Devillish Angel

Such an adorable creature
Dark eyes
Silky hair
Brownish skin
Beautiful smile
A smile with blood dripping down
Down to the chin
Chin to the breast

She's gonna suck you dry
Out of your neck
Hard breathing
Soft hissing

She's gonna keep you high
Over your body
Gentle touching
Wet licking

If you see her first time
She's the most angelic
If you see her twice
She makes your heart ache
If you see her third time
Protect her you'd want to

But careful gentlemen
She's the blood sucking
Eye-deceiving
Devillish Angel

Are Chinese all gangsters in America?

Eh budak-budak Holiwud! Apa pasal kamu smua ni?

You think all the Chinese are kungfu fighters and are gangsters or triad members is it?

Blardy hell!

Tengok lah "War", oh my God!!!! Such a bad movie with such a bad message --- revenge. The starting of the movie was ALL about underground night club and naked women in a yakuza district --- yeah I know, they're Japanese, but you get what I mean. Then Jet Li started to kill his victims with every saddistic way possible.

Jet, I thought you're into Buddhism these days and like, REALLLYYY into it? You don't seem like it. You're sending out bad messages to the audiences. Revenge revenge and bloodshed, is this the message you wanna send out to your audiences? Gosh man, I dunno what the hell you're doing in Hollywood! Go back to Hong Kong!!

But it's OK, I can live without your shitty Hollywood films. I also watched Bourne Supremacy. Now THAT'S what I call a great movie!

Well of course, Hollywood is still the one to be blamed, stereotyping Chinese and other Asians. Like you white people have no gangs and triads. Shit...

Constantly misunderstood

Thinking back in my life, my friends from primary, middle, and high school, never really understood ---- or still don't ---- how my life is like. All the more, many of them misunderstood what I do.

Most people would say, "Yeah man, so nice, you study music, so 'senang', no need to study like mad like us! Just play some music and have fun every day."

Now I'm wondering if it's just me or it really is ---- they kinda sounded sarcastic.

What they meant was "you musicians suck at life".

And there was this chick whom I used to like, told me something like this, "I need a man who knows what to do when there's a trouble, for example, when my tyre is flat, he should be able to change it; when I dunno how to pay taxes, he should know how... not a musician."

Eh, hold on a sec... How the hell do you know I dunno all these things? GAWD-DAYUMMM!!

Some would be too nice to me, "You mah good loh~~ Can do what you like and earn so much money!"

Analysis: do what I like? Correct. Earn so much money? How do you know? You think every musician plays in MPO?

The business people would say, "Aiyoooo, you dun understand one lah!! For us, networking is number one! Without networking, there's no business!"

Hello? Do you think music is not a kind of business? Where did you get that idea from? And how the fuck do you know I don't network? I network EVERYDAY!!

Then the ones who went into science or maths field, they'd say, "We go by logic and theory one, not like you only go by feeling and emotion."

Understatement: You're lame, don't think things with reason.

For these kinda people, I would REALLY, I mean REALLYYYY like to ask them to come study the theory of music. See how logical we can be, and how our theory teachers can be cold-blooded assholes like theirs. And I can also say to them, "You're lame, you only have logic, no emotions."

For you who do not understand my job, stop shitting on us and be humble and ask us about it ----- though you'd probably ending up not understanding it still! And for those of you who know a bit of it, please explore more before you drop a statement.

Oh, and for those of you who don't bother to try to understand us, please fuck off. No time for you. (yes... musicians are busy and hardworking people)

Susan Sarah John's new gamelan piece...

Malaysian composer and arranger, Susan Sarah John, is working on a new piece for Hands Percussion Team, a Chinese-Malaysian percussion group that combines all sorts of percussion instruments from different cultures in the world.

This piece uses Javanese gamelan set, 3 Chinese lion dance drums, a drum set, and an electric guitar.

I had the privilege to watch the rehearsal tonight, and I thought it was a beautiful piece.

The guitarist is my friend, Gideon Aluba, a wonderful self-taught musician whom I worked with a couple of years ago. He played some beautiful sound in there, sometimes reminds me of Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint, because he was playing over the minimalistic and rhythmic gamelan.

Sarah retuned the gamelan set to make it diatonic, it sounded just fine!

I hope to see the real performance, but of course, I won't be here...

Happy 10 years old Hands!!!

Ikon ASEAN 2007

I just came back from playing for the LIVE TV Broadcast of Astro Ria's Ikon ASEAN singing competition.

First of all I have to say I was really really happy with the result. The 4 judges were each from Malaysia (Mac Chew), Indonesia, Phillipines, and Singapore ---- doesn't seem to have much room for shouting "Malaysia Boleh" does it?

Yeah at first I thought this would be just another "Malaysia Boleh" kinda competition --- held in Malaysia, get most of the attendance from Malaysian fans, Malaysian contenstants get cheered at the most, and all awards won by Malaysians (or at least one).

It turned out that it didn't happen that way, which is a good slap in the face for the local contestants.

Let's first talk about the local contestants.

Jaclyn Victor (solo category). She has the technique of singing R&B-ish twist-and-turn lines and ad libs, but she doesn't have the voice and doesn't know how to sing properly either. Also, her choice of repertoire was quite weak, especially the P. Ramlee Medley, nothing could be shown much. With this adding up with her singing that was lacking of emotional depth, it was a failure.

OAG (band category). Bunch of monkeys jumping and stomping on the stage, rolling on the floor, spinning round and round, pitches perfectly out-of-tune, and expect people to buy that this is rock music ... or worse, music. These guys should really go home and revalue their lives living in a dream, thinking that they're the shit and they're already there. A bunch of try-too-hard wannabes, sorry to say.

Indonesia had two representatives too. Can't say they're very good, but the solo singer, Judika, did a pretty good job. The band, Tahta, was just another Malay-rock kinda band. They have the potential, but they should stretch out more.

Finally, the Pinoys! Yes the Phillipinos are awesome. During the rehearsal, I could already sort of tell that they're the winners --- provided that there are no Malaysia-Boleh fetish involved.

The band, KJWAN, kicked off the competition with their song, "Invitation". That was some crazy ass tight shit man! Once I heard the sound, I KNEW this will be the ones who are winning if I were the judges. They really look like great performers, the singer was cool, everybody seemed to be serious about making the music work. Unlike the stupid monkeys jumping around, acting rebellious and shit, thinking that they're inheriting Kurt Cobain's bottle of piss. Tight ensemble, powerful sound, refined technique (the drummer has the kinda touch that I love!), great stage presentation (doesn't mean you have to be like monkey). They're great.

Then it was Vina Morales, the beautiful actress/singer. Damn, was she good! She captured my attention from the first note to the last (despite of her smiling at me during rehearsals, haha!). She has that depth in her voice and phrasing that Jac really didn't have. Yes, maybe her ability to sing like a black mama was not as good as Jac, but technique is not everything. Jac's singing, though flashy at times, didn't touch my heart. But Vina's did. She conquered the judges with music, not technique, that is just so much more important. But of course, she's born with a beautiful voice too.

All in all, I was very happy with the result of the competition, and I thought that the judges made justice to the Pinoys. And I do hope that the Malaysian contestants would get a lesson from this: Being famous in Malaysia is just a beginning, only seriously making music --- with your hard work and heart work --- will make you the real deal, not by posing and syok sendiri on the stage. The four judges taught us a lesson without saying a word, bravo!

End of ranting, my dear Malaysians, 好自为之吧!

2nd Night with the ExperiMENTAL Quartet

The set list was basically the same as the first night.

We kicked off with Manda's Mood, my tune for Amanda. Then "14th Street, St. Nicholas", a tune inspired by my walk with Nicholas in his last night in New York. Then Herbie's Watermelon Man, which we didn't rehearse but came out well. Then it's "In Case A Goodbye" I wrote for Wendy, Julian did a great job on the soprano saxophone!! Finally, we ended the first set with Bored of Bb by Justin, which was the last song in the second set on the first night.

Eugene and his gang came in half way while we were playing Watermelon Man. They said they liked the gig a lot! Li Tinh said she likes "In Case a Goodbye", wahaha! Yeah I like it a lot too, maybe that's my best ballad yet. :P

2nd set started off with "Take The A Train", which we didn't play the originally melody from beginning till the end, only hinting the song by having Justin playing the piano intro somewhere in the middle. The whole song was just improvised over the changes. And when we asked if the audience know what song it is, we didn't accept the answer "Take the A Train", we said "Take the KTM"!

Then we played Justin's Consequently, and his untitled new tune (which we temporarily called it "Justin's New Shit"). After that we played Not 3 Not 4, also by Justin, which sounded so different from our duo and trio version. It's fuller and Eddie added some 1920's humour with his wawa mute.

We closed up with "Days of Guns n' Roses". People were shouting and cheering like mad in that one, haha! Just like a rock concert.

3rd set started of with "A Few Words with JaC", which documented one of my most idiotic moments in my life. It was a duo with Justin, and I think we both played our hearts out in that one. Then Julian and Eddie came back and we played "One Flight Back to Bolehland", my hymn to my beloved country, the "Bolehland" Malaysia. The phasing part was better than the night before.

Then we did "It's... It's Not Funny", our tribute to Ornette Coleman, title inspired by Ken's super funny story. We were stretching wayyyyy wayyyy out tonight, and it was more animated and funny this time. Could it be because we found a title for it? ;)

Finally, we did "Days of Guns n' Roses" once again, because David finally showed up and we wanted him to hear it, also wanted to record it. It sounded better than the one we did in 2nd set.

Quite a night, I have to say!

I surely hope we can do more shit like this, seeing that the audiences actually liked it!!

The ExperiMENTAL Quartet

Had my first show with the ExperiMENTAL Quartet last night in The Top Room, KL.

That was a fun gig, never seen such a great reaction from the crowd doing THIS kinda music.

What kinda music?

You see... we played everything from standards to originals to rock to free jazz to experimental...

I don't suppose KL has ever seen something like this from local musicians.

Our line-up is totally weird too. We do not have drums and bass, only a piano, a violin, a sax and a trumpet.

We were a little worried about the instrumentation at first, but we later sorted it out without thinking too much. The bass is already in the piano, so why worry?

So we focused more on collective improvisation and harmonising and complementing on each other's parts. It worked out perfectly.

Our saxophonist Julian's motto is "I don't give a shit".

We held on to that and did as we feel like on the stage, mixing spontaneity with pre-rehearsed arrangements. We did some funny stuff like playing Take The A Train without playing the head at all --- they know what it is anyway! We also played "The Days of Guns n' Roses".

Yes, you read me right, "The Days of GUNS N' ROSES".

We fused "Sweet Child O' Mine" with Mancini's Days of Wine and Roses. We ended our first set with that. I could see people's faces changing every time we twist the music into another one. That was fun.

We also did free jazz, based on a 3-phrased melody. We stretched out really far and I felt that our souls were transported to somewhere else.

That was a great night! I hope tonight till be a great one too.