97-shiki

We head to the train station on the morning to catch the 8:00 train to Solo. It’s about a 9 hour trip. Our friend Kitu is going with us. The train costs $9/person, and is pretty comfortable.

Rice paddies everywhere stretch out on all sides, and we enjoy the ride, and enjoy leaving the smog of the cities for a while. Friends from home send text messages to Patrick updating us on the election results — they call it for Obama, and we celebrate with a round of cookies.

When we arrived, we were met by our hosts at the train station, and then we found ourselves at the radio station, StarFM. They sponsored the gig, and put us up. The show took place in the foyer of the station, but before that, we found ourselves in a weird Indonesia/English live radio interview, complete with listeners calling in with questions. Kitu kindly translated for us.

radio interview…

on the radio…

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The show went great, with several local bands opening up and a lot of excited people. That night, we slept in the station’s air conditioned studio, and we woken up to the sound of the morning DJ starting her show, at 5am.

Gear Blog #4…

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Here’s a more detailed report on our show in Solo, Indonesia. (Written by Kammy after we got home)

Early in the morning we go to the Bandung train station. It will be a 9 hour train ride to Solo. Ketu will be continuing to travel with us. Did I mention he blew off school so that he could help us with the tour? (He is teh awesome).

Our train car is the “soft seat” type. It has cushioned seats and oscillating fans mounted on the ceiling. As we depart the Bandung station, an employee comes down the aisle and passes out little containers of water. We start traveling, leaving the city behind and entering the tropically forested countryside. At every stop, local people board the train and circulate throughout the cars, hawking everything from fresh fruit and fried tempeh to bottled water, candy, and instant soup (they even have a kettle of hot water with them). Each hawker has their own distinctive spiel that they keep singing out — kind of like a bird call — it’s a cacaphony of voices.

Here in Indonesia it’s November 5th in the daytime, but back in the U.S. it’s still the evening of the 4th — election day! (We all took advantage of early voting, before we left town.) Patrick’s girlfriend Jessi is sending us updates via text message. So far, it looks like Team Blue is winning. It’s pretty exciting even for a cynical person like me. I almost wish I could be transported back to the U.S. just for today.

Soon we leave behind the forest and the landscape turns into endless green rice paddy land. It’s also hot again — we’ve descended from the highlands and are now on a coastal plain. Whenever we’re moving, a pair of train employees keep coming down the aisles with food and drinks on trays. I’m not sure of the system, it seems like you can either go to the dining car or else they’ll bring the food to you. Eating at one’s seat seems a little bit inconvenient since the train is moving & there aren’t tray tables, so I eventually go to the dining car (which is only the next car forward from ours), and order nasi goreng telur which is fried rice with an egg. (I’m pretty sure fried rice is the national dish of Indonesia, at least unofficially). I start talking to a guy in the dining car who speaks pretty good English. I tell him I’m in a band and we’re on tour, then lend him a CD because he wants to copy the songs onto his laptop.

It’s late afternoon. More text messages from Jessi — they have called the election. Obama has won! We’re all very stoked, but still cautiously so — after 8 years of Bush, we still can’t believe that this is really happening. Surely the Republicans will come up with some loophole, or there’ll be some Florida-type situation with hanging chads — but no. It’s really happening. President Barack Obama!!!

We pass through Yogyakarta, where we’ll be returning for tomorrow’s show, and then about half an hour later, we arrive in Solo where some folks are there to meet us. One of them is wearing an Obama t-shirt. (Obama is well-known here, as he spent part of his childhood in Jakarta, attending — gasp! — a madrassah, otherwise known as a “school”.)

We split up into two cars. A girl is driving the car I’m in — I’m asked to sit up front because I’m a woman and everybody else is male. Apparently it might look improper otherwise. She’s very quiet and reticent and I can’t think of much to say to her. Soon we arrive at the place we’ll be playing, a radio station called Star FM. OMG, there are a million kids here and they are all super friendly and sociable — it’s awesome, if a little overwhelming. (I’ll tell you one thing, social awkwardness does not seem to be a big thing in Indonesia. People are *very* friendly and easy to talk to. You make eye contact with somebody, even random people you see on the street, and chances are very high that you get a smile, a handshake, or even more. It’s like the anti-Russia.) We stash our gear in a little room adjacent to the studio, where there are some foam mattresses on the floor. Our roadie Mark immediately goes to sleep on one of them. I’m a little concerned because he’s been looking really pale and wiped out. Me, on the other hand, I’m feeling better since last night. Still tired but I think I’m going to pull through.

We meet some of the DJs/show organizers including a very outgoing girl named Tika, and a guy named Beton who is sooo incredibly excited to have us there that he peppers every other sentence with “Omigod!” Tika says Beton has been practicing his English for this occasion and shows us an English/Indonesian conversational book. Ryan is very interested in this, and quickly learns how to say “What about the mangoes?” Assisted by Ketu, we do a live radio interview with Beton. The studio is airconditioned but quickly becomes hot and stuffy as kids keep piling in, excited to watch us being interviewed.

After the interviews, somebody brings us some food — curried rice with tofu and tempeh. Just in the nick of time because I’m so ravenous I’m about to fall over. Because we’re eating and talking with people, I miss the first two bands, OVERKIDS and MY EVERLASTING DEAR, but manage to catch REMAIN SILENT and ENFORCED, two very good hardcore bands. Finally it’s our turn, we have a big crowd of excited kids. Mark has been comatose again, but revives to take pictures. It turns out to be a really fun show.

Afterwards we hang out and talk to tons more people. D has tried talking to the quiet girl but she won’t answer him. I go up and talk to her with no problems. Undoubtedly it’s some cultural thing where an unmarried (?) woman shouldn’t be talking to a man not related to her — but obviously not all of the women here abide by this. Maybe she comes from a stricter upbringing than most? At last I basically feel overwhelmed by people and have to hide for a bit, LOL! We go to sleep on the floor of the radio station — well at least until 5:30am when we’re woken up by the first DJ of the day, come in to do her R&B show.

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…

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Gear Blog #3…

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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.

Thursday, November 6th 2008

at Dennis Lounge, Yogyakarta - FREE

with:

Monica is Game Over
The Frankenstone
Rocking Milo
Healer Glut
Lex Luthor the Hero
Radio at Midnight
Go Richie Go
Gargoyle
 

presented by Deckill Syndicate

Cat cafe, Seoul…

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Kammy  finds evidence of Kpop star RAIN! (yes, we stole the poster afterwards)…

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Ryan report…

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here’s a pile, to be sorted later…

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(as we’re trying to catch up on posting  — here’s a bullet point sketch of what we’ve been doing…) Airplane struck by lightening over Borneo. Met by host at the airport. Stayed in a small place near the venue. Went sightseeing to the National Monument. Show at the Maroti with 8 other bands. Patches made by a friend in Jakarta showed up, and tour t-shirts arrived as well. Next day, made our way to Bandung via mini-bus, accompanied by our friend/guide/translator Kitu. No  convenient access to internet or wifi, so no post/video/pictures uploaded yet.

Here’s a more detailed report made by Kammy, after we got home:

From Korea it was about a six hour flight to Jakarta. Kinda rough, and I’m told that our plane was actually struck by lightning, however I was nodding off (having slept poorly in the sauna) & scarcely noticed. We arrived in the airport at evening (it was hot!) and were met by Mandra (who booked our Indonesia shows). We got into a minivan which was barely big enough to hold us and our gear, and set off towards the city. Immediately we see that traffic, and the way people drive, is intense! I guess it should freak me out — dense traffic filled with cars weaving about, motorcycles darting in and out, but it just amuses me, after all I can do nothing about it. After about 45 minutes drive, we arrive at a spot and meet some of Mandra’s friends who take us in a car to the house where we’ll be staying. The best way to describe the area is that it’s smack in the middle of the barrio — narrow streets, houses crowded together, no sidewalks, you’re constantly dodging motorbikes and breathing their exhaust. We meet Ari, who lives in the house (and operates a record store out of the front room), as well as Ketu, Eka, and some other friends who have dropped by to hang out. No furniture to speak of — after removing our shoes at the door, we all sit on the floor in the tiny record store space and drink coffee and eat some food (coconut rice, tofu and tempeh wrapped in banana leaves) and talk about punk rock stuff. When it’s time to sleep, we all sack out in the rear room where there’s 1 cot (D is the first to nab it) and some blankets on the floor. It’s hot and sticky. There’s a fan on the ceiling but it looks like it hasn’t worked since before any of our hosts were born.

The next morning we wake, first to the sound of a torrential downpour, then later to the hubbub of a million gas-powered vehicles outside, have breakfast (noodles with tofu and some kind of sticky rice cake & coconut curry sauce), then we have some time before tonite’s show, so Ari and Ketu take us on a sightseeing expedition. Just walking down the tiny street is a challenge, you need to have your wits about you so that you don’t get hit by a motorbike or fall into a sewer. Just crossing the street is a major undertaking — there are very few crosswalks or traffic lights. You clump with other people (safety in numbers), then dart and dodge as fast as you can. Out to the main road, then we get on a mini-bus. D and Mark, both very tall guys, can hardly fit in the seats. We launch into the swirl of traffic. Again, it’s overwhelming — big buses, little buses, cars, herds of motorbikes, and swarms of some kind of smog-belching mini-car powered by a lawnmower engine. Forget renting a vehicle yourself — you are not driving here unless you’re a native. We get off the mini-bus, then go to a station to wait for a larger bus. The big city buses are built so that you enter them from a second-floor platform. It feels like chaos, but actually everything is very organized — you queue up to buy a ticket, then go through the turnstile, then wait in line on the platform. Each bus has a conductor who only lets certain amount of people aboard. You enter via one half of the platform and exit from the other half. It has to be so organized because of the brazillions of people who use the system. Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous nation, and Jakarta is the biggest city in southeast Asia, with a population over 8 million, and that’s not counting the suburbs and outlying areas, else it turns into more like 30 million.

The big bus is airconditioned, nice. We try to go to a museum but it’s closed, so then we head to Monas (the National Monument, also known as “Soekarno’s final erection”, haha), a giant tower topped by a gold flame, it’s Jakarta’s #1 landmark, located at the city’s center.  There are some guys selling postcards and souvenirs outside — when we say we’re from the U.S., they immediately exclaim “Barack Obama!” Ari says he’s already been here 10 or 12 times & that he’ll just wait for us outside, so Ketu and the rest of us go in. In the ground floor there are dioramas depicting Indonesian history, then you wait in line to go up in the elevator. (The elevator only holds 11 people so it takes forever). When you get to the top (not all the way to the flame, just to the viewing platform), there are windows in 4 directions and you can see all over Jakarta. A girl named Kristy takes a shine to our singer, Ryan — this results in a ten-minute photo session with her and her family. Finally we descend in the elevator, then make our way home via more buses. It starts raining (we’re entering the rainy season here). For the last leg of the trip, we get on a mini-bus. Just like everything else, there’s a system. The conductor stands in the back entrance, yelling out the bus’ destination to people on the road (to me, it sounds like he’s yelling “AwoolawoolaWOO!”) If he sees that people want to get on, he signals the driver to stop by tapping loudly on the glass door with a coin (”tikk-tikk-TIKK!”) As soon as they’re on the bus, he yells “Ho!” and the bus starts moving again. At one point, a guy gets on and starts playing guitar and singing. It’s somehow peaceful, sailing through traffic in the rain and darkness in this rattling old mini-bus. Then we get off and the rain immediately turns into a downpour as we run all the way back to Ari’s house.

The show is at a place called Maroti Cafe, on the third floor of a building that’s close enough to walk to (after the rain has stopped). We set up our merch table. Mandra and friends have made 97-SHIKI tour t-shirts and buttons from the art we sent. Ryan’s friend Dolly shows up with the patches he made for us. They’re the best patches I’ve ever seen — meticulous work. There are 9 bands including us. There are hardly any females at the show, only one or two besides me. I watch a couple bands perform including Ari’s band PEACE OR ANNIHILATION. I need some more food to eat before we play, so I ask Ketu if there’s anyplace nearby to get snacks. He says we have to go to Circle-K, which is too far to walk, and takes me there on somebody’s borrowed motorbike. Whee! It’s about 51% fun, 49% terrifying. Did I mention they drive on the left side of the road? I get some snacks and then we go back to the show. There are still more bands to come. Now both Ryan and I are starting to feel sick. Oddly enough, the bathroom at the club is not only of the sit-down variety, it actually has toilet paper. How strange! This will never occur again. (I always bring those little packs of TP with me anyway.) Finally it’s time for us to play, and we pull it off and get a pretty decent crowd response.

After the show, everybody hangs out outside the club. It’s weird not to have to load any gear. All I do is stow my Iron Cobra and sticks in my backpack. Tomorrow we have to leave early to catch a bus to Bandung.

After days of no posts, we’ve finnaly found some internet access. Between travelling and incrdibly poor or non-exitant internet shops, we’ve been unble to post since Korea. But we’re catching up as much as we can.

Wednesday, November 5th 2008

at Star FM - Solo - Ina

97-shiki with:

Enforced
Remain Silent
My Everlasing Dear
Overkids

5pm 12pm, donation Rp 5000,-

Tuesday, November 4th 2008

at Jawara Hell Jammin Studio, Bandung

with:
Auticed
Aneka Digital Safari
Breakdown
Domestikdoktrin