remember the slew of new nirvanoid malaysian underground bands in the early 90s? the pity about some of these guys was that the thought of the need of “shitty” playing, without realising the dissonance that you hear from the likes of nirvana or mudhoney was more of a, shall i say, shittiness yang bertempat. guitar world magazine in the early 90’s even rightly described a way to play “shitty”. kurdt’s voice was fantastic, listen to his harmonies. his angsty groans/moans doesn’t equate with out-of-tune singing.

talking about kurdt et al., coincidentally my current iPod playlist has come full circle lately. i’ve not really listen to them proper for a good ten years (proper in this instance is defined as playing it all day all night and finding the chords yourself). it’s back to 1992 again with tunes from this shortlived seattle three-piece. i know the tunes but have a hard time remembering the titles.

“ni lithium kan?”
“ni in bloom la.”

reminds me of lmsn rds’ subsequent comment, “ko ni macam bagak sialll…“.

just be careful when breed comes on when you drive. makes you wish you have your nine iron next to you in the passenger’s seat.

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i also find myself struggling to keep up with what’s new these days. i can see why some of my contemporaries have started going, “let me sing la. let’s do… umm… living on a prayer.” or go, “damn, more than words is the shiznit.” as in saying it only like last week. i take pride in trying to keep up, as i’m sure it’ll be uncommon to see some of my late 30’s contemporaries checking out a band like the ting tings.

if you think about it, imagine buying cd’s of 10 new bands each year. if i was to do that from the age of 20, i’d have in my list approximately 180 bands, added to the ones i’ve already liked since the age of 14 (just picked a year la). bearing in mind not all of these 180 bands would have survived the 18 years, with these bands churning out an average of two records every two years, it’ll be a right feat to really follow all of them. not forgetting the fact that i tend to retrospectively try out older stuff (eg i didn’t really listen to black sabbath until i was 30). so, i find myself ignoring some great stuff in my CD collection. take the nirvana example i mentioned earlier.

therefore, i reckon my 30-something friends who live in a time warp have it eas(ier) – to this date, they probably have the same 10 bands they’ve been listening to, going on about how great they are and how shit the new bands are these days.

“apa la budak-budak sekarang dengar ni. dulu saya dengar band macam [insert old band here]. macam tu la muzik, bukan bising macam lagu-lagu awak sekarang ni. haih.”

sounds familar?

in the past few years, sources of new stuff include recommendation from idlan “slit wrist one tree hill” zakaria. not seen much from that end of the blogosphere recently, so these days it’s either the minimalis or the boys of boleh bla. i’m checking out post-rock at the mo. unlike nirvana’s breed, stuff by mono makes me want to leave my nine iron at home.