Tiramisu alive once more at Rouge

The vivid sketches of the 10th June gig at Rouge:

4pm: Soundcheck? What soundcheck? The crew were still setting up the gear, Keith, Lan and Jeremy doing some fondling on their instruments. Replacing strings, waxing, smoking, Ahmad bought some food from McDonald's. I heard some problems with the floor tom, the attachment was too loose from the side. Love Me Butch dudes cam, shook hands, said hello...talked about KL music scene. Kevin was telling me how difficult to get venues in KL except for Paul's Place which is like so far off, in Damansara I think.

5:30pm: Dhany the organizer drove to the Goldmine studio, borrowed a floor tom, at the same time Ahmad took a cymbal and a nice looking drum seat with a moulded butt shape. In the car, we talked about the music scene, Dhany said something about B Quartet is the best he has ever seen for now, yeah, Mike Patton I like too, Ahmad was pretty tired of the scene but still wanting to contribute some sort and I was having a great time at the back of the car belonging to the Love Me Butch guys.

6:45pm: After LMB soundcheck, we took over the stage, the sound was great, with the monstrous sub-woofers in front of the stage which acted as an elevated platform for all singers alike. We did Spoon, Take Over The World and Afloat. Asked for our vocals to be pushed up a little. The name of the sound company was D Entertainment, they had a huge banner near the stage, that's advertising boys and girls.

7:00pm: After soundcheck we went our seperate ways, I went to hang out with Ahmad at Goldmine. The rest...I dont know. Had dinner at the unknown Sarabat Stall at Bussorah St. Chilled at Goldmine till about 10-ish. We couldn't get cabs, and me and Ahmad were late.

11:00pm We came at the right time, the guys were setting up, and I changed to my neo 80s garb with Ramones wig. And lost it in between set. There were a lot of action...there were some hissing here and there....romp a pomp pomp.

Set-list:
1. Spoon
2. Swinging Arms
3. Take Over The World
4. Paper Crane
5. Afloat
6. Mr Fantesticles

We had only a large bottle of mineral water, well, as usual it became a communal drink. Like Young men in a war. The audince were pretty alright, I saw some hands going up and down. Joe Ng was smiling with arms to his chest, his bootlegging habit is back.

After 11pm: Loads of head banging action and falling into a pit of arm-pits, and crazy pearl licking moments, some free drinks from the management. A happy night and we sold all our VCDS. All 8 of them.
Think Merchandise!

The Sedated Sequins

The Sedated Sequins
Originally uploaded by mrfantesticles.

Dance and Jiggle when you are merry and cheery! photo by Sab.

The Get Together Session for Butching Me Love

We finally got together, and carried on with some old tunes and the newer/fresher ones for Friday's gig, two sessions all in all. Remembering all the songs over and over again. Definitely, we are tired of playing the same old numbers, normally what we do is that we reconstruct/deconstruct/shorten/expand/trash the songs, so when we play them, they do feel fresh somehow.

As for now, we have to agree upon that I seldom update anything here, so might as well I do some historical analysis of the songs we have played based on last night's session.

The session last night started out with 'Take Over The World', Jeremy wrote this song for an experimental performance we did under KYTV 3 years ago at the Substation, Sabrina and Syed Ahmad from Moods were in it. She sang only the chorus...that was pretty soothing. In the beginning, I was reluctant at first, because I thought my voice couldn't carry certain high pitches and the melody was pretty weird. But after a while, I got used to it completely, and this song remained one of the powerful number.

Frankly, from my personal interpretation of this song, its about power-trip/mind-fucked/exploiters/greedy bastards, I assumed Jeremy wrote this when he was in the army. A combination of a fluke bossa, hard rockin riff with sing-along-chorus.

The next song I would like to talk about in brief is Mr Fantesticles, the song LocalBar Boys covered, this song was written in a strangest way, it was Jeremy who got this 'jeering' riff, like those neh-neh-neh-neh type of sound, and The Strokes just came out with their first album, we had this small studio in a factory called The Pete. So everything was a bit Punk Rock...here and there...

At the same time, we were just figuring out how can we transpose a jeering feel into a song? So I had this visual idea of people who love to suck up on other people. Well, the man was my Sergeant Major in the army, who was a fanatic balls carrier..."Hey Dancing friend wait for me...I'll be there....", the imagery I had was a man in uniform dancing and inviting another friend to join him in his dance....

About the chorus:

"Its in your mouth...your Testicles...your Testicles...!"
Another word play from a crude-street-style Malay Text : ' Hisap Buah', which means to suck on a fruit literally. Fruits, a strong metaphor for testicles. Crude, rude and rocking! Stupid but efficient!

The ending to this song is a sing-along-ditty, it goes "Boplay! Boplay! Boplay! Boplay! Boplay", The real meaning is actually Buah Pelir in Malay, I am not sure if this is scientific or another beautiful invention by the street pioneers. Yet again, from my observation, when you sing along to this, no matter how much work you have done in your life, its a celebration of hardship....the fruit of labour of being alive....Boplay! Boplay! can also be interprete as balls to you!

So National Service can also be the birth to many of our songs, more analysis coming this way! Sorry if I have gone astray in this writing but I am a really bad writer....can't deny that...

Rouge your Feelings on the 10th of June!

Rouge your Feelings on the 10th of June!
Originally uploaded by mrfantesticles.

See you at Rouge, June 10th.

It has been a while, we are back again, this time round we are opening for the new pop maestro Love Me Butch. So bring along your sweethearts and sugar daddies and mummies, Spread the love, spread the magic!

Event details:
Love Me Butch ‘live’ at Rouge (located at Peranakan Place)
Opening acts – Surreal and Tiramisu
Friday, June 10th 2005
11pm ’til late (free entry before 9pm, one-drink entry between 9pm – 11pm, $18 for ladies and $21 for men from 11pm onwards)
Entry for those18 years and above only