W passed me two of his band’s discography CDs earlier at the office. The usual Friday rendesvous with cousins in town today resulted in me having platefuls of Ayam Penyet and tonnes of bad jokes spinning in my head, so the first thing I did when I reached home was to play the CDs – LOUD, mind you, in my room.
The moment I heard the first riffs and W’s basslines, I was immediately transported to a realm so familiar yet so distanced at the same time. Sang Froid is incredibly tight-sounding, and I must say that for a non-heavy fan – I became an instant one.
Right after the last song, I caught myself dragging a big box of CDs from under my bed just so that I can find CDs of my own former band recordings, many eons ago. Those jamming days were the kills! F & C, the first band I sang with – was actually a group of tired journos, me included – not of the profession, but the sometimes stupid demands of the newspaper editors we worked for. We used to jam on the 7th floor of Times House, in the same room where journalists were trained to report world affairs succinctly. For SSM (our lead guitarist) and RLB (our bassist), it was a case of getting the chords right, and nothing beats those better, not even a former DPM being accused of sodomy.
The Boon’s studio at Macpherson was our playground on weekends. Tucked in a small street in an old rundown area, Boon’s does not actually cater to drivers. I remember always, always fighting for parking space with the rest of them whenever we jam. Sometimes, when I am lucky – the guy I used to go out with then would send me there -but not until he gave a long face as a mark of disapproval that I jam at all. Ah.. sigh. One of those holier-than-thou cases, if you ask me. Glad I didnt marry him!
Our first public gig was at No.18 at Mohammad Sultan Road. That fateful night, CB, our other guitarist chose to wear a huge colourful wig. He ended up blocking the drummer with his head and in another gig, where I was absent, he could not even hear himself cos the wig was an Amazon. The night we played at No.18 we had the club packed with …well…almost all the journos from the entire ST newsroom. I am pretty sure strangers who walked into that gig must have thought we were one bigtime band with the amount of media personnel there. But alas, my offkeys would have been too much of a tell-tale that we were not.
After almost a year of jamming, we decided to record. We pooled our blood money from reporting and spent 3 days on a weekend at Lions Studio. I remembered sweet ol’ Tian who was mixing for us, and MS (our drummer)crazy antics. I shudder thinking of the tense moments between RLB and SSM abt the tracks, and me wearing a hat instead of the hijab while in the studio. Alas….the exuberance of youth.
I thank God for those sessions. Notes From a Lost Weekend was the name of the album. Call it wild, but they were defining moments of creativity, if you want to call it that. I am sure W, and many others who ever had a band would agree.
Rock on. Music lives.
Rawk nevahh dayehhh!!
yeargh yeargh