Mood: Blur
Listening To: Nothing









The Performance:

Soundcheck was not bad but scary.  Of course, they had inexperienced soundmen once again during the first soundcheck which made things horrible for some of us.  Ear piercing settings for the bass, guitars, and vocals.  Uneven sound level for instruments, and the list goes on.  Thank goodness that the better soundmen came by right before the whole thing started.

What scared me was that whenever they did the sound check for the drums, and when they kicked the bass drum, I heard extra jingles.  I looked up, and I saw air condition ventilation ducts and a shit load of flurocent lights.  Yeah, the sound kind of.. moved the things up there which gave me the idea of it all being shattered halfway through the performance, hitting innocent audiences, but that wouldn't happen now, would it?

The performance was not that bad.  Except that I performed with an empty stomach and a thirsty mouth.  Seriously, a bad experience for myself.  And when I was performing halfway, I couldn't really feel my 1st/e string.  My fear was that it could've snapped which will cause the other strings to go out of tune as well.  But I have faced a new problem last night.  My string was being pushed off the fret board, and it was trapped behind my first fret.

I never new that'll happen to me.. Talk about Steve Vai hitting his strings so hard until his 1st string gets stuck behind his neck pickup.  Lol

Panic Overdrive.  Ahhh.. The usual lah.  Got heavy metal song, head bang.  Got solo, went solo.  When there were no vocals but only instruments, did some never-done-before Steve Vai top and bottom necks based on 4 beats-in-a-bar sorta thing (And yay!  The crowd cheered!! XD XD XD XD XD).  Then came.. Well, most probably, a signature by many great guitarists - the 2-hands-on-the-neck legato trick:

But not this one, of course:

But then again, for the night, watching school children playing Elvis Presley sorta music was really good.  I don't know how, and where, but bloody hell.  Watching a 13 year old kid playing super clean country blues riffs made me super jealous!  Also, I respected the whole band.  Seriously, I never watched anything better.

There were various music genres for the night.  I enjoyed them all.  And it was crazy.  The drummer for Panic Overdrive, Joshua Tan, was the drummer for the Flaming Pandas (Underwhere).  The guitarist and bassist of the Flaming Pandas were in Evan's (ex-drummer for Dysnomia) new project.  It was like, all of us were sharing members.  And since Evan, Ying Kit, Roy and I were there, we decided to pull of a personal joke by going on stage together to play what we used to play back in 2005 in Dysnomia.  Lol

Ahhh.  The whole concert thing didn't go bad.  It went pretty well, except I think that it wasn't properly promoted because I didn't really see many people?  Plus the hall was sooooo small O_O.

After that, I headed off to watch Spiderman 3.










Spiderman 3

Once again, Marvel or the movie director has done it again.  But then again, the viewers of movies like these won't ever know the true storyline for the comic-converted-into-the-movie sort of thing.  Besides the storyline, I have only three say.

1) The part where the two policemen were trying to look for Sandman in the streets after he got used to his new powers, the camera was really bad.  Inexperienced First Person Shooter gamers or those who never played FPS games, could've got dizzy.  The whole scene reminded me of a bad game of Half-Life.  Even Quake 3 wasn't as bad as that.

I don't know what they're trying to pull off.

2) Venom's a dumbass.  I mean, seriously.  I remember in the comics where the symbiote got to Eddie Brock, he had an IQ of..well, nothing.  I never heard Venom speak so much.  Of course, he wasn't as dumb as The Hulk, but.. Whatever.

Oh.  And they missed out on this in the movie:



What?  Oh.  I'll give you 4 other pictures so you can spot the similarity..










There you go.  They missed out on Venom's signature!  The tongue and the shitload of droolings.  Boo hoo :(

3) I don't like the Black Spiderman.  Too much bling blings.  At least make the suit look like a signature or a sign of the symbiote.  Venom was supposed to look like the Black Spiderman and vice versa, only because of the symbiote.  I prefer the Black Spiderman this way.  I find it super sexayh <3


That's it from me, I suppose.  Now, I'll just wait for Spiderman 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 for Venom's offsprings to appear in the movie.. Carnage <3



Then comes Scream, Hybrid, and that purple symbiote with the long frog legs dude..

Half way through, we saw Stan Lee!!!!  Now that was worth the wait!  The legend of Marvel <3.. Now, which Marvel movie was it again that we never got to see Stan Lee?  Hmmm..

Overall, Spiderman 3 is not bad.  But for serious Spidey hardcore fans, I wouldn't dare say.  The first Spiderman already pissed off half of the world.  Same went for the second Spiderman, on a lesser scale.  Spiderman 3?  Don't know lah.

Besides, I'm picky these few days.  Lol









*sneezes*

Mood: Blur
Listening to: The Spinning Fan









Ahhh.  Nothing beats a late night, and a good, long rest.  Anyways, yesterday's guitar clinic was awesome.  Once again, another door of knowledge has been opened for me.  Guitar clinics are not about tapping, ultra fast solos, etc.

In the words of Wes Borland:  "In fact, Ocean of Fire are here tonight, and all of them just blow me away when they're on the guitars!"

Of course, the guitar clinic turned out to be different than I expected as I wanted to see what sort of solos that Wes Borland plays or can pull off.  But my whole concept of Wes Borland is mistaken.  He's not a "Guitar God" that we all would call him.  Examples:  Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, John Pettruci, etc.  He admits that he's none of those guitarists that he mentioned last night.

In fact, he's more onto a band mate, more to a solo artist.  He's not even a guitarist when he's in a band.  He shared with us about how he writes his guitar riffs, and composes music.  He focuses on what's around him, and not what he is.  He sees the band, and listens to the drums and bass. From there, he coordinates both of the instruments, and he gets his diffs up.  In a simple bar, consists both of how the bass and drums would play.

And his style?  Although lack of solos, it's extremely unique.  Now I see why people respect and go nuts all over Wes Borland.. His style is just so... extraordinary.  This makes me want to pick up Limp Bizkit's albums and re-listen to what he would play, usually would play, and what he was forced to do.










And like many musicians, Wes Borland does put his emotions into whatever he does.  In fact, he loves to experiment with a lot of effects pedals which makes him sound very.. grand.  Y'know, during the last song, he used a violin bow to play the guitar..well, like how a violinist play a violin.  Came up with a few rhythmic muted guitar riffs, and turned it into an African percussion rhythm.  Arggh.  I wish I had a digital camera, but I think Michelle Oh took a few videos.. So if you all are interested, drop her a message at her Multiply site, wait for updates or just contact her straight on MSN.










I can't really explain much.  I'm bad in turning actions that I've seen into words.










Oh.  And last night was a minor gathering between musicians.  Met up with Ocean of Fire and Uglymen :D.. Managed to take a picture with Uglymen also, and I'm waiting for that picture.. Michael Lee has the pictures of me, Ying Kit, and Michelle with Wes Borland, soooo..we're waiting.  :D

And I'll keep you all updated if you all are interested in seeing pictures of the clinic.  Michael took a few.










Also, Tai Suan and Michael asked the most questions about Wes Borland.  Reasons why he left Limp Bizkit, the way he composes music, the guitar he uses, autographing Wes Borland's effect pedals and giving it to Michael -_-.. Lots of good and weird questions at the same time.  Muahahahahahahaha..










Now, when is Mic Thompson coming by to Penang, eh?  Lol










Update from Uglymen.net:  More pictures of the Yamaha Asian Beat.  Looked really good :(

Mood: Tired
Listening To: Nothing









I'm here, teaching Ying Kit how to use Reason.  Gah.  Tiring like hell.

Anyways, today, we had our weekly Panic Overdrive jamming session, and today was a little bit different.  Coming up with new flavours based on old school inspiration - Which is very suprising.  A mix of INXS and Offsprings.  Havoc, man.  Musical havoc.

Besides that, the last two songs, the whole band did Blues, man.  From Punk Rock, Rock, Ol' Skool Rock, Heavy Metal... to .. Strong country blues.  I actually had fun playing lead along with Ying Kit.. First time after so long, both of us used our guitars to.. actually, communicate.

Of course, for those people with different aspects and mindsets, y'all would've thought we were gay, but no.  This is serious music harmony.  Best thing was that he was playing aggressively as he depended on the minor pentatonic scale, and I did the major..

When we came up to the last bar, and when we were going to finish up the song.. Both of us switched on our light distortions, and played sweet harmony.  Of course, it sounded messy, but there was a light harmonous ringing going on










:)










More to come from Panic Overdrive :)