“Smiling to Keep that “Rock” Alive”
michael and Tai Suan were the co-founders of Uglymen. They were smiling, and the air filled with laughters during the over an-hour long interview. They walked down memory lane and tell us how they ended up as the 3-piece unique band today.
michael is a music teacher, Tai Suan is a project manager, while Say Hooi who joined Uglymen in 1998 is a system programmer. Tai Suan recalled, during the early years of our band, all members were residing in different locations. Tai Suan himself was studying in Penang, michael and former drummer KJ were staying in Alor Star, while their no-nonsense bassist Boon Lai (formerly the famed Innocent band) was doing his business in Kangar. So each week, they will rotate the location of practise, such as week 1 will be in Kangar, and week 2 might be in Alor Setar. Some times we felt really tired but the passion was there to keep the band and music alive.
“Budget was a big headache”
Tai Suan added “One of the most severe headache we had was budget. As we llive in different places, i mean really far apart, we had to plan where and when to rent a studio. In addition, 4 of us have to travel few hundreds kilometre just for a two-hour jam session.
On how the three of them got to know each other, michael explained the day where the initial 5-member band VINTAGE met. “We were playing music in the same music school, and the boss planned to hold a full-length concert to collect donations for Kidney Dialysis Centre. The event was co-organised by LION club of Alor Setar. On the 2nd of April, 1994, VINTAGE Charity Unplugged Concert was held, we performed our very first public performance in front of over 1,500 crowd at the now defunct Dewan Dato Syed Omar. We played 16 songs consist of mostly BEYOND’s numbers, as BEYOND’s lead man Wong Ka Kui died in a filming tragedy less than a year ago.
“Grab the chance or it’ll be gone forever”
The music scene / music industry is very different from other professions.
You get to know so many people aroud the world, make new friends, and understand others’ cultures. Tai Suan said “The most important value in playing music is making new friends, we cant survive without friends, and by knowing more people, that motivates us to play better and make better music”
Coming up in # Part 3: How Vintage (5-piece) ended up as Uglymen (3-piece) today; What had to be sacrificed in order to maintain the band; Advice to the younger generations who want to succeed in life and music.
7 responses so far ↓
taisuan // Dec 28, 2006 at 10:10 am
huh? me project manager? sure or not? kekeke… me = IT tech support only… bwahahaha
michael // Dec 28, 2006 at 10:17 am
yeah yeah… u project manager, me project worker…. kekeke..
Silver Isle // Dec 28, 2006 at 2:21 pm
Wah lao eh. Why now the font size down here is so huge?
ric // Dec 28, 2006 at 5:37 pm
michael // Dec 28, 2006 at 9:52 pm
stupid wordpress la… duno why…
Ric wat u trying to say, you oways say so deep, no one undersdtand oh….
rambo // Dec 29, 2006 at 11:14 pm
16 songs most of them were beyond’s?
wow..wonder do you still remember what songs you played?
Silver Isle // Dec 30, 2006 at 3:07 am
They still have the video recording of the day I supposed. Kekeke.
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