La Bodega video
Now this came as a pleasant suprise. We came across a video of our La Bodega show on YouTube. (actually we first discovered it from a blog of one of the fans). We’ll also be putting up some videos of the show soon, as Dinesh managed to get the whole gig on video cam.
We’ve gotten a lotta rave comments about the show we played at La Bodega, including this one that was posted in one of the blogs. Read more about it here.
But i think of all the performance, i loved Superbar’s set. Their first song was awesome man. I got it on video and i feel like kicking myself for not recording the whole song. Now i’ve got it on loop for like …… 100 times. Anybody knows the name of the song in the video and if they’re coming up with an album cause so far i don’t think i’ve seen any superbar albums yet. Check it out! I simply loved the arrangements. 3 on guitar and one on bass.
We got a slot at this year’s Fete de la Musique as a result of this gig. Will talk more about it soon.
Chak to The Future
Michael J Fox plans to sue us for using his image to near perfection.
This pic is taken from our Singapore gig. Why did I only put it up after 3 months?
Cos I’m lazy ok? Got a problem with that?
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*
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!
Rock Safe at KL Jam Asia
We were recently invited to perform at a fund-raising event organized by Taylor’s College called Rock Safe. The gig was part of a series of events to send out a clear message that drugs aren’t cool. The turn out was pretty good and Jam Asia was packed to the brim. The line up of bands was excellent as well, with big names like Tempered Mental playing alongside newcomers FYPK.
Say no to drugs, not beer!
Interview with Hitz.TV just before we hit the stage
Just listen to me!!
The crowd seemed to love it
Five Years Pending Knife
How could we possibly say no to this lot?
Pictures from the Laundry Gig
Ok folks!! Photos are up now. These photos were taken by one of our bigger fans, Alan from the band FYPK. (We’re playing a gig with them on 12 August at Taylor’s College) There’s more pictures on Laundry’s Official Blog.
The view from Leonard’s (sound maestro) console
Keeping in tune!
Dinesh has officially replaced Sen Kiat as the band’s pretty boy
Pretty awesome turnout, a view from the side
Isaac Entry & Friends
All in the family - Superbar & FYPK. Adlin’s taking photos, so thats two-fifth’s of Lied
The Laundry Gig
As a highlight for a week that has been pretty hectic for the band, we played at Laundry on Thursday. There’s an article in The Star about the place today. Now I’ve already told you how much we were looking forward to playing there and to prove that point, this was the first time everyone (yes ….EVERYONE) looked all spiffy on stage at the same time. I managed to not wear the total opposite of everone else & Bala steered away from his Killer Panda shirt! Yup, we are (were?) walking contradictions of metrosexual rock. How did that label come up anyway? Sen Kiat & Chak still give us hope though.
On the whole, it was a decent show although I guess feeling spent after the sleepless nights recording Same Way I Do & Rollercoaster this week might have robbed us of the ability to put up a super show. (as opposed to a decent show) We’ll post some pictures of the show soon.
Anyhow, it’s back to recording mode as we head down to Standing Wave Studio (Meng’s place) to review same way, out of body & rollercoaster. Shit I’m late.
-suren
Fete de la Musique
We also played at this year’s Fete on June 17th. The event was held at two locations, Bangsar and Alliance Francaise, Jalan Semarak. Our slot was at Alliance Francaise, in the afternoon. The event at Alliance Francaise was divided into 4 stages scattered all over the place, so that people can walk around and check out an eclectic selection of music, both French & Malaysian. We managed to catch up with a couple of guys who have performed with us previously - Flow (a reggae-funk band who played a gig at Little Havana yesterday, but we had to skip it unfortunately), Y2K, Peter Brown, Azmyl and Sei Hon. Nothing much to report about coz it all happened in a daze and there were no photographs to show.
Oh yeah, except for a notice to one of the groups that played in the afternoon. They played indoors and had a didgeridoo and a whole bunch of percussions. I thought that band was awesome but could not catch the whole show coz they played the same time we did. We really would like to know who they are.
We also managed to get some positive comments from Rex, a radio DJ from XFresh FM, who happened to be at our set. Oh yeah, Bala mentioned the other day that Rollercoaster’s now playing on XFresh FM. 
Pictures from the Troubagangers Show
Got these pictures from Dinesh, who decided to sit this one out. He also took some video shots of the performance, which would answer a couple of questions:-
a) Is Bala engrossed with observing the imaginary colony of ants in front of him every time we take to stage?
b) Does Chak really like Lazy Sunday that much that he has to play with himself everytime he sings it?
c) Should the band allow Suren to indulge in a couple of beers before a show?
d) No questions about Sen Kiat, he’s the cool guy in the band!
Anyway, enough babbling. Here are some pictures. Check the rest out in the Photo section.
WPFD & Troubaganger’s - The Aftermath
This was a day when for some reason, everybody in the band were not in the best of shape. Sore throat, bad case of the flu, lack of sleep and stuff. I don’t know about the rest but I was popping Panadols like freakin’ M&Ms the whole day. Anyway, we managed to soldier on and put up decent performances in the afternoon & at night.
The World Press Freedom Day gig in the afternoon went pretty well. We were kinda worried about not getting a crowd, due to the fact that we were opening the day’s gig and were scheduled to start at 12 pm. But I have to say the crowd was actually bigger than we had expected. So I guess we started the gig on the right footing. Gig organizer, Hasbee did a great job in roping bands that played an eclectic set of tunes. Managed to stay on to watch Flow, with their reggae-like, funky as hell music. Makes you wish you were chilling on the beaches of Redang/Perhentian! Broken Scar was up next. Bought his CD a couple of weeks ago, and I must say he sounds just as good singing live. Played a great set which sent the crowd roaring when he played the intro to “Eye of the Tiger” Hahaha……rawk kapak rules!! Hasbee’s got a write up on the event here. (will post the link for day 2 once its up) Anyway, we’d like to extend a very special thanks to Hasbee and Sonia who organized the show and got us on board.
Headed back around 2 pm to catch some snoozes and gather our energy up for the La Bodega gig. The show which co-incided with Troubadours & Doppelgangers birthday celebration was a total blast. The whole place was packed to the brim and the crowd was extremely supportive towards all the acts of the night. There were a couple of open mic poetry recitals as well as performance from Malokai Gruv (Azwan’s band), before we took to stage. Played a short set - Same Way, Out of Body, Lazy Sunday, which I think went well with the crowd. Big shout out to Jasmine who organized & mc-ed the event. Happy Birthday Troubagangers!!
15 hours, 6 beers, 4 Panadols, 2 shows and 1 beef noodles later, I crashed into bed (again, bad idea to say “we”) thinking, damn….I could just keep on doing this! Pictures to be available soon.
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About
Superbar is a pop rock/power pop band based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Fronted by sometime singer-songwriter Chak with lead guitarist Bala, eclectic rockers Superbar came together in 2004. Read More >> -
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