Written by lainie at 12:24 PM on June 4, 2006 in Daily Life, Music.

I dreamt that I was standing by a gray sea, and I wanted to empty it of its water. I boiled the water away in a small kettle, the campfire was the only warm thing there - I was turning water into steam. Eventually, the steam formed a cloud, and it rained back into the sea.

My face when I woke up was quite "holy shit" lah.

====

CIJ Malaysia organised a World Press Freedom Day gig (the gig happeneda month after the actual day, I don't know why it was postponed), lots of bands playing.

When I went there Peter Hassan Brown and Markeeza were performing. They were making speeches about people loving "Bangsa Asing" music, and that we should love Malaysian ones too because they rock.

Uh, I decided since I'd be there the whole day, I gave their set a miss as I went in search of a McDonalds. I asked Chi Too (who seems like a photography geek, to put it mildly, and was there taking photos) whether there was one nearby.

He said something about not going there because McDonalds is cutting down Amazon rainforests for chicken feed. I told him he wasn't going to like me much over my choice of coffee chains either. Then I asked if he was from PETA - I'm sorry, it's a kneejerk reaction, people who care about the environment get this from me.

As usual, I got the whole weirded out, uhmmmm, this is about trees, not so much animals reply. I'm just so scared of another PETA person getting at me that I need to establish where they are, like huge, potential plague infections I must avoid. Anyways, turns out he's with Greenpeace so it's all cool. Hmmm. Wonder if he knows my uncle then.


RELA uniformed dudes were there.

I came back from lunch, and was taking a video of one of the performances when a very disturbing banner caught my eye. I didn't stop looking at it as I ended the video, aimed the camera at the banner, and took a picture of this:


Bapaku, Wiraku (my father, my hero) banner at Pasar Seni, with big quote of, er, fatherly love, by Sigmund Freud.

Lainie: Uh. What's up with that Freud banner?
Sonia: Yeah I know. We have one up next to our booth inside too.
Lainie: Wow. That's soooo wrong.
Sonia: Goes to show, we only have so much control over what goes on.

I liked the next band up, NAO. I think the matamata song is about the KLCC protest recently, where some innocent bystander watching with his daughter got brained and beaten up by the police (video of protest, and another video, where people walking away are being attacked....). I only have a short video of them.

After NAO was skyjuicecoffee. Poppy punk, lil bit of emoness gonig on. They're alright, I guess. I can see them doing well on XFresh. I didn't get any pics, video later yah.


Most of the crowd there were Malay rocker looking dudes. KA had told me she wanted me to put up flyers for this show because Sonia was worried there wasn't enough publicity, which seemed quite an unnecessary worry and I told her as much, even though I did post up the flyer - because Carburetor Dung would be playing, and the flyer had been up at the website, and for heaven's sake, it's at Pasar Seni. People are good with music there, and the crowd is pretty much easily available.


There were even more people beside the stage, for some reason. Everyone was hanging out in the shade. I chose to stand in the sun because I don't mind heat as long as I don't have to walk - I might be sunburned by the end of today.


Lurks played next. Very electronic band, I think they lost the attention of the crowd who wanted noisier stuff. Their "try something different" songs that fit in with the other performers more did better than their usual stuff.


Farasu was the band that got the crowd to get close to stage. Metallllllllll. Some dude handling the stage saw the guys all suddenly show up in front of stage, and went up to whisper something to him.

The lead then looked up after, with a big grin and said "Sorry ah, no moshing. Banging dalam hati". Sigh, I guess they didn't want DBKL to see imaginary goats running around. Those nasty lil hallucinations get everywhere. I liked their set.



Mushbuttons. For some reason, I thought of Iszie when I heard this band. Will be uploading videos later, I haven't reencoded anything.


Project 8ight had a front man that I think may have sliiiightly annoyed the crowd there, judging by the reactions I saw. Which is a pity, because their music is actually quite okay. And, check out the cool green on that, I took photos of him, but forgot to take one of the lead singer. Never mind lah.


Carburetor Dung. Joe Kidd called Pasar Seni their "spiritual home", and so it was apt that they were playing there for the first time. My goodness, they hung out there years, and years, and years.

That lil white sticker on Joe's guitar is an anti-ISA sticker


This was the band everyone wanted to watch. When they came on, I was soooo far from the stage compared to before cause all these guys went up front. I was too short to take many photos.

I did, however, find a six inch platform to step on, and totally purposely block Hishamuddin Rais' view of them (I am evil, I am sorry), because I wanted to take a 30 second video. I guess we were both too short to see the band otherwise.


Some bodysurfing happened, but mostly, the crowd listened to the organiser's request....Banging dalam hati....(banging in your heart, don't look like you're rocking the crowd).

Carburetor Dung blogged about it.

And the day of standing in the hot heat was over.

[ Update: CIJ World Press Freedom Day gig - day 2. ]

I went for Actorlympics after that.

It was okay. More on that later. I don't have time to check what I typed, have a gig to catch at Pasar Seni now I've probably already missed Superbar and Flow.

Then it's off to the Troubagangers Anniversary show at night. Will fix whatever later, so if this whole post is italicised / bolded cause I forgot to close a tag, sorry lah hahhhhh.

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