My other friend told me that the Singapore band was boo-ed a few years ago when the ABGF was held in Malaysia (Malaysia won that year with a fusion band, see the connection with fusion and campions? Maybe we should go fusion… haha…). I heard that it’s because every single band was very technical, except Singapore. They played modern/alternative rock stuff, that’s why they got boo-ed.

Mickey told me that his professor in his music college in Singapore (La-salle) finds that “the kids here (SG) are spoiled, they are too lazy too practise…”. I guess that quite sums up everything.

And the ONLY photo I took was this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/magnificent1986/Image529.jpg

Sorry, but I can’t recall a single band name, and some of the songs also escapes me, I’ll just list down some stuff that I can remember. The major difference in rules is each band is required to perform one cover and one original number, this is to make sure the band they picked to represent Singapore is an “all-rounder”. And two of the songs should not exceed 10 mintues.

Singapore’s Asian Beat final was held on the 25th of November at Plaza Singapura’s front plaza (outside McD’s). It started 6.30 sharp with last year’s Singapore Asian Beat champion, they did some covers of Rage Against the Machine etc.

7 Bands took part in the finals. A total of 80 (!) bands took part in this year’s Singapore Asian Beat Finals.

Different paragraphs denotes different band.

The first band, if I’m not mistaken, they are called Jabbaholics (sp?). They had one guitarist, one keyboardist (sling around like a guitar one, what’s that called?), one drummer (duh…), one bassist, one vocalist, and………… one saxophonist (cool!). They all look very young (teenagers), accept for the bassist (looks 20-ish). The first song was Donna Summer’s Bad Girls, after that, their own song called Angel. The vocalist said that “I believe that there’s an angel behind every bad girl, so we wrote this song called Angel”. Nice showmanship and interaction with the audience and within the band, very tight too. There’s a part where each and every instrument had its own solo break. The sax is just so beautiful, and sits very nicely in the whole mix. Then there’s this breakdown, where the vocalist sang small verses and duets with the sax, keyboard, guitar and the bass. Very very very cool. Guitarist was ok, mostly consist of funky wah+clean rhythm strumming. One more thing, I think they played for 20 minutes! Why is this so? The rules stated only 10 minutes per band for 2 songs. Can anybody enlighten me?

Now, I absolutely forgot about the rest of the show, because most of the bands sounded the same to me. Only the first band really made an impression on me.

There’s a band how played Jimi Hendrix’s Fire, I’ve never heard this song before, but according to my drummer, they revamped it, as in simplified it a lot. The original had a lot of complicated rhythms on drums and guitar, but all this band did was chugga chugga chugga, and not in a metal-chugga manner, more reggae-ish-chugga. This band was funny as hell though, their fans down the stage were just crazy, they danced and jumped a whole lot. The MC later gave them a few freebies, courtesy of Yamaha, for being great fans. The lead singer had a big afro wig on, and later took it of for the second song, I find it sorta lebih to do that.

There’s a band that was really really young, I think 18 or 19 only, and the only all-chinese band of the night. They played a little below average. Not tight at all, guitar not clean too, singing below par compared to other bands. And yes, we also thought why they were in the finals. Oh ya… The singer very handsome. After some discussion with my other band members, we think that the singer is why they got into the finals

This band played and R&B song as their cover, and a similar genre as their original. Forget about how they sounded, but something is worth mentioning here. The vocalist made me think hard when I want to up my antics on stage next time. I may offend somebody with my next comment, but please don’t take it too seriously, as I’m referring to some proper showmanship, read on. The male vocalist was kinda “chubby”, and wears some quite fitting shirt that showed his “asset”. Whilst they were doing an R&B number, this genre normally is synonymous with SEXY, therefore (you’ve guessed it), the singer tried to be “sexy” on stage. Twisting and turning (think Usher), a bit over… I was laughing my butt off. I turned around and looked at the judges, all kept a straight face (how in the world can they keep a straight face?). Anyway, very entertaining to watch.

Then there’s this band that did a Rage Against the Machine cover. When the MC introduced them, he mentioned that this band had tried 3 times before. Everything about this band was RATM, guitarist used tons and tons of effects on his guitar, even the singing pattern of the vocalist. Not hard to see why they never won AB. It’s ok for me if they played exactly like RATM when they are covering their song, but the problem is they played exactly like them on their original. Sigh. Guitar solo also take out the input jack of the guitar, and scratch it somewhere whilst using the whammy pedal. BUT, he didn’t know how to jack it back into the guitar as the YAMAHA guitar provided had a more unorthodox jack position, he manage to have his guitar up and running after half a verse into the rest of the song. This is why musicians should be allowed to use their own instruments on stage, especially on a big stage like AB.

The next band is almost like a clone to the previous band. RATM all the way. Guitarist also did the Tom Morello styled solo and stuff.

All the bands are full of showmanship and interaction with audience, really nice.

After all the bands, the MC briefly told the audience there were gonna be BESTs awards. I was thinking, how are they gonna choose the best guitarist? I didn’t notice any guitarist that’s consistent and clean through out the whole competition. Plus, non of them played anything technical at all, really a very very sad thing for me, as I was hoping to see some great guitar playing. Really disappointed.

I think that’s about it. That’s all I can remember from the show.
My conclusion: Very showmanship oriented, very different from Malaysia which was very technical. Obviously Singapore is more into modern rock and stuff, less technical stuff. Nevertheless, very entertaining indeed.