I recently viewed my old VHS tapes of gigs played long past. My performances, especially from the earlier days, I have to say, were laughable. Makes me wonder what the eff I was thinking then. Some were cringe-worthy, the others were ok lah.

The best moments on one of the tapes were those of Extended Coordinates (aka f.a.k.a.p.), mates of mine who played the Sheffield University students union band competition, only to be disqualified despite a genuinely rousing and rocking performance. Reason for Quiet.disqualification: failure to play at least one original composition (they played a full, and convincing, RATM set). The thing was, none of them gave a toss about the organiser’s decision, as we all knew they rocked the house better than the tepid bands that played that evening (evidence: dismayed boos by the majority of the audience on the announcement of the disqualification). As for me, my best gigs, I guess, were with suck at the Pria Mambo 2 in Sheffield and with The Desperados at the Malaysian-Singaporean dinner/dance at Sheffield’s Cutler’s Hall. To tell you the truth, regardless of this post-mortem analysis, I had a great time in all the bands I played in. Other memorable moments: my new-underpants-for-me-mom debut in a band was surprisingly rewarded by us sharing the top spot with the home band at Warwick; a gig in London where the sound was barely audible onstage which actually sounded great on tape; seeing my marshall dying of overheating at the 11th hour at the tin pan alley gig. some of the better performances were not on tape unfortunately. but then again, some of my abysmal ones weren’t either, thankfully. I guess we were there to simply to play music. The music didn’t have to be ours, ‘cos it didn’t really matter.

What mattered was, to quote Primal Scream‘s Loaded, we all just wanna have a good time.

As you can see, this pic below just sums it up.