Midnight Marvel | Official Site

Salutations, fancy web dwellers!

I love reading sanctimonious exposé of life on the road. Some of my personal favorites are Ben Blackwell’s Tremble Under Boom Lights, Screaming Females’ official blog that’s updated mainly by their drummer Jarrett D and The View From The Bus!!, a blog by Steven who’s the touring lighting designer for The Killers. (PS: If you haven’t read Steven’s latest entry on the Killers’ Asian tour cancellation, you should.)

While there’s hardly any “life on the road” for us just yet, we still play the odd one-off shows, all seasons around the year. Naturally, because shows don’t really happen frequently or back-to-back, they become somewhat of an highlight of our band career. It also doubles up as a social outing because we also get to reconnect with old friends who would drop by, as well as make some new friends along the way. Just last Saturday, we played our first show of 2010 at Home Club and had a blast. Here’s what went down!

Being a drummer is tough luck because of all the gear you’ve got to carry. Neither of us drives. So it’s pure manual labor via public transport all the way. Sitting in the cab and speeding down the highway, I felt like AC/DC wrote “It’s A Long Way To The Top” just for me.

Shirley has it easy ‘cos all she carries is a guitar. Under that cutesy Emily bag was a Joan Jett Melody Maker. Rock beast camouflage, I’d say.

We got to the venue on for soundcheck at about 3:30pm. Things were running late. So we sat about and had a chat with Famie from The Pinholes who told us that they were invited to SXSW 2010 and wrote a song called “Youth Of Goal” for submission to the Youth Olympics. Good, exciting stuff!

The boys of Karl Maka and their guest vocalist Biddy, who also plays in Breakbeat Theory, were milling about too.

Went out for some “fresh air”. I didn’t know the bridge just outside the venue’s called Elgin Bridge. Shirley said she didn’t either and was all bummed at our lack of knowledge of bridges in Singapore.

After Karl Maka’s soundcheck, we did ours. It was short and fast, just like our songs. CK and Georgina took the time to decorate the stage with blinking lights that said “Noisy Pop.” Just like the TypeWriter song, it’s all about “Details.”

At 5.45pm, we took the stage and rocked the hell out for 30 minutes. Of course we didn’t turn electro, contrary to our last blog entry. We certainly did have some friends fooled though! Played four tunes (“Spit It Out,” “Wago Fever,” “Your Girlfriend Knows,” “Straight Doll”) from back in the day when we were a four-piece, two new songs (“Gold Mine” and “King Kong Beat”) and two covers - Le Chat Noir’s “Her Wicked Smile” and Blood Red Shoes’ “You Bring Me Down.” If my memory serves me right, we have played a BRS song at almost every gig except for Baybeats 2008. We ended the gig with the oriental riff just for CK.

Gig aftermath: Shirley didn’t break a sweat while I poured like a waterfall. After wiping down a little, we headed to the front for our homies.

I loved the new drum sound that Ken did for “With You, Always.”  The newly reworked duet “Say It With Maka” with Biddy went for a bullseye at my heart. Biddy, being a chameleon, could work her style and vocals in all sorts of musical situations. The electro-pop Biddy reminded me of Victoria Bergsman. It was damn right lovely.

Eve and Alf, who played in the first formation of Midnight Marvel, came down as well. We attempted to take beer cheering to a new height.

After Shirley and Biddy’s tag-team super boogie-ing at Quasimodo’s set, we went off for dinner. I was famished. I could eat a cow even though I’m don’t eat red meat. I ate a huge bowl of udon instead.

As you can tell, I was pretty psyched about it. It came with Hokkaido seafood, which was good because then I didn’t have to wake up the next morning, thinking of how delish Davvy Jones looks to me.

At 10pm, we returned to the venue to catch TypeWriter. To my chagrin, they’ve started way earlier as Moods cancelled their set. I heard them even when I was in the loo and ran all the way back in. Only managed to catch their set from “Enemy” onwards. But I didn’t miss their new song, “The Deepest Blue,” which Shirley misheard as “The Dimples Blue.”

The Pinholes closed the gig with a regal bang. Famie is such a consummate frontman. I can’t imagine what it was like for those girls watching Elvis perform. I certainly did feel like a gleeful small girl with Famie working his old skool, retro charms on us.

And we split. Shirley continued her wayward, havoc ways till the morning while I was back home by midnight. Our spitfire singer spent her Sunday in her cosy bed while poor me was suffering from food poisoning after a piece of bad fish at lunch. Should have heed the culinary advice. You know what they say about seafood on Sundays and Mondays!

Till the next gig! We strongly encourage you to stalk us on Twitter. You know you want to.

\m/
Lennat