Bandung - Nov 4
We took a 2 hour van ride to Bandung. While travelling, and after arriving, we saw lots of interest in the US election and Obama, and many people asking if we voted for him. The media also runs Obama stories, and are very proud that Obama lived in Jakarta for a few years as a boy. We arrive at the venue, which is the promoter’s record store, and home. There’s a practice space on the 3rd floor where the show takes place. Heavy rain all afternoon and onto the evening, but still lots of kids on scooters show up. We’re playing with 4 other local bands, and everyone is excited to have us play. Our show is an the packed little room, with people standing on all side, and the temperature soaring. We play well, but the heat kills the bass amp during our last song. Still no usable internet — a small university nearby with free wifi takes 10 minutes to load a page, so again, no post/video/pictures uploaded yet. We slept in the record store that night.
Kammy and friends…
playing the show…
Gear Blog #3…
Here’s a more detailed report on our show in Bandung, Indonesia. (Written by Kammy, after we got home)
I spent a mostly sleepless night after our show in Jakarta — first off, I was feeling sick & have to take some medicine. Finally that kicks in, but just as I’m about to drop off to sleep, Patrick’s phone (which we’re using as an alarm clock) goes off because some random person has decided to call him from the US, which is twelve hours behind us. Then I’m about to sleep again, but this time the neighborhood cats begin yowling as a prelude to mating. Argh! Then it’s time to wake up, pack up our gear quickly, and depart. Mandra has arranged for two cabs which will take us and our gear to the bus station, so we split up. I’m in one cab with D and Ketu, while Patrick, Ryan and Mark go with Mandra in the other cab. Apparently our cab has gotten the wrong directions, so we end up taking a circuitous route through a rather shee-shee section of town. I’m sort of worried we’ll miss our bus, but on the other hand it’s a nice opportunity for me to see that Jakarta isn’t all cramped barrios and tall skyscrapers. There are some crazy fancy mansions here with beautiful architecture and landscaping.
We arrive at the bus station, then wait around for a while. I feel feverish and generally lousy but I buy some water and some kind of bread with chocolate inside, and eat that. (It’s almost the same word in Indonesian: “coklat”. Their “c” is pronounced “ch”.) Our bus arrives — it’s a nice minibus with airconditioning — and we pile in. Only Ketu is going with us, so we say goodbye for now to Mandra.
The ride to Bandung is about 2 hours, passing through the countryside — lots of green rice paddy territory, then the tropically forested hills known as the Puncak Pass. The road is a nice, smoothly paved two-lane highway. I spend most of the time talking to Patrick about my writing and my ambitions to hook up with an agent, then he tells me about his ideas for a service to provide internet-delivered underground, cult and B-movies.
We arrive in Bandung — at only 2 million people, it’s much smaller than Jakarta, and being at elevation, it has cooler temperatures. The air is also less polluted than Jakarta. Somebody tells me it’s because they don’t have those two-stroke engine mini-cars here. We’re met by some of the local punks who give us a ride to the venue: the Jawara Hell Jammin Studio. (Most of the shows we’ll play on this tour will be in jamming studios, otherwise known as practice spaces.) We meet Methui, who runs the studio as well as the Full Speed Ahead Record Store in the same building. (He says the rent on the record store is 750,000 rupiah per month. For the jamming studio, it’s 1 million rupiah. That’s about US$75 and $100, respectively. To save money, he also lives in the record store, sleeping on a mattress behind the counter.) We go for a meal, and while we’re eating, there’s a torrential downpour. Yep, it sure is the rainy season.
After the rain subsides, we go in search of the internets. First we go to a nearby university where many students are hanging out in a courtyard area. We try to leach off the university’s wifi (D has brought a laptop with him), but it’s very slow. In search of a faster connection, we go to a nearby internet cafe located next to a political bookstore — Methui points out the Indonesian translations of Marx and Engels. Unfortunately, the internet here is even slower than at the university. I literally cannot even login to any of my email accounts.
Back to the record store. I’m feeling very feverish and sick & have to lie down on Methui’s mattress. The show has started but I’m too miserable to go upstairs and check out any of the other bands. We are scheduled to go on last. I’m actually afraid I might not be able to play tonight. That would be a first for me, having to cancel a show due to illness, and I really, really don’t want to let everybody down like that, especially not here where the kids are so incredibly amped to see us. Patrick and Ryan go out and buy some bananas and oranges. This helps a lot. Finally it’s time for us to play, and I feel like I’ll live. The practice studio is like a little hot box — unbelievably sweltering and sticky, and so small that the band sets up in the middle and the audience forms a ring around them. Fortunately, there is a tiny, struggling airconditioner directly behind me. I think I’m the only one who can feel it. We start playing and it’s just incredible — everybody is so into it! This is the best thing about playing these kind of “underground” shows in very close quarters — the intimacy. There’s no stage, there’s no performer/audience barrier, you’re either just inches away from everybody else, or else you’re actually touching, everybody’s moving together, breathing in the same hot air and sweating out the same hot salt, while the excitement and energy are about to blow the door out from the inside. Heh what can I say, it’s a fucking rush!
After we’re done playing, all the kids want to take pictures with us. Everybody keeps jumping into the pictures, and there’s always a cry of “One more! One more!” We all have to pose for 9 million shots with crowds of happy kids. Just like last night, it’s almost all guys here — just a couple of females in attendance. We hang out and talk to people. Somebody asks if Patrick and I are married to each other. What a concept! We tell ‘em I’m married to D, Patrick’s married to Ryan. LOL.
By the end of the evening I am feeling considerably less sick, maybe I sweated it out. We all go to sleep on the floor of the record store. Tomorrow we have a 9 hour train trip to Solo.