SEARCH Live at TRCC 2008

Even after IGNITE! Music Festival 2008, I’m still rocking out at TRCC. Except that this time, I’m doing it the old skool way!


The legendary band from Malaysia, Search, is playing live, one night only, at TRCC Theatre. Can you believe that? Firstly, it’s SEARCH; the band which was rocking the region when I used to weigh lighter than a guitar. Secondly, it’s a metal concert here at Republic Polytechnic. It’s been donkey years when I last hope down to a poly to catch metal bands such as Stomping Ground and Ossuary.

AMUK

The best part of this gig is that I’m actually doing monitor engineering! Woohoo! I did made it clear from the start that I don’t mind helping out at the gig, and the gang can still run the show. But for some reasons, they rather I do monitors and I can take on the stress. Personally, I would prefer MooMoo to do it. Really! But my hands eventually landed on the monitor board. And I must say, it felt like an ice cold beer after a hockey game under the hot sun.

RAVEN

Had the honour to meet up with Yama, the FOH engineer for Search. Heard loads of good stuffs people say about him, but I didn’t have the chance to hear his work. The whole time I was just stuck backstage with the bands.

Search had 2 opening bands. One was Amuk, and the other Raven. And going with the feel of the production, I thought I had to knee and bow down to Search. Their setup consisted of 2 sets of musical instruments. The opening bands are not to touch Search’s setup at all. Fair enough coz this is Search’s gig. During setup, it was all about Search. They tuned Search’s drums properly, ensured that the amps are good and kicking. For the opening bands, nobody really care whether they sound check properly, or the equipments are at least working.


During Search’s sound check, one of their setup crew claimed that he’s the monitor engineer for Search. First thing I thought, ‘Great man! Like that I can lepak one corner!’ But I was quick to realise that I wasn’t that lucky. First reaction by Yama, the FOH engineer, was the classic ‘No….’ which I think it goes all the way into the sub-frequencies region. Hehe… Yama confirm with him again, ‘You doing monitors?’ Setup crew replied, ‘Yeah.’ Yama shot a low, ‘No….’ immediately. And this went on for 3 times.

Imagine yourself being stuck in between them with the ‘Yeahs’ and ‘Nos…’ bouncing off across courts. For one, my lepak time depends on this. Next, it was very interesting to see that Yama rather trust a stranger to do monitors for the legendary band, than the band’s setup crew themselves. Very interesting indeed.



During Search’s sound check, I showed the self-acclaimed monitor engineer what I have on the board, which is basically a Yamaha O2R. ‘Oh… This is just like M7CL huh…’ was his comment. OH MY SWEET CHOCOLATE HEAVEN! He has got no idea what he’s doing! In the end I had to do the monitors myself, with him claiming the effort. No way in hell I’m going to let that slip. So I had my fair share of fun. Since he’s the ‘monitor engineer’, I push all the EQs to him, I just push fader only. J It was always a laugh when he asked to cut 8kHz, and reached out, dug at 1kHz, at the wrong channel, simply coz I refused to be his ‘human-remote’ and just showed him where the knobs are.

After Search sound checked, the production crew all fly kite. Nobody left to coordinate the rest of the sound check. And to add toppings, one of the bass amp wasn’t to the opening band’s liking and one of the speaker cones weren’t working. They refused to go for alternatives or proceed with sound check. They stood firm and requested for a change in bass amp. And guess what, all this drama-rama happened just 15 minutes before house open. Just great.



Finally the replacement bass amp came, when house had already been opened for 45 minutes, and the gig was already late. The band finally found new drive to walk out on stage in their flippers to conduct their own sound check, right in front of a full audience! As everyone knows that Amuk will only perform with their masks on, the audience knew that the bands are not ready to start, even when it’s already over an hour past published start time.

As the clock ticked on, the organisers were nowhere to be found. When we finally found someone, who was only in charge of playing sponsors’ video, she had no clue either. And she revealed that the show emcees weren’t around either. Soon, the crowd got really rowdy from waiting.



Finally when we got to start, the stage was just roaring loudness from the very 1st minute to the last. The opening bands came and went. And I’m too lazy to continuing writing any further….

My fortress for stage monitors