The Strikeforce

Last night's gig wasn't too bad, except for one glaring problem, the lights of one double-UDM weren't working. I tried like twice to flip the switch on/off but to no avail, as later we found out that the buttons on the left side were jammed (probably when shifting the UDM up the stage or something).

But although the playing didn't downright suck, there was no vibe. I think not enough toms to support, but another critical reason is that a few pple weren't performing. Yeah they might have gotten all the parts right, but there's a different in playing the sequence and performing. When will they learn how to enjoy your performance? Only when you fully immerse yourself in the beat, in the moment, in the performance, when you feel like you're in your ELEMENT, and you lose all kinds of restrictions, when you're playing the gig like its the greatest moment in your life.

Not struggling to keep time with others, or struggling to remember what comes next. Up till the very few mins before the performance, we were still TEACHING certain pple how to play the parts. I wanted to voice out, come on , let Daryl replace the player, but i thought, nevermind, give him a chance. Then some others also made mistakes, my stick broke after about 2 hits, I dunno if anyone else's stick broke too, but then again, if they're not playing with all their strength and all their heart, I don't think the chances of that happening is very high.

I felt terrible after the gig. Yeah, a woman came up to Nic n I to express how good the performance was, she was from CHC too, blah blah, but honestly? I felt played out. Cos I gave it 100%, shouted till my voice was almost gone, only to hear silence in response, maybe only 2 pple shouting with me. I give the performance 4/10.

Totally different from the one on sunday, with Ian n Lianghong n Liting n Lingling n Rallen n Lydia n of cos the MAN NEO! I mean, not to say they're really that good, but they were enjoying themselves. Yeah we made a couple of mistakes here n there, even Lianghong was playing 16s for the firstt 4 bars (haha!) but the thing is, we were laughing and grooving and enjoying ourselves. Even if mistakes were made, the energy and the vibe covered up those mistakes (plus the track was so bloody loud nobody could hear our mistakes).

Yesterday's gig was pretty bad because we didn't internalise the FHW sequence. Granted, I myself haven't played FHW for a long time, probably about 2 months? Then cos I was trying to press the switch for the UDM, I lost count of the first 4 bars of the intro. But in order to compensate for that, I smacked harder, grooved more, shouted more, to give a good performance.

My stamina also dropped, by the time of the long triplet, I could feel my arms beginning to weaken, and I made a mistake at the tag team. But what's done is done, now is to see how we can improve on future performances:

1) we need to internalise the whole sequence, play it with eyes closed in perfect synergy, before we are able to perform

2) we need to check all equipment just before going on stage

3) we need more than 1 tom for FHW support! at least 3 toms. if not cannot really hear. honest, i could only hear the snare and i was keeping time with the snare. i think some were keeping time with the snare, but others were following the tom (which was speeding up) so the timing as a bit off.

but ultimately, i still felt the only thing missing sorely is the vibe. Totally no vibe, not really enjoyable when you scream and nobody screams with you.