Oct 11 Jam Session, Guitars Galore!!!

Well! Another magical Jam Session!!!

Jam Session in Progress at Frenz, Oct 11 2008

This would be the night of the Guitars, really, though Idris did steal some of the thunder with his Hammond keyboards too.

Durvan was noticeable by his abscence, and good old Lan came in to help, and ended up playing the drums for everybody the whole night! Thanks a million, buddy, we owe you big-time for this.

We had a number of guitarists this night, and some fantastic guitars on display. Rizal brought along his Gretsch, a Brian Setzer signature Nashville model worth about a kidney or two…. Ming brought his Les Paul Custom, the sweetest tone imaginable. Made my 70’s strat seriously jealous!

There was also Kamarul who brought along his 5-string bass, Nain with his beefed-up Stratocaster, Joel who hid his guitar (!!!explain that, Joel!) .

Great jam session. Great crowd. Great night

Rocking away!

Elvira Brings Down The House!!!

Our first weekend with Melvin on bass, (we’re back at Frenz Fun Pub), the 1st Jam session night in our planned jam-every-Sat-nite series, and really,it’s pointless talking about anything else but Elvira from Kuala Lumpur.

The lady who brought the house down at Frenz

We were just fortunate that Elvira was at Frenz that night, she sings in KL but was in town for a wedding (not hers!), with this large group of Melvin’s relatives/family who dropped into Frenz to party.

It would be totally understating things to say that it was a magical and momentous occasion when Elvira came up to sing. We got her to sing “Proud Mary” as a warm-up number, and it was obvious that we had a SERIOUSly good singer there, so I persuaded/pleaded/begged her to do “Summertime”, a song which holds special meaning to me for reasons I’d rather not go into here, and so……

Folks, if you could imagine sharing the stage with the likes of Randy Crawford, Tina Turner, Ella Fitzgerald…… Elvira is all of them and more. Superb, commanding vocals, beautiful voice singing the Blues with passion……ahhh, it was the greatest vocal performance I have ever witnessed! It was only way after the song had finished that I realized I was playing the guitar too, but I can’t remember anything about what I played, all I know is that I’d played for a Superstar.

When the last notes of the song had died, there was this totally electric atmosphere in the pub. Almost everyone who had a mobile phone had turned it on to record the audio/video, it was like everyone knew they had just witnessed something totally remarkable and rare.

It was pointless trying to play anything after that so I called for a break. It would be a long 30 minutes before we dared step up onstage again, and the night continued in party mode till way past 2.00am.

Biggest reward for me was seeing Elvira’s happy and smiling face throughout the rest of the night, she looked like she had enjoyed herself too.

Elvira, thanks!!!

Much Work, Slow Progress.

Story of my life, I guess. *sigh* Nothing comes easy for me. Or perhaps I always choose the difficult paths?

This post sort of begins to explain my many weeks of not updating this blog.  I’ve been busy!

So whaasup this time? It all seemed innocuous enough when I first started thinking about it,a simple plan: I wanted to do away with the “modern” digital guitar-effects I’m using now and go back to old-fashioned analog effects.

Digital audio is basically audio that has been reduced to numbers, (1 and 0 !) and then these numbers are modified by all sorts of clever calculations and computer-like processing, and then reconverted into sound which you and I hear….when you bring it down to it’s simplest,  basically digital sound is the art of manipulating what you and I think we’re hearing.  Really. All sorts of stuff that the scientists “know” you and I cannot differentiate becomes irrelevant,  sor of lik I can typ thi sentnce lik thi n u can stil think u kno wha i mean.

So? Fuk digital. Fuk Fuk Fuk. If I want to say it in a sentence I’ll say it in a goddamn sentence without sounding like some 14 year old retard texting his retard friend. And if I want to spend 40 years learning how to strum a simple G chord I want you to hear the whole bloody G chord and not some scientist nerd’s idea of what constitutes the essential audio aspects of a G chord.

So? Just go back to the old-fashioned equipment, and play the old fashioned music the way it used to be played. Simple.

But not quite. Nothing’s ever simple. Not in my life anyway. If you’re a guitarist, or someone with a morbid sense of curiosity, you might want to read on. Might. The rest of you can just kindly go back to whatever it was you were doing. Something digital, most likely.

Guitarists use gadgets called “effects” to produce enhanced and interesting sounds. Some are simple-ish effects like reverb units, some are outrageously freaky effects that belong to sci-fi soundtracks.

I’m an old-fashioned guy. I just use some Overdrive and Distortion effects, along with some Chorus, Reverb/Delay and of course the mandatory Wah pedal. A Tuner gets into the stuff as well, thought a tuner is just an aid to tuning the guitar and does not do anything to the actual sound.

My almost-wholly-analog setup: (The delay unit is still digital). OK, guitarists, you can get jealous and drool and call me a sonofabitch now, I’ve set you up for this nicely! But there’s a whole BIG and extremely complicated story unfolding, which I’ll address in subsequent posts if time permits….

How NOT To Shoot A Band Video

Were YOU at our last night’s gig at Frenz on the 25th of April? We have videos of the night’s happenings!

…..So we had this great idea, why not shoot a video of our band’s final night’s performance at Frenz Fun Pub. Especially since it was going to be a massive jam session with lots of guest musicians. Brilliant idea.

So we borrowed a videocam from Andy Tan , it was a JVC hard-disk videocam, and Eisubius would be (ir)responsible for the whole video thingy. Brilliant plan.

Except it turns out that shooting a video in a dark pub results in a dark, Stevie-Wonder-ful-vision video. And using the onboard microphone gives you a it’s-a-cheap-crappy-microphone sound. And having a bunch of drinking buddies hold the videocam ensures recording mayhem. AND they get their monkey friends to make monkey faces at the camera. And the wisecracks…….sheesh, whose stupid idea was this whole thing anyway?

And after the said crappy video is shot, just htf (how, close relative of wtf) are you supposed to make a usable video out of it?

JVC videocams save the video recording in a proprietory JVC format: .MOD extension. NO other effing (excuse the French, it’s me vast travelling experience showing, sorry) company uses this stupid .MOD format, and apart from me never having worked on a video before, I had to find a way to work with this .MOD thing. Long story, but I finally figured out a work-around.

Then of course htf to create video clips for youtube (seems like you either have a video on youtube or you are a nobody) and also make a DVD for them folks who were at the party and need to watch a crappy dark DVD with shit sound to recollect events.

And so anyway, if you watch the video above, you’ll know why it’s so crappy.

BUT y’know what? It was a bloody great night and a wonderful party/jam session!