, and my nose still feels like it's going to threaten another nosebleed, but no worries. Am on slightly normal form, and one of the creative directors (who, since the time I've joined, have failed to impress) actually complimented me on my copywriting for once, which is a first and has put me in a jolly mood indeed.
Even though there is still the fear of the nosebleed.
Nosebleed's don't freak me the same way it does most people. It's just something that reminds me of an incident in my past concerning a girl I once knew (who I will always remember as Hawa (Eve), even though that's not her real name, but her brother's called Adam, so go figure).
When I first moved into Damansara Heights, everything felt kinda strange, yet again. New neighbourhood, new school, new everything. Then the doorbell rang.
"Hi," said Hawa, "welcome to the neighbourhood!"
She was about a year or two older than me, and the coolest friend I ever knew at the time. Wide eyed innocence is too vague a description of this girl. Nothing bugged her. To imagine her sad was to imagine the world turning upside down.
My mom loved her, for the simple fact she always wanted a daughter, and was instead stuck with a rebellious son with a tendency to cut up her dresses in the interest of creativity. I'm quite certain if I knew her longer we'd end up going out.
We hung out a lot, played outdoors together, spent a lot of time together.
One day we visited the mummy exhibition at the national museum. We strolled around the ancient dead bodies wrapped in white.
"Do we get wrapped up like that when we die?" she asked my mother.
A few weeks later she came ringing on my door, as usual.
"Hi," she said, sun beaming through her smile, "just wanted to let you know I won't be around for awhile. I'm going to the hospital!"
Anything wrong?
"My nose keeps bleeding all the time. The doctors are going to try and fix it."
One surgical fuck up later, and the doctor is asking the parents whether they'd rather pull the plug or let her live a vegetable for the rest of her life.
At muslim funerals, the deceased are wrapped in a white cloth. I watched as her relatives carried her to her grave and stood at the side as they prayed.
That was the first funeral I ever attended.
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Tribute to Khaimano, R.I.P.
 Yesterday I couldn't help but google that old, old band of mine, and see what's been written of them on the World Wide Web. The nostalgia reminded me that I promised some of you the story of this teeny little band that didn't make much of a difference in the Malaysian Independent Music Industry, but it sure as shit on a cornhole made a difference to the lives of all those involved in the band, most of all myself.
Khaimano, as a concept, was born in Shrewsbury, circa 1997, the child of a mad Italian named Filo (whose only input in the child's upbringing was to name him before buggering off to dope, drink and debauchery before fucking off to Italy) and me, a Malay musician named Khai in a dingy room in a boarding school named Concord. At the time I was playing in Crap Budget Tattoo, my first real band, on bass, with Jordan (of Flatline fame) on lead vocals and guitars and Spaceman on drums. At some point Charlie Cibai joined the band, we played the proms in the college, and went our seperate ways musically. Spaceman joined a boy band in England, Jordan started up Flatline and Charlie Cibai crunched numbers in an insurance company.
"i have a bone to pick with u, i thought u were like totally gifted in the music writing business only to find out when i listened to a sublime album that u had nicked loads of their songs, not impressed khai redeem yourself. pls. tell me its not true."
- taken from an e-mail from Laura E. Turner, flatmate during the Khaimano creative process in England, friend, and radiologist.
411C studios consisted of my dorm room, a laptop that was in danger of spontaneously combusting, and an old shoe for a mic stand. Using Mod Plug Tracker in ways the designer never envisioned and N-Track, I began writing songs, inspired by the heavy doses of Sublime I'd been listening to. The songs were all originally meant to be 3 minute punk rock ditties, but everytime I plugged in my Zoom 505 into the laptop on a distortion setting the sound that came out resembled an elephants fart through a Metal Zone booming out of a Vax Jamz amp. Inspired by Brad Nowell's ska/reggae/hip-hop stylee, I changed all the chords into sliding A's, D's & F's, slowed the beats and concentrated on the lyrics to carry the songs. It was my final year of uni, my exams were over, the exam hall had been burnt down and there was nothing else to do except skate, get blitzed and write songs till my flight back. By July, I had 14 songs on a tape. Some made people laugh, some made people like Laura cry.
 KL was filled with nothing more than fattening food and skating. I hit up the Mid Valley skatepark at least 3 times a week, skating for hours and hanging out with the Flatline boys. Uni was over, student prices were gone for the purposes of beer, and my parents were constantly down my neck to get a job. The Khaimano stuff was already on mp3.com for feedback (but now no more, since the fuckers sold out) and the Flatline boys had heard the stuff. After their first gig at Monash, where I helped them out with a little rap, they asked whether I wanted to open for them at some chicks birthday (Rauf, help me out with the name here, it's been so long). I had two weeks to make a band and teach them the songs.
I figured it shouldn't be too hard, but nobody was available (Imran from One Buck Short almost came onboard, but he had a kenduri). A week before the show, I got a call from Ariff, who I had tried to contact earlier but couldn't get through.
"Hey, I just got your voicemail," he said, "sorry I couldn't make it for the gig. I would really want to play."
"What're you talking about? The gig's this weekend, not last weekend."
Aha.
Ariff rounded up a very good female bassist named Jules who learnt the songs overnight. Ariff was a bit rusty on the drums but I was confident we could pull it off. Then, the night before the gig, Ariff called.
"Jules can't make it."
"What?! What the fuck do you mean, she can't make it?"
"Her dad won't let her out on a Saturday night with two strange men."
Well, I guess that makes sense. Saturday morning, Ariff rounded up MoJam, a hip-hop and r n' b b-balling b-boy to bust out the basslines. As we waited in Black Widow for our turn in Studio C, I watched MoJam play some jazz guitar and figured if he can pull of a D#dim7 my basslines shouldn't be a problem.
"Ok, dude," I said to Jam in the studio, "this one's really easy, it's just C, F and G the whole way."
"Okay. Where's C?"
Fuck.
Needless to say, we sucked ass that night. I guess it didn't help that the entire audience were b-boys and b-girls decked out in fly threads. Flatline rocked, incidentally. But we had a shit-load of fun, and we continued, jamming out songs and writing new ones almost every session, recording each jam so that I could back track.
Our next gig was at Lim Kok Wing, and that was a whole new ball game. We had songs, we had some sense of skill, and Jam knew where C was on a bass. We rocked amongst the hot Lim Kok Wing chica's. Now, it was time to hit up the underground.
"Next up were frat-party boys Khaimano, with their danceable funky ska punk rock. This six-month old band, with Khai 'I'm Not Chinese' who looked and talked like Fly Guy the hitz.fm deejay charmed the crowd with their in-your-face humor."
-taken from an online article by Albert Ng, XFresh writer, blogger & bud.
I e-mailed the entire length and breadth of the local scene begging for gigs, trying to preach the word of Khaimano (and inadvertedly pissed of Abang Rom in the process, but all is fine now), and nobody replied, except one: Saiful. With his help, I organized the Spanky Ben Gomez show at Blue Planet, with acts such as Dragon Red (back when everybody thought they sucked), Tempered Mental (back when nobody knew who they were), Flatline (back when they still threw tantrums), Iodine 39 (back when they still existed) and Silent Scream (back when they annoyed me, which has been fixed now, thankfully).
No one came.
The good thing that came out of it, though, was the fact that I still play with these guys and I got to see them grow. Now they've all got their slices of fame and glory that they all deserve, but back to the plot.
Cannot get it up is a coool song but "UNDERGRADUATE" is the COOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLEESSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- dEdE, Dragon & Revolution writer and one of the few that actually thought we were good.
 We persisted. We went to XCess to record an EP and after three hours had over 20 songs which we cut down to about nine. The 'Fly Fatass Fly' EP was born, which surprisingly sold ok, all things considered. Hit the gigs non-stop, played wherever we could play, our main break (as is often the case with most of us locals at the time) being Peter Hassan Brown's 'Acoustic Jam'. Saiful and I started FYI. Arieff started Tombston3. MoJam started MoJam Interactive. Our EP got reviewed in KLue. Our interview came out in Dragon. Our band was actually known, al within the space of a year.
One day when I was sat at a mamak with Rauf discussing the finer points of cow fucking, someone I'd never met walked up to me.
"Hey, did you play that gig at Charlie's Place?"
Yeah.
"You guys rock, dude."
Two words, dude: 'Bangga, sial' (translation: 'who's the man!?')
Hey -
Through the wonders of modern technology, I was able to download and hear a live version of your song, "I'm Not Chinese," all the way over here in Sacramento, CA, USA. I'm a mixture of Filipino and white, and I also get the business from people about, "What are you?" I've been mistaken for everything in your song, too. But because there are so many Mexicans in California, I also get asked if I'm Mexican. Or Hawaian. Or Native American, etc. Anyway... I love that song! I've changed the words a bit so that I can sing along and apply it to myself: "Won't you believe me when I say tha I'm Pinay?" I haven't heard any of your other stuff, but that song rocks. Just wanted to let you know.
Peace.
- Maja Seif, Sacramento, CA, USA
What a song.....What a song indeed. The title basically tells you what it is about(if you think that way). This band has a great sense of humor in thier writing of music so i would recommend this download to anyone who likes ska.
- EAT THE EMO KIDS "shoeboxin" (WASHINGTON), taken from Amazon.com
Then, just like any good book, things started to die down.
 For one, we were playing more and more like that first gig in that tennis court on that girl's birthday. The band was beginning to deteriorate, very slowly. Still, I persisted. We went in to record some new songs for the upcoming album, one of which went onto the FYI compilation for Dragon which was aired on WOW fm back when it existed. On the down note, I got dumped by my girlfriend for reasons unbeknownst to me and during a trip to Egypt I found out she hooked up with someone she assured me she wasn't dumping me for. If I had discovered emo during this period, I would've been fucking addicted to the shit.
Taken from Jamtank, circa Feb 2003:
Cammy: you want girl??............. i give u goooood price......heheheh. i miss that guy khai, what ever happened to him?
Khai: Khai mutated into the horrendous capitalist pot bellied figure you see before you... that old Khai of fun and laughter is dead and burried beneath 6 feet of decomposed gila monster carcass. I am the new Khai, and I killed Santa Claus.
As you can tell, I was reading a lot of Transmetropolitan at the time.
 On the lighter side, I got the call to do Dragon Music Magazine as an editor. I juggled my day job with this fun little task and hired MoJam to design it. During the same month as the deadline for my first issue, we had three important gigs. One was on the same billing as Disagree, Tempered Mental and Prana (who Jordy and I once played in for a few months before they got big), one was at ICOM, another was the Punk Rock Rest in PJ. By the time I got to the gig after an excruciatingly long meeting, I found out Khaimano were closing. This was the first time Prana, my old band, were gonna see my new band, and I wanted to be on top form.
And our guitars were out of tune.
In the rush to get on stage, everything got screwed. The tuning, the timing, everything. It was embarresing as fuck.
The ICOM gig went ok, and at the same time I was trying to edit the magazine and get together with this girl called Yaya. My day job was hell, and timing was of the essence. Every day on the final week before deadline I kept hassling MoJam for the designs. Every CD he passed me was blank.
"Must be something wrong with the burner," he replied.
On the day of the deadline, he dissapeared.
All calls were not picked up. His mom didn't know where he was. His friends didn't know, or they were lying. Ariff sure as shit hadn't a clue.
That night, I made my way to the Dragon office and begged for another week (where, after going through a crash course in Quark Express and only three pages to go, my hard drive decided to erase itself completely).
The next weekend was the Punk Rock Fest, and we had no bassist. We pulled out. I sat down with Ariff trying to figure out what to do. Hafiz from One Buck Short walked past.
"Dude," I asked, "do you know any bassists?"
"Why?"
"Our bassist's gone, we need a new one."
"If you're gonna change the bassist, you might as well change your drummer."
I awkwardly pointed at Ariff.
"I already have a drummer."
"Oh," said Hafiz, sitting down, "what do you usually play?"
"Drums," Ariff replied.
"No, I mean, what's the instrument you know how to play?"
"Drums. I'm a drummer."
"Oh. You ever thought about getting lessons?"
He was right. Ariff was making more and more mistakes. I was making more and more mistakes. This band was dying a very painful death.
On Monday, May 12, 2003, at 9:05 am, I posted this message:
For Any Of You Who Would Actually Give Two Beans...
It is with much grieviance that I post that after long consideration, Khaimano has now been officially 'put down'. Yup. Khaimano is no more.
Due to other activities, innability to time manage, many circumstances and events that occured over the beginning of this accursed year 2003 and complete lack of inspiration to write another tits and ass song, I have decided that maybe it's best that we put this mule out of its misery.
It's been a wonderful year of gigs, and I know that a year really isn't that long for any band, but on behalf of Khaimano, I'd like to thank all those that supported us out there (if there are any), and a special thank you to Onisan, Jay, Amil, Peter & Markiza Brown, Sham (XCess Studios), Mr. Khoo (music expo), Andi Fam, Adlin (KLue), Brian (KLue), Kevin B (WOW fm R.I.P.), Su, Lena, the City crew, the Slacker crew, the FYI crew, Adli and Adam of Urban Revolution, all those I forgot to mention or couldn't be bothered to write your names so just put you down in a 'crew', all those on Jamtank and all the bands we've ever shared a stage with. Here's to another year of kick ass gigs.
Khai
P.S. And as for all those guys out there that thought we were worse than a seventh layer of shite - YE HAPPY NOW, ARSE 'OLE?! YE KIN FOK OFF 'N DYE, EH... WHERE'S YE WANKY FOKIN' POSTS NOW, YER BOLLICKS!!
'Move too fast and you'll fall... Good bye to Khaimano~ heh...'
- Cold Fusion, posted on Jamtank
Name: happy dude
comments: i would like to extend my happiness with the breakup or most appropriately, the very deserving-ly death of khaimano. 3 cheers to khai for disbanding one of the most stupidest and most pathetic band to have ever existed in Malaysia. Now let us all await for the death of these following bands:-
Y2k
Flatline
Dragon Red
Estranged (especially the bassist. he's fucked up and stoopid)
till then..cheers to the death of khaimano. losers.
- posted on the FYI Entertainment guestbook.
I never realized how much people knew about Khaimano until it was announced in the news section of KLue and all the hatemail I read afterwards about how glad some were about the break up? Did people really know us that much?
A year later, and everything was different. The hell of the break up of the band and my relationship, followed by a nervous breakdown, some serious therapy, and leaving the office to never return, I was back on solid ground again. A few months back, I got a call. It was MoJam.
MoJam met with me at a mamak close by and he proceeded to apologize. I proceeded to blast him with anger. I never thought someone I used to think I could trust could give me such a fucking migraine.
The last time I saw him was on Trish's birthday, together with Ariff, and we took a photo together:
A long way from what we used to look like:
I guess everything came full circle. I still see Ariff from time to time, and I still pop on a Khaimano track occasionally, but it's all dead and gone. To some, they couldn't be happier. Me? I'm just glad I'm happy and still playing music.
Jesus, how'd I get so fat?
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I am Khai. Here me cluck.
Interesting fact for non-Malaysian's reading this: 'khai' means 'chicken' in Chinese.
Of course, if I knew this, I would not have insisted on all my friends calling me that when I was in England. Getting them to pronounce 'Khairil' was infuriating, hence the whole 'Khai' thing.
Another interesting fact: the term 'khai', meaning 'chicken', is also used by some Chinese people (particular in Hong Kong) as a term for prostitutes.
This I also didn't know.
Yet another interesting fact: in the movie 'Young & Dangerous', a gritty yet stylish movie of street gangsters in Hong Kong, one of the coolest characters in the movie is called 'Khai'. He is called this as a nick-name because he likes to fuck whores of varying sizes, but we never actually see him indulge in this. Instead, he kicks ass left-right-and-center in every one of the 'Young & Dangerous' movies.
This placated me somewhat.
When I was studying my A levels in England, I had hair much like the hair you see in the photos there, except spikier. My hair was super spiked. This wasn't my fault. One day I let Jordan and Fahril cut my hair and they proceeded to turn my scalp into an experiment in modern art. The next day I shaved it bald. After a few weeks, my hair was spiky. I ended up with the nickname 'Buzz'.
Cue annoying 'Buzz Lightyear to the rescue' jokes.
It got to a point where only my close friends knew my name, and even then it was just 'Khai'. Even fewer knew my real name, 'Khairil'. And the 'Buzz' name never died due to the fact that I kept getting haircuts from different friends to save money and every one of those haircuts was shit.
I have since abstained from having friends cut my hair. But it's still spiky. At least this time it's out of choice.
One guy during my A levels, Filo, called me Khai. Usually in a sentence he would add the colloquial 'man' at the end, as in, 'Hey, Khai, man, you mind if I piss in the sink?'
One day he turned to me and said,
"I always call you 'Khai-man'. From now on, I will call you 'Khaimano'"
Ok. Does it mean anything in Italian?
"Yes. It is an animal with a looooong nose, shoooorrrtt legs and a loooooonnngg tail. And sharp teeth."
I drew him an anteater.
"Yeah, like this, but with no ears."
Three months later I found out it meant 'crocodile'. I named my first band in Malaysia 'Khaimano'. But that's another story.
Before A levels, I was occasionally called 'Sonic', again thanks to the hair.
On other occasions, I was called a chink. Or a nip. Perhaps a gook. Considering I'm not Chinese, Japanese or Vietnamese I first found it amusing. Then infuriating. These names weren't my choice, of course. They just happened.
One day I walked into my common room to all the other students chanting 'CHINK' continously in unison.
CHINK. CHINK. CHINK. CHINK.
Some of these guys were friends I grew up with just a few years ago in Prep School.
CHINK. CHINK. CHINK.
They were smilling too.
CHINK. CHINK.
I grabed my bag, smiled, waved and walked out.
CHINK.
In retrospect, there's nothing wrong with being called 'Khai'.
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Hey, Ladies...!
I was going through the 'My Secret Life as a (Former) Prostitute' blog, and saw a comment/query posted up by one of its readers, wondering whether his regret at not performing as many acts of sexual deviancy as he should have when he was younger was valid. I think his girlfriends confession of her past sordid sex life got him into this whole self-reflecting thing.
Now he's got me wondering: should I have done more? Should I have carpe dieme-ed? Should I have seized the day, or in this case, the peach? I find myself asking myself (god, that was structured bad-bad styley):
Should I have made a move that time when Jane was sat on my lap, looking into my eyes?
Should I have made a move on Marian before the whole fiasco with her boyfriend at the time?
Should I have made a move on Milan that time in my room?
What would've been the alpha-male thing to do when that chick pinched my butt in that club?
Or that time my butt got pinched in McDonalds? Granted, she was probably 14 if she was a day and I was 21, but as my friend Izzy used to say, "If there's grass on the pitch, lets play football."
Ok, that was a bit sick.
Should I have forgiven that Ah Lien chick's absolutely despicable Canto-accent and gone for the kill? Should I have been less a gentlemen all those times all those women in Uni were under the influence of enough alcohol to make Godzilla grab King Kong and say, "You know, I fahking love you, man... I FAHKING love... YOU... you're a mate, you know that...? Bleeuurgh...!"
All these questions can be summarized into one simple question:
Should I have been a prick?
A ruthless sex-driven bastard? A walking hard-on?
Should I have said,
"Fuck it. Forget the whole moral code you've built up in your head. Respect the cock. Tame the cunt. You've broken your code a couple times. You've been an asshole by mistake a couple times, just ask Jess, she'll tell you. Embrace the whole assholliness. Just do the same shit you do, but don't apologize. Fuck for fuck sake. You can do it. Just relinquish all control of your body to that piece of flesh dangling between your legs and get out there and cum on a couple faces. Be just like those fucks that all your ex-girlfriends or would-be girlfriends ended up with, getting hurt by, but still believing that there is love underneath that son of a bitch. Everybody's doing it. Why not you?"
And when it's put like that, I guess it's obvious why I didn't go that path. And I'm glad.
After all, there's still porn.
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The Day The Music Died
I should remember the date for this one, but I can't. It was the second year of A levels, making it somewhere between September 97 and June 98. Must've been early '98.
Why didn't I write down the date I broke up Crap Budget Tattoo?
Of course, to Jordan, it was 'Deviant'. He wanted to rename the band. I liked Crap Budget Tattoo. Charlie liked Crap Budget Tattoo. Spaceman really couldn't say, considering he'd already graduated.
Spaceman. A short, young black man who didn't believe in blowjobs. Wonder what he's up to?
I do remember I was pissed with the band. Charlie was pissed with the band. Charlie was pissed because all we did was play pumpkins covers. I was pissed that we weren't concentrating on writing our own damn songs. We were both pissed that the band had no inkling of pop-punk in it.
Jordan had a vision, granted. And a good one. His band at the moment, Flatline, is a realization of all that skill the lil' fucker has and never showed the rest of the world for so damn long. Only thing is, I had a vision too, and it wasn't the same.
"Let's just go up to him and say 'I quit'. Fuck him," said Charlie. Or at least, may have.
I had other plans. This wasn't just some light decision. We were all still friends. No need to burn bridges. And Crap Budget Tattoo, that had been our entire life for the past year. Everyday after study time, jam for an hour. Every weekend, rehearse for another couple of hours. All we wanted to do was play on prom night (or, as Concord college called it, 'International Night'). Forget good grades, forget school. You don't stick a bunch of angst ridden teenagers in an A level college in the middle of God knows where on the border to Wales, eight miles from the nearest town, and expect results. The animals will revolt.
One night, we had a band meeting. I laid it down on the ground, I said all that needed to be said. Very, very tense. Jordan had no idea we weren't into the new direction. Charlie had no idea that breaking up the band was bigger than he thought it was. I had no idea it would hurt so much.
After everybody left the room, I bawled my fucking eyes out. Crap Budget Tattoo is dead. Long live Crap Budget Tattoo.
After I sent my girlfriend back to her dorm, I passed by Jordan's. Through the window, I could see him with Charlie, playing Worms on the PC.
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One Year Anniversary
I just realized it's been exactly one year since I walked out of my previous employment. Exactly one year. Maybe a year and a couple of hours. I think I left just before lunch.
I won't go into the details of it, hell, I'm not even sure I can remember all of it.
I remember deciding that there was no other way. Resigning would mean sitting through another 3 months of hell before finding heaven, and didn't seem like an option. I should've resigned as soon as the shit started hitting the fan.
Some people here still service my previous employment. Nobody ever brought up the walking out. Good.
Fact of the matter is, I just left. I made the decision, got up, walked down to the reception, said goodbye to the receptionist, got into my car, and drove away.
I've never been back since.
After about three hours they realized I was gone, and the calls started coming in. I switched off my phone and went straight to my friend Saifuls' house.
That night, I had the first decent nights rest in months. When I woke up I didn't realize it was 4pm. Everyone thought I'd killed myself.
The backlash was even worse, followed by a few months of hell from my parents, which I could've done without. It kinda stings when your dad tells you you have to be strong and face whatever challenge. If he had a day of the shit I had to go through in that office in the year 2003, I think he'd probably have a stroke.
I wish I could tell you more, but I think I'll leave it at that.
...
Hmmm. Not that funny or interesting, isn't it? Well fuck off, then. You want hillarious, imagine a penguin trying to fellate itself.
THAT's hillarious.
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The Good Ol' Days
It's hard to believe, but there actually was a time when myself and the people I knew in the local underground music scene were doing nothing more than just having fun playing music. No politics, no back stabbing, no 'fuck that motherfucker' bullshit, no ass-kissing. Just a bunch of guys and gals having a good time rocking.
The picture above is a little memento of that: the Tribute to Ramones gig at Blue Planet that Saiful organized. Pictured above are members of Intoxicated, Khaimano, Iodine 39 and friends.
This was before FYI. Before Y2k. Before things got iffy with Drake. Before it felt like we were competing against the organizers. Before jamtank flame wars. Before Intoxicated broke up and Iodine 39 still existed. Before Saiful lost his pet sisters (no thanks to me). Before Dragon Music Magazine. Before Jam fucked me over as bandmate and friend.
Looking back, it seems so innocent. Hardly anyone turned up to the gig until Intoxicated's last two songs, probably because nobody expected it to actually start at a decent hour, but we didn't care, we were having a blast.
That's all changed now, but at least it was fun while it lasted.
Not to say that we don't have fun now. It's just... different. There were less headaches last time. Hardly any headaches. Our only worry on that day was when MACP tried to screw Saiful over since the Ramones were copyrighted. We just buggered off before the shit hit the fan.
Sigh... oh, well. At least I've still got this photo.
God, I was thin. What the fuck happened?
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Malay Nazi's... right...
Last year, when I was a corporate whore, one of my perks was that I had a job my parents approved of and enough money to rent out a flat about 5 minutes away from the office (if there isn't a jam). I think the place was called 'Pangsapuri Sri Tanjung'. I stayed there with me mate Bob, who found the place, and for all intents and purposes was pretty kick ass. We moved in on the month we got our bonus, where I spent the majority of said bonus on furniture and a desktop PC (which is giving me more trouble than it's worth).
One day, I got into the lift coming back from work and noticed the following grafitti:
and this
Right.
For those not in the know, Malay Nazi's are ignorant lower class fuck holes who have nothing better to do and are generally pissed off.
Somehow they discovered Nazi Punk and immersed themselves in the culture.
There are some in this country who wear nazi symbols simply because they think it's 'cool'.
Malay Nazi's get their kicks out of hating every other race that exists in Malaysia. A family friend of mines' son was a Nazi. His friends had a band that played songs such as 'I wanna fight (with some Banglas tonite!)'.
I dunno about you, but there's something deeply disturbing when you see Malay kids screaming 'Zieg Heil' with their arms outstretched forward.
I would rant and rave about their lack of brains, but I'm sure that's pretty fucking obvious.
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From KL to London and Back Again (unpublished article used for portfolio)
Above: 'Mustard' playing at 53 North (I think that's the name of the place)
I was sat at the corner of Blue Planet, lighting a cigarette with my back to the stage, when I overheard two Malay males mutter and tut-tut about the state of the equipment.
On stage right was a 50 watt Peavey amplifier, a microphone that looked like it had survived two world wars hanging over the front.
Beside the Peavey was a Marshall bass amp with what suspiciously looked like duct tape over a hole of the speaker. The dry remnants of a non-descript clear whitish liquid encased it’s corners and made one wonder exactly what kind of gigs occurred here after hours.
On stage left, what appeared to be a Fender bassman, when, upon closer inspection, was a Watson 50 watt-er with the knobs missing. A young baggy jeaned fellow tested the amplifier with his Epiphone Les Paul, and the yellow box bellowed a sound not unlike three squadies farting in unison to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
In the middle of it all lay a drum kit, in the broadest definition of the word possible. The crashes had huge chunks missing from them, as if a beruang tanked up on amphetamines and amyl nitrate had decided it was a cookie. The hi-hat was cracked, and as the organizers tried to remove it and replace it with another one, they discovered the screw to release the hi-hat was snapped off and there was no way of removing it unless they had a blow torch or a beruang tanked up on amphetamines and amyl nitrate.
The two Malay males stood there and complained endlessly, a barrage of questions spewing from their mouths between puffs of Dunhill’s and kretek’s: ‘there should be marshall amps’, ‘the drum kit sounds like shit’, ‘we need three mics’, ‘what kind of venue is this?’, etcetera etcetera etcetera.
Cut to London.
I was stood in a club in Shoreditch, watching a band called Mustard play. They had brought their own equipment, which comprised of two American Fender strats, one tele and an Epiphone SG, a Hohner bass, one Marshall JCM600, one Marshall JCM600 head connected to a bass speaker (for the bassist, obviously), one Tama drum kit, one Moog keyboard and one Roland keyboard amplifier. The venue was huge. The venue had it’s own bar. The venue had five people in the audience and the gig was free.
Cut back to KL.
All the problems during the sound check were resolved and the audience started coming in one hour after the flyer stated the show would start (which is ok, because the gig only started an hour after the first paying customer walked in). The place fills up with about two hundred people. The band that was complaining took to the stage and, apart from a few off notes and twelve minutes of tuning on stage, played a half decent show of a total of twenty five minutes. A moment later, a young SPM girl came over and asked them if they were that band that played at that thing and asked if they had a demo for sale. They passed her a CD-R in a plastic case with a photocopied cover, charged her RM5 and she looked like she was wetting her panties with glee.
Cut to London.
After their second one hour set, the band ‘Mustard’ began distributing their well printed three track CD to the few that we’re in the venue for absolutely no charge. They then packed up their guitars, amplifiers and drum kit (which the band collectively owns) and loaded it up onto the back of their truck with the aid of one loyal roadie. The band are then paid with a pint of beer and a bowl of salted nuts. Between four band members and a roadie. And they were happy.
Cut to KL.
The band’s ask the organizer whether they are going to get paid. The organizer has only twenty bucks to give each band, and they stare at him with a look that does not correlate with the word ‘thank you’ that comes out of their mouths. They then proceed to go to the mamak stall and bitch about how they couldn’t hear anything.
Funny how things differ, innit?
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