SUPERBAR WOOO HOOO, WE’RE HERE! International Tour 2007 Part 2

Ok, part 2 is a little late. *heh*

Took me a while to find those damn suspenders.

Anyhows, we needed them for the cover of Power of Love at the gig later.

No, you can’t imagine Celine frickin Dion wearing suspenders right?

Wrong version.

Nah, we just added the song from Back to the Future to our regular list, and we have to say it’s fitting in quite well.

The Suspenders are for Marty. See the resemblance?

Anyhows, if you’re ever going to buy suspenders, the best place would be to look in skate shops. Bought mine for SGD13 (discounted from SGD17). They’re the same ones they sell in tailor shops for about five times the price.

Also, if you need to wear them in a hurry - oh i don’t know, maybe in a concert or a fire or something - make sure you practice beforehand…

The gig started off a bit shaky. Ching and Willie had come up with a hand signal for Same Way I Do, which was pretty cool, but no one else seemed to get it :(

As we progressed through each song tho, the crowd grew.

From a few uncles and aunties, and young indian couples, the group diversified to include joggers, parents n even a few kids (probably the ones scared off by LIED’s kickass gig the day before).

By the time we reached Power of Love, there was quite a sizable crowd there, clapping quite enthusiastically, and making us basically feel like superheroes. Unfortunately, i had problems putting on the damn suspenders.

Luckily enough, there was a huge shuffle of feet as people rushed up to grab free CDs from Bala and Sen Kiat. Yup, See? Singaporeans and Malaysians aren’t really all that different.

After i managed to figure out the suspenders, Sen Kiat hit that familiar riff from Huey, and it felt like a hammer had just hit us. We were bouncing up and down the stage, and even Bala was alternating between jumping and looking like he was in some sorta drug-induced trance.

and once we were done, the applause was absolutely glorious!

Later, after the gig, I was packing my stuff, and telling the band what a kickass performance we just put up.

Two canadian guys shout to me from offstage.

White guy #1: “Dude, that was an awesome gig!”
White guy #2: “Ya man, we’re from Canada”

Well, i think they said a bit more than that, but i have really bad short term memory, so sorry for the lack of detail. Anyway, you get the gist of it.

Needless to say that after that, I had a smile plastered on for the rest of the night.

Later, back at our Language Centre lodgings, I noticed Bala was shifting around in the sheets a good half hour after the lights went down.

“Dude, you’re still thinking about the gig, aren’t you?” I ask

“hahahaha, yea man. It was damn awesome! I can’t stop smiling!”

we went out for a ciggie, and talked for hours about the band, life and everything in between.

And for the rest of the trip, the thought of my crumpled wreck of a car back home didn’t even cross my mind.

Until i saw it. *sniff*

June 20, 2007 | Filed Under on the road, Previous Gigs | Leave a Comment 

SUPERBAR WOOO HOOO, WE’RE HERE! International Tour 2007 Part 1

It didn’t really start all that well.

• Bala and Suren were still on Malaysian time, and ended up in my house an hour late.
• Once we got in, I was afraid of getting stopped by cops. With the three darkies and me in the car, it looked like a kidnapping (oh yea, Sen Kiat went a day earlier to bonk).
• We had shitty fishball noodles in Yong Peng. Just for reference to anybody who hears about Yong Peng’s fishball noodles – the fishballs are awesome, but the noodles and soup are shit.
• We got lost on the way to the ‘Hotel’ in Singapore, which had a big sign outside that says “LEARN ENGLISH HERE!!”
• The clincher - 1 hour after arriving in our grumpy neighbour’s backyard, I found out that some underaged girl had just plowed her Kembara into two of my cars.

What a way to start off Superbar’s first and last leg of our International Tour.

Luckily enough, the rest of the band were in high spirits. After 4 years, this is actually the first real road trip we were taking. It helped that we all have similar tastes in music, so the music in the car and even in the room (on my excellent Logitech Ipod Portable Speakers) really helped set the mood.

Also, Suren’s car was doing its best Little Miss Sunshine impersonation all the way to Singapore (it kept dying around highway corners), so we had a real blast on the way down, talking shit and wordplaying every sentence with “Busteeeeeeerrrd” (inside joke for anyone who’s heard Shine by Pete Teo.

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Superbar in the car

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Bugs Bala

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No caption necessary

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Our Beatiful home at RELC, where many peoples is learn good english! Thanks RELC!

Anyhows, after finishing packing and giving words of encouragement to help individual band members past constipation, we went straight to the venue of our performance to check out the band performing the night before us – LIED.

The venue was Esplanade, which is sort’ve at the end of Orchard road. It’s a huge stage sponsored by Nokia facing Marina Bay, and your audience is basically anybody who’s walking by and happens to be interested – in tonight’s case, a weird mixture of aunties, mat rockers and tourists.

Right from the time we got there and had our first shitty Singaporean meal (Kuey Tiao and Prawn mee at Makansutra), LIED could not stop talking about how awesome soundcheck was – how it started on time, how they really felt special with the crew and how absolutely amazing the sound was.

When the time came for their performance, it proved right. LIED sounded better than they ever have before (cept on their bootleg MP3s, which we have, of course). Every instrument came through beautifully and Adlin’s groar during their cover of Quiet by Smashing Pumpkins made sure that only the hardcore aunties stayed around for the rest of the performance.

When it was over, the only thing I was thinking was…

“I can’t wait for tomorrow!!!!!!”

And the rest of the band felt the same. Sen Kiat (who performs with LIED) told us he didn’t even want to get off the stage after soundcheck. We didn’t even think too much of the lukewarm responses of a casual audience.

All we were thinking about was how awesome it’d be to be playing on that stage.

All I was thinking about was where the heck to buy my suspenders.

Stay tuned for Part 2 on Frida 15th May – promise!

May 15, 2007 | Filed Under on the road, gigs, Previous Gigs | Leave a Comment