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Overheard On Orchard Road

[A quick note for non-Singaporean readers: On Orchard Road, our main shopping strip, banks often set up big tents on the pavements and attempt to lure people into them to sign up for credit cards. Such tents also often feature greatly amplified music and obnoxious commentary by the various promoters present, with which it is presumably hoped that innocent passers-by will be bludgeoned into submission.]

"...and that was a really great song by Suzanne Vega! Luka, a song about child abuse! You're here with us outside Wisma Atria shopping centre this Saturday afternoon, and we're offering a waiver of annual fees for..."

The Joy Of Text

The predictive text input system on my mobile phone learns from the frequency of my word usage and adapts its predictions accordingly. When I first got the phone, input of "9-2-9" would predict "way". Now it predicts "yay".

It's nice to know I send happy text messages.

In fact, further research has revealed that "cunt", "dick" and "bitch" aren't even in my phone's dictionary at all! "Fuck" is right up there at the top of the "3-8-2-5" list though, more commonly used by me than "dual", "duck" or "eval", which I suppose is hardly a surprise.

Erlend Oye (Esplanade, 15 March 2006)

Erlend Oye was playing interesting stuff when we arrived at the Mosaic Club, but many people weren't dancing. I have a feeling the vast majority of his audience were Erlend Oye fans rather than house music fans so perhaps that's why they weren't really in the groove but honestly, at some points I felt like yelling "DUDES, ERLEND WANTS YOU TO DANCE, NOT STAND THERE STOCK STILL GAWKING AT HIM!" After all, as he demonstrated several times himself, no one needed to actually dance dance, just jumping around happily would have been fine too.

On the whole he played about one and a quarter hours' worth of music I found interesting (including remixes of Kings of Convenience songs which I generally much prefer to the originals), and forty-five minutes of boring indie/pop standards eg. The Cure's Close To Me, Springsteen's Dancing In The Dark. I found these fairly dull.

What I did find enjoyable and endearing was his personality. He interacted pleasantly with the crowd, and dealt extremely well with technical problems that twice brought his set to a complete halt - the second time, as a Kings of Convenience remix suddenly just stopped playing, he continued singing the vocal a capella while looking for a new song, finally substituting "I think I found a good song" for the lyrics he was singing. Quite charming.

Ultimately though, this gig wouldn't have been worth $30 and missing the America's Next Top Model finale for me if not for one moment right at the end.

He announced the last song, put it on, and came down to the dancefloor, a ring of ecstatic fans forming around him almost instantly. Although originally in this ring by sheer coincidence of location, I stepped out of it, figuring that it would be nicer to make room for people who were bigger fans than I - essentially, almost everyone else in the room.

At this point I spotted Dominique trying to physically drag a struggling, protesting Han (huge Erlend fan) in his direction. Being no stranger to the paralysis of extreme starry-eyed admiration I bounded up to assist, knowing that friends who refuse to let you wuss out are necessary in such situations. (Lifelong mortification is still better than lifelong regret.) Unfortunately, Han was putting up quite a fight and after a while I decided it probably wasn't best for her first meeting with Erlend to involve being hurled at him like a human cannonball.

So I took another tack. Given that I only get star-struck by people I actually admire, I had absolutely no qualms about approaching him myself. I danced into his little bit of Erlend ring-space, yelled that I had a friend who loved him but was too shy to say hello, and pointed at Han. Upon which he plucked her from Dom's arms, wrapped her in his, and started dancing with her.

That was when it finally felt worthwhile. And if you don't understand why, you've never been a teenage girl.

Don'cha Know I Get Emulsified

We each had about 20 minutes on the decks at Ci'en's Pah-ti. This was obviously not a whole lot of time with which to reprazent, but therein lay the challenge! Here's what I did with mine:

1. Emulsified (Yo La Tengo): Because I was playing something later which sounds quite similar to Griselda, because The Whole Of The Law isn't really a party track, and because Blue Line Swinger would have taken up almost all of my allotted time. And because Emulsified is lovely.

2. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (Neutral Milk Hotel): Because I have lived in every moment of this album for the past 8 years, and it still transports me the same way it did the day I brought it home.

3. Baby Got Back (cover by Jonathan Coulton): Because this is just self-evidently awesome, and anyone who doesn't appreciate it is an enemy of joy. And big butts.

4. Home Sweet Home (Kano): Okay, I knew this one and the next would pretty much go down like lead balloons among most of the crowd there, but I have to admit I didn't care. The Amoy Street concrete just needed to hear this, okay?

5. Dancingbox (Modeselektor featuring TTC): I was somehow really in the mood to play some TTC, but Leguman just loses so much when you don't get to see it performed live by a guy with a big legume for a head. This track had been rocking my commute for a couple of months, so I used it instead.

6. Darling Nikki (Prince): Because every set needs some Prince. Who else is gonna rhyme "sex fiend" with "masturbating with a magazine"?

7. 'Cross The Breeze (Sonic Youth): Because you knew I'd get this in somewhere. :)

I only wish I'd been able to get there earlier, stay longer, and hear more of what other people played, but I didn't dare to risk missing any of Gang Starr and left around midnight. Cheers to everyone I met, if you read this - I arrived feeling alone and awkward and weird but that quickly evaporated with your good company. And cheers, obviously, to Ci'en for organizing. Please do so again, I promise to stay and get trashed with all of you the next time!

Birthday Presence

So there I was, up to my ears in the details of an oil pipeline contract, and then I heard a voice outside the door of my office, asking for Michelle.

My first thought: Wah lau that bloody ________! Always barging into my office without calling first, just assuming I'm free to drop everything and attend to him. Too much!

My second thought: Hang on, that sounded like Alec. Wha??!

Next thing I knew, Alec was in my office with a bunch of lilies. :)

He couldn't stay long because he had to rush off to work. I walked him down to the taxi point, and we had this conversation while waiting. Sorry if it grosses anyone out, but I thought it might amuse fans of the long-running Alec/Russ war.

Me: Aww, thanks for doing this. It was really sweet of you to bring the flowers yourself.
Alec: My pleasure. Anyway, I totally had to one-up Russ.
Me: Ha! I bet next year Russ will COME FROM ENGLAND to hand-deliver the flowers to me!
Alec: Well then the year after that I'll FLY TO ENGLAND, BUY THE FLOWERS THERE, AND BRING THEM BACK!
Me: Aw. Okay, there's your taxi. Bye dear.
Alec: See you later, dear. Happy birthday.

Annie Are You OK?

Annie Proulx writes at The Guardian about "how her Brokeback Oscar hopes were dashed by Crash", and is in general a bitter, pontificating, reductionist cow. It's rather pathetic.

"Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good. And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash - excuse me - Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline."

Thanks for the newsflash Annie, but I kind of abandoned the idea that award shows like the Oscars or Grammies actually reflected what I thought was good at around the age of fourteen. For your reference, that was also about nine years after I stopped doing kindergarten-level snarks like the one you just did about Crash. Here's a tip for when you become a big girl - decide whether or not you care about Hollywood's approval before it hands you a result you don't like, and maybe then your bitching and whining might be worth something.

"There came an atrocious act from Hustle and Flow, Three 6 Mafia's violent rendition of "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp", a favourite with the audience who knew what it knew and liked. This was a big winner, a bushel of the magic gold-coated gelded godlings going to the rap group."

This is quite amusing. One, the last sentence is hilariously, Bulwer-Lyttonesquely, bad. Two, the entire excerpt sounds like the sort of statement that would come from, say, someone living a cloistered life behind wrought-iron gates or in a deluxe rest-home, out of touch with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days.

I Also Can "Interpretive Dance"

A little background, for non-Singaporeans and Singaporeans who weren't there, is that 1 + 1 Not Equals II was a free event on the Arts House lawn, featuring local bands Astreal, Lunarin, Electrico and Local Bar Boy and local dance troupes Ah Hock and Peng Yu and Moving Arts. The premise of the event was that while the bands played, the dancers would perform interpretive dances to the music. (Yes, I know it sounds like a recipe for awkward hilarity but it was free, so I went.)

Now that's been explained, perhaps someone more knowledgeable about contemporary dance than I can explain how going on stage, slowly taking off one's jeans, eating a takeaway meal from its styrofoam container, drinking from a plastic bottle, occasionally swinging one's legs while eating, slowly putting one's jeans back on, and leaving the stage, constitutes an interpretive "dance" to any music?

I must admit, one reason this aggrieved me was that it was done while my favourite local band Astreal was playing the best gig I've ever heard it do. For once you could hear Ginette's vocals loud and clear over the mic instead of just snatches of them through the crashing guitars, and they did some new material I really enjoyed as well. It certainly seemed to me like music to which one could quite conceivably perform dance-like movements to.

I must also admit, if this had been done for Electrico's performance instead of Astreal's I'd have been fairly amused, given that the performer's complete obliviousness to the music being played does rather capture my usual reaction to Electrico's ho-hum music. But even then, I'd still feel it was rather taking the piss.

Pushing 26

I had a pretty great birthday last year. Long-time readers may be aware that despite being confident, well-adjusted and happy in every other area of my life I somehow suffer from dumb irrational birthday angst. So it really made me happy last year when loads of people remembered, my best friend sent flowers to my office, and Tortoise decided to grace Singapore with their presence.

This year's birthday looked off to a bad start when I checked the gig schedule hopefully only to see...Jason Mraz. Thankfully, lots of preferable events quickly emerged, and I decided to take matters into my own hands for the actual day.

So this is the plan so far:

• 15 March: Erlend Oye's DJ set at the Mosaic music festival. I've long wished the dude would just quit indie music and focus on DJing because I think his taste in house music far outstrips his indie muzak.

• 16 March: No special plans but my usual Thursday lindy hopping will probably keep me very happy. [Edit: Actually on second thoughts, I don't really have the time for this one. Nuts.]

• 17 March: my actual birthday. For the first time since the age of 8, I'm taking the chance on a party. Since my previous attempt at mixing my friends went okay, I decided to push my luck a little and impose a theme - being born on St Patrick's Day makes it a no-brainer anyway. So "Craic Whores" it is then - a cheesy Irish theme party fit to inflict a lifetime's worth of cringing on my poor Irishman.

• 18 March: This is the tricky bit. Ideally I will spend the afternoon getting drenched in water and dye and bhangra at the Holi festival, rush home to change, rush out again to Ci'en's party where she has kindly invited a couple of us to play music, then finally head to see GANG STARR!(!!!!!) However, in reality it is far more likely that I will collapse asleep on my bed after Holi and wake up the next morning still Technicolored. I live in hope though.

Analog Girl / The Konki Duet / The Lovers (Esplanade, 3 March 2006)

It was pretty shocking how badly attended the 2 gigs we attended at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival were. I guess in a two month period where Franz Ferdinand, Oasis and Kings of Convenience were performing here, most local "indie" music fans chose to spend their money there instead. I'm not saying it's wrong to like those bands, and when I was 14 I'd probably have been ecstatic about such gigs, but I do wish people in Singapore were a little more willing to take a chance on something less established or radio-friendly. Call me a bleeding heart if you like but it always really upsets me to see a good band performing to an embarrassingly empty room.

Having said that, my heart remained resolutely unbloodied during Analog Girl's performance, if one could even call it that. I'm having difficulty writing about this because I don't want to be needlessly unkind about someone who is trying to do something different, even if I don't personally think she succeeds at all. Let me just say that as someone who has a fairly high threshhold for abstract noodly electronica (anyone here like Fennesz?), I was bored stiff by the music, and watching her essentially press buttons on devices for half an hour didn't exactly make for compelling viewing either. There's more I could say, but let's leave it at that.

The Konki Duet are three girls who make pretty, slightly melancholic, chamber pop with two of the girls harmonizing over a guitar, dinky keyboard, violin and occasional trumpet. It's a simple setup, but what they achieve with it is a good reminder that you don't always need an Elephant Six-esque panoply of obscure instruments to make interesting indie pop. They're a little raw - they were sometimes out of time with each other, and the violin is far too obtrusive in the mix - but they have a lovely little collection of songs which managed to have a distinct identity and style about them without all sounding the same. I enjoyed them far more than I'd expected to, and although they do need a little more polish at the moment, I think they deserve to do well with this in time to come.

If you're a stark raving Francophile you might love The Lovers. They started their gig with the "I'm French! Why do you theenk I havv zis outrrragyuss akksent?" sound clip from Monty Python's The Holy Grail and sang a number of impish bossa nova songs about French grammar genders and French wine and French kisses and...you get the drift. All this shtick would put them firmly in novelty band territory for me if not for their rather charming stage persona. I'm not sure if it's part of their act or if they're genuinely besotted with one another, but I found myself buying into their affectionate, coquettish chemistry. Sometimes it's nice to watch a gig where the performers hold each other closely and exchange seductive looks. It's certainly a change from shoegazing.

(Review of the 2nd gig forthcoming in a future post.)

In Memoriam (Delfos Contemporary Dance)

Delfos Contemporary Dance's In Memoriam presentation at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival was aimed at "broaching the topic of death through literary images". I have not quoted this description of it as a preface to my exhaustive and learned analysis of the various literary images employed, but have simply co-opted it as adequate setup to say that despite my worst fears, this performance thankfully didn't end up as a tale of two shitties.

The first half was fairly abstract, with few props used apart from paper boats, a tiny red fluttery bird thing, and mist. It relied mostly on the considerable skill of its dancers and the passionate dynamism of its choreography, and was really quite captivating.

The second half involved a man wearing nothing except a tiny G-string being guided towards a huge animated butterfly on a screen by two women wearing butterfly headdresses.

Guess which half was shitty.