Archive for February, 2007

Good Vibrations 2007

I’m not a huge fan of any of the bands that played at Good Vibrations, but who passes up the opportunity to see the Beastie Boys and Jurassic 5 in Singapore for $40? Kudos to the organizers, I hope it was worth your while and that you do it again.

I haven’t really listened much to J5 since 2000 apart from a couple of unsuccessful attempts to enjoy their latest album in preparation for this festival, so I couldn’t identify that many songs apart from the old classics. Still, I’ve always had a soft spot for this sort of old-school ensemble rapping so I didn’t have to find the songs familiar in order to enjoy them. Highlights for me were Jayou and Quality Control; they also played Concrete Schoolyard and Improvise but I’ve never been that fond of those. I apologise to anyone I might have startled when I burst out with “FINALLY!” when the flute sample in Jayou, er, finally kicked in, because doing half the song without it constitutes cruelty to Michelles.

Don’t hate me, but I’m not a big fan of the Beastie Boys. I realize they’re hugely significant and all, and appreciate the effort they put into good performances and videos, but something in their flow just doesn’t do it for me. (I attempted to explain it here but actually, I still can’t.) Also, given that all the Beastie Boys albums I own are from the days when cassettes still ruled (i.e. any album before Hello Nasty, which I did buy on CD but later sold), I wasn’t exactly able to do much memory refreshment in preparation for their performance either. Based on the songs I did recognise though, they did Root Down, Sure Shot, Ch-Check It Out, one of the better instrumentals from Ill Communications, No Sleep Till Brooklyn, So Whatcha Want, Body Moving, 3 MCs and 1 DJ and unsurprisingly, Intergalactic and Sabotage for the encore. One thing I did enjoy was how they’d do half a song to its original beats, then Mix Master Mike would switch to beats from a fairly recent top 40 hit and they’d just continue with that. It worked well and kept things refreshing for me, plus everything just sounds great to the beat of Pass That Dutch.

Lastly, no account of Good Vibrations 2007 would be complete without paying tribute to these particular members of the audience. In the name of bad 70s fashion, wearing wigs and fake moustaches in Singapore heat, entering and staying in character even before the Beastie Boys were performing, and of course posing so awesomely for my photo, I salute you.

Beastie Audience Boys
  February 23, 07 | Music Geekery | 5 Comments
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Nubbins

  • Breaking news from the Onion: Radical Islamic Extremists Snowboard Into U.S. Embassy
  • It’s rather too late for a Valentine’s Day entry, but if you feel like poking a little fun at your favourite new-age sensitive guy this strip from Pearls Before Swine is kinda cute.
  • Okay, so this season’s Top 12 guys on American Idol are almost all appallingly bland and have wussy voices (God I miss Elliott, no one there sings like a man), but my heart still goes out to Phil Stacey because no one deserves to be compared unfavourably to Chris Daughtry. Which is why Idolatr’s well-spotted screencap from the iTunes store amused me. Coincidence? Or the DIVINE WRATH OF RAAAAAA?
  February 21, 07 | Links | 5 Comments
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Nancy Drew (Ron Koertge)

Today’s Writer’s Almanac poem made me smile, though I hate that I can’t remember whether the poem’s referencing an actual case-file from one of the books or not.

Nancy Drew (Ron Koertge)

Merely pretty, she made up for it with vim.
And she got to say things like, “But, gosh,
what if these plans should fall into the wrong
hands?” and it was pretty clear she didn’t mean
plans for a party or a trip to the museum, but
something involving espionage and a Nazi or two.

In fact, the handsome exchange student turns
out to be a Fascist sympathizer. When he snatches
Nancy along with some blueprints, she knows he
has something more sinister in mind than kissing
her with his mouth open

Read the rest

  February 19, 07 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment
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Gig Bites

Because I’ve had the curious problem of not being able to write about each new music event I’ve attended because I’m hung up about not having written about the last one, here are some quick memory-filing notes about the last bunch of events I’ve been to, just to clear my mental RAM in preparation for Good Vibrations and Mosaic. (And in April, All Tomorrow’s Parties!)

  • Eclectic Method (Zouk, 10 Nov 06): After two years of waiting to see them, I was bitterly disappointed. Too much lazy use of catchy crowd-pleaser beats like from Drop It Like It’s Hot as a substitute for doing stuff that was actually interesting.

  • Gamelan Shokbrekker (Esplanade, 25 Nov 06): The bare bones breakdown is that it was a collaboration between an Indonesian gamelan orchestra and Norwegian free jazz musicians, but the incredible synergy the performers managed to create between their different musical styles is really just something you had to be there to understand. (If you’re interested though, try the recordings here from their 2006 London Jazz Festival performance.) I love Mogwai and all, but don’t underestimate the intricate mesmerizing wall of sound a determined gamelan orchestra is capable of. Gig of the year for me.

  • Kid Koala (Red Dot Design Museum, 20 Dec 06): About four times as crowded as his first visit here, and not even half as good. Still, his inherent adorability always makes me want to get all Elmira on his ass.

  • DJ Kentaro (Ministry of Sound, 8 Feb 07): His On The Wheels Of Solid Steel mixtape’s been one of my iPod stalwarts since its release, so I was pretty excited to see him. He was brought in as part of some HP promo event presumably intended to demonstrate how technology brings da world togetha, so there were performances by various artists going on sequentially in Singapore, KL, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and linked by live video hookups between the various countries. Unfortunately through cluelessness I think we must have managed to miss the live transmissions of both the performances we were there to see (Kentaro and Hifana), so thank God Kentaro came on again after the live transmission was over and did another set, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Hip-hop, old and new drum’n'bass, club salsa (I think it was, but all Latin music sounds the same to me so I could be wrong), Coldcut’s Timber (wish he’d also shown the video though), bits of that organ sample, everything got seamlessly and effortlessly mixed with just the right amount of turntable pyrotechnics. And all for only about 30 people on the dancefloor. Party on, Singapore.

  February 18, 07 | Music Geekery | 1 Comment
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Sonic Youth Snark Snippets

I haven’t bothered to read many reviews of The Destroyed Room, the new Sonic Youth rarities collection, because, well, good or bad reviews are fairly irrelevant to my need to own anything Sonic Youth, but as it turns out I’m quite happy I wandered into this one at Stylus. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but here are some especially funny snippets:

“In an effort, presumably, to stay lock-step with Ghostface in the holiday odds £ sods market, the Yoof have put together The Destroyed Room: B-Sides and Rarities or More Fish for Balding White Music Critics.”

“The Diamond Sea, which originally clocked in at 19 minutes, wasn’t exactly yearning for an extended mix.”

“If you own all this material, congratulations: you are probably David Fricke or Lee Ranaldo’s mother.”

  February 16, 07 | Music Geekery | Closed
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Here I Go, Here I Go, Here I Go Again

Long-suffering is the man who queues up at the long-queue Punggol nasi lemak place on Tanjong Katong Road to ta pao for the sore-footed fiance lazing on the couch in his flat, watches 3 episodes of the X-Files with her while she squeals “AWWWW POOR SCULLLEEEEE…DEAD??! HE CAN’T BE DEAD!…HE’S ALIVE YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!” (studying in England screwed up my X-Files viewing, so I haven’t seen any episodes from the middle of season 8 onwards) intermittently throughout the evening and finally, sits calmly while said fiance gleefully searches out old Salt’N'Pepa videos on Youtube and raps to them because she fucking feels like it.

I bet you’re thinking this is a poor excuse for a post, and so far, you would be right. But you see, although all of the above did happen, I wouldn’t normally bother blogging about it. But then I found this:

  February 10, 07 | Music Geekery | 4 Comments
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Flo’mission

This New York Times article about the thoughtless racism of describing a black person as “articulate” (prompted by a US Senator’s cringeworthy tribute to fellow Democrat and presidential contender Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”) was done funnier by Black People Love Us, plus it fails to highlight the incomparable contribution of black people to the oratory art of having flow, but it’s still an interesting read.

  February 7, 07 | Links | 5 Comments
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Chiang Mai: Day Two - Lampang

The usual elephant camp / handicraft village / long-neck tribal zoo day tours that most Chiang Mai travel agencies offer don’t appeal to us so we decided to go to Lampang instead to see Wat Phra Tat Lampang Luang. Our hotel wanted to charge us about 2000 baht for a driver to do this, so that was a fairly simple hell-no decision.


Alec in songthaew

Instead we did it ourselves for considerably more fun (and yes, also a little more difficulty and frustration) at these costs:

  • Songthaew to bus station: 30 baht
  • Return bus trip to Lampang: 142 baht each (284 baht total)
  • Return songthaew trip to Wat Phra Tat Lampang Luang: 400 baht
  • Tuk tuk from bus station into town: 20 baht
  • Total: 734 baht

 

Lampang, or at least the bits we saw of it, was really quiet considering it was a Sunday. We came across so few songthaews that I was worried the temple would be closed by the time we arrived, and visiting Wat Phra Tat Lum Pah Pah Lan as the sum total of our day’s adventures would have been a bit depressing. We probably didn’t haggle hard enough when one eventually arrived, which explains the slightly high price, but at least with some of the usual maniacal Thai driving our songthaew driver unleashed we arrived at the wat in good time.

Naga temple guardian
Sexy beast

It’s an imposing complex, situated on an incline and surrounded by fortress walls and you enter by an elaborate flight of stairs flanked by lions and nagas.

 


Candle wax residue

Once inside there was a real feeling of reverence, with Thai pilgrims outnumbering gawking tourists about 9:1. One group intoned chants in front of a chedi containing a relic of the Buddha as other worshippers processed around it silently with hands clasped. We snuck around trying to be discreet and respectful.

 


Boy at bullethole shrine

Another small shrine commemorated a historic battle victory against the Burmese, apparently featuring the bullet hole in the stonework from the actual bullet which killed the Burmese commander in question. Um, okay.

 

Being a woman, I was unfortunately deemed unworthy to enter a small viharn at the back of the complex to experience one of the most interesting features of the wat, but according to Alec it was really cool. It was pitch dark inside with light only entering through a small hole in the wall, such that a detailed, panoramic camera obscura image of the entire temple was projected onto the back wall. Ladies could glimpse a scaled-down version of this in another viharn to the left of the main temple where a colour image of the chedi was projected onto a concrete slab next to the entrance, again, through a chink of light in the window.


Offer-tree

Very lame Catholic mass pun there in the caption, sorry. I don’t remember coming across this method of collecting donations from worshippers in Singapore’s Buddhist temples, though of course it’s possible I just didn’t notice or haven’t been to the ones where it’s done.

 


Money shot

Very lame porn pun there in the caption, sorry. Can you tell it’s been a long week?

 


Chicken bling

This is where the temple’s chickens live. I think it’s nicer than most of the backpacker hostels I’ve stayed in.

 


The shrining

I found the gold-leaf monks in Wat Phra Singh quite touching, but I must say the life-size, super life-like monk figure encased in this shrine creeped me out a little.

 

I don’t have any experience with taking, Photoshopping or appreciating black and white photography, but tried some out anyway with the bodhi trees in the temple compound. I’m not sure if the results are decent or just meh, but I do quite like them and how they work as a pair. Comments/advice from more clued-in photographers very welcome.

 

  February 4, 07 | Photography and Travel | 2 Comments
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