Hi Peeps,
For the last few posts I’ve been focused on other gay lifestyle issues. Here's a music review for today. Last Friday, your intrepid techno deejay found himself, plus husband, at the only live appearance in KL of American indie rock band MGMT.
It wasn’t the best night of my life, I have to say. The gig wasn’t that well organised and the venue was more like an aircraft hangar than an indoor stadium suitable for a rock gig. My first impressions were ‘No, no, no!’
No 1: no queuing system or crowd control, which worked in my favour because I'm a sneaky old dog but I feel I should complain about it anyway, on behalf of all those people who stood in line but moved backwards in the queue. The only crowd control measure in evidence was to shunt women from one line to another so that they could be frisked by female security staff. All women, not just Malay girls in tudong, of which there were a surprising number. .
No 2: no alcohol. Alcohol is not my thing. I get drunk really easily. Unkindly, one friend has told me that ‘I get pissed on a barman’s fart’. I’ve tried to keep my distance from bars and flatulent barmen ever since. So the lack of alcohol didn’t bother me, but I found myself concerned for al those kids. Don’t they know how bad Coca-Cola is for the body?
No 3: and this was a biggie. No toilet paper. Not even any hoses in the cubicles. To be fair, there was soap and running water in the sinks but at a certain point in the night you could have made me happy by plunging my hand into a vat of boiling bleach. You get the picture.
Enough of these trivial complaints about ambience and amenities. How was the show? We were warmed up by an MC. He introduced himself by telling us, quite rightly, that his name was irrelevant because all we cared about was MGMT. He then did proceed to tell us his name and also the name of his show on Astro but I forgot, primarily because it was irrelevant.
Anyway, he warmed us up by getting the right side of a fairly small crowd to chant against the left side and the left side to chant against the middle and we were all supposed to scream ‘yeah-uh’ and ‘oh-yeah-uh’ after him. His crowd warming skills were average and left me lukewarm. Now if we’d been chanting ‘THERE’S NO HOSE IN THE TOILETS. YEAH-UH!’ I might have sung louder.
At fever pitch, he introduced local band Kymxmygh Prsml but sadly, his elocution wasn’t very good. I can now reveal, after extensive online research, that their name was, in fact Kyoto Protocol. Apparently they’d been selected by MGMT to be their warm up act out of over 250 candidates. I’d like to say nice things about them but I really can’t. I begin to wonder about the real motives for their selection.
I suppose they had a few quirky tempo changes that caught my interest for a bit and some control of dynamics - they knew how to go loud and soft and they did. Visually, they looked truly awful - like an overweight unkempt boy band or a bunch of waiters in white shirts from an upmarket food court. I asked myself if I could ever grow to love them and the answer was no.
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| White man in Trilby. You heard it here at Freedom |
Strangely, there were lots of white men there. A few vintage wines from my generation and a whole heap of unripened punky, bleached, tattooed yoofs who I’ve never seen in KL before. I didn’t know there were so many of us. What's more, I got quite a few 'Hi Oran's' from enlightened queens not addicted to MTV and divas.
Oh, and there were lots of Trilby hats. Please note: Freedom KL is never going to be a blog where you get hot fashion tips about what to wear and what not to wear but just this once, listen up. Trilby’s are ‘in’. You heard it here last!
Oh, and there were lots of Trilby hats. Please note: Freedom KL is never going to be a blog where you get hot fashion tips about what to wear and what not to wear but just this once, listen up. Trilby’s are ‘in’. You heard it here last!
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| The big boyz come on... |
Finally the big boyz came on. From the first note you could hear the difference in stature between the support band and the main act. Melodious, accomplished, disciplined and confident. MGMT have got some great songs. They were let down by the venue and their sound system, which simply wasn’t right for the cavernous space. Like the crowd, it simply didn’t fill it.
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| Not a charismatic band |
The lights and back projection were OK but not stunning. I don’t think they’re a charismatic band. In fact, they didn’t bond too much with the crowd. But they played a good set full of highs and lows and sudden surprises – sometimes romantic, sometimes psychedelic, often irresistibly dancey. When they played Kids, we all went wild and jumped up and down. Could I love MGMT? Yeah, I guess I could.
If you haven’t heard them before here’s a song of theirs called Electric Feel
But I’m a dance deejay. Here’s a great dance remix of the same song by Hot Natured, called Electric Jones. It's a long teasing mix but bear with it, you’ll hear the original chorus come in half way through.
I've been saving the best till last. Here's a glorious video of Time to Pretend, which will have all you boyz blinking at the pretty boy singer shooting his fiery arrows...
MGMT -Time to Pretend
It was a horrible night for me unfortunately, tortured by out-of-tune, noisy sound all through the gig. And there was no escape! There seemed to be no sense of sound engineering from the organizer and the band of this live show. The venue was terrible. Lack of sound proofing and relative arrangement. The result is an out-of-tune performance. I don't know if others really enjoyed and felt a good night of music. I didn't. And I know from past experience that even in live show, you can reach the level of CD listening with good sound tuning. But not this one. The night is called 'experience live'. I did. And it was horrifying! And I learned that even a first-class band can fall miserably without proper support.
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