Quick Recap : December 2012 Jogja Tour

One good thing about doing a tour is the stories that come with it. It doesn't matter if the tour is a "success" or not. You will be left with plenty of stories, good or bad. I'm about to share some of the things that happened during our recent trip to Jogja as well as report from the shows we did. 

1st show : in front of Nimco distro (Saturday, December 22th)

We didn't get a chance to do a sound-check because by the time we arrived there -about half an hour before the show was supposed to start- the generator for the electricity hadn't been available. I thought we'd just do a quick one before we play our set. The show had to stop by 10 PM due to permit issues, so we were racing against time.

Arpappel was the one to open the show that night. They were loud. And noisy. With feedback squeaking from all over the amps. They had two basses, although it's too bad one of them was hardly audible due to technical issue with the amp. They were good! 

Talking Coasty was up next. They were late so they played a short set. It seemed from the get-go that they were a bit under-prepared for the gig. Singer Veni told me apparently they had to get subtitutes for bass and drum at the very last minute. It's also a shame that the amp for the microphones was simply coudn't properly support the level of volume needed for the gig, resulting the vocals to be drowned under the instruments.

Skandal played quite well. If you're a fan of 90's alternative rock, then they're right up your alley. They did a Pavement cover! The drummer Agha, is also in Nervous who was supposed to play, but unfortunately couldn't. Skandal's singer Sidha had been stuck in Jakarta and couldn't make it to Jogjakarta in time (it was almost christmas, train tickets were hard to come by) so they had the bassist doing the lead vocals.

Then we played. Time was running out so I kinda just quickly set up my pedals and turned a few knobs on the amp and we were good to go. I wish i had used the other amp and go stereo, but it's okay. We had cut the one song off our set to make sure Anggisluka, the band after us get enough time to play. 

Anggisluka was really good. From what i remember, they did the 90's dreamy shoegaze/rock with tons of delay and reverb. They were also the only band who brought vocal pedal. Gotta have those delicious reverb on the vocals. Their guitarist/singer Ito said it was their last show because the other band members live somewhere else. I hope that's not true because they were definitely the highlight of the show for me. 

2nd Show : Jogja National Museum (Sunday, December 23rd)

We got slotted into the lineup of Sunday show about 3 days before we left Jakarta, so the nature of gig was different than the previous day. We were simply a guest. Unlike Saturday show, there were tons of bands playing on this one. With the exception of Wicked Suffer and Sistem Rijek (who unfortunately we missed), all of them are hard rock/alternative/grunge bands. 
 

The venue was simply awesome. It was this empty abandoned building by the corner of JNM huge mass concrete complex. Inside it's nothing but floor and walls with some graffiti on them. Total punk rock. We ended up hanging outside the building and went inside to check out bands occasionally. Most of the bands were playing really loud anyway.
 

Wicked Suffer was on before us. By the time they played, the mic had already died on them. But it didn't matter, because the crowd was singing with them. There was a lot of moshing as expected. It was a killer performance. 
 

Then it was us. By that time, most people had already left. There were maybe less than twenty people in the room. Since the mic was not working, we decided to go instrumental. It all went well until at the end of the second song, I broke my D string. It was really late past midnight and changing my string would just zap out the energy in the room, so we went on. We decided to do one jam piece and called it a night. 

Other Highlights :

- Interviews with Alphabeta Journal, Kanaltigapuluh Internet Radio, and Swaragama 101.7 FM
  

The Alphabeta Journal interview started off serious and soon turned somewhat into a series of  laughters thanks to our part-time bassist, part-time comedian, Gary. Thanks to Hilman Fathoni for the interview. Check out Alphabeta Journal here.

Our interview with Kanaltigapuluh went for over an hour since it was recorded and going to be released as podcast. It didn't feel like an interview. It was more like a bunch of friends hanging out at night and talked about music. It was enjoyable. Thank you Eka, Arie Mindblasting and others who were involved. Check out Kanaltigapuluh Radio here. 

We were really lucky to land an interview with Swaragama. Asad (Tripping Junkie), the announcer of the Fresh Meat session -the one we would be on later- happened to watch our show on Saturday. He came up to us and said if we'd like to do an interview. We said yes. Thank you Asad and Swaragama 101.7 FM! 

- Our car broke down at 11 PM 

No tour is complete without some sort of story of van breaking down, missing gears or anything along those lines. Well, we got one for you. Right after our show on Saturday, our car refused to start. We had to leave it overnight and picked it up the morning after. After that, it's been a series of catching overcharging one cab to another. 

- Gary had too much to drink at JNM show

No explanations needed for this one. If you were at the show, you'd know the story. 

 

We'd like to show our gratitude and say heaps of thanks to Anggia Murni, Indra Menus, Adit Arpappel, Rangga, Kongsi Jahat, Syndicate, Wicked Suffer boys, Eka, Hilman Fathoni, Asad, Dea, Anitha Silvia, all the bands we played with, show organizers and every single person who came to our shows and talked to us.