Not Quite An Arms Race

March 5th, 2007

it was definitely a scene at the Singapore Expo last Saturday, when punk rock band Fall Out Boy were in the Lion City to promote their 4th and latest album, Infinity On High.

prior to the night of the event, publicity of the show was almost non-existent in KL. even in Singapore, news of the concert went around mostly by radio and word-of-mouth. however,

okay so it seems i no longer have to do a write-up on Fall Out Boy’s gig in Singapore. so to hell with the customary sanguine politeness of mainstream media reviews! i shall tell it like it is! it is no holds barred from hereon! (unless of course, you are a publication who didnt send anyone to cover the event, but think it may be nice to feature the gig. in which case, you can email amateur ol’ me.)

anyway yes, i dont know why the publicity and advertising for FOB were so paltry. i would think that for a band so big, the concert would be touted all over the streets of Singapore and KL, especially now that FOB have managed to tap into mainstream audiences (though i’m not sure if that is a good thing). and what with Singapore being the only Asian stop in their 4 month long worldwide tour! if i were the organizers, i would have been more than happy to spend a few extra bucks just to blow the event out of the water. i mean, it’s Fall Out Boy! dude!

when i got to the Expo, i must say the initial sentiment i had was one of disappointment. walking into the enclosed concert hall, there were kids as far as the eye could see. i dont mean kids like kids my age, i mean kids like kids aged 10-13!!! see lah, this is what you get when good bands go mainstream. you have all these fake-eyelashed preteen girls going to rock concerts in glittery high heels and boys who think they’re cool if they’re wearing a tshirt that says ‘I’m A Sex Instructor’. upon sight of 2 such tshirts and too many prom-queen girls, i started to prepare myself for the fact that this would not be a good concert.

at 8.10pm, Malaysian band One Buck Short opened for Fall Out Boy! that was a very pleasant surprise, coz i thought it was just a rumour that they were going to be the opening act. so amidst the crowd of some 5000 (teenybopper) Singaporeans, there was 1 Malaysian pinkpau that night feeling very bangga for the Malaysian local music scene. heehee.

i like the fact that One Buck Short are totally laidback and not image-driven as some bands can be. Izal came onstage in a purple shirt that said Fart Wars… hahaha wtf so cute. lead vocalist Mooky wore this jacket that you’d wear out to get a pack of smokes or something. that’s keeping it real. i loved that they didnt try too hard to impress, which is the case most of the time for opening acts. but is it just me or has One Buck Short’s musical style taken a new Simple Plan-esque direction? i remember listening to their EP songs and they weren’t anything like what i heard at the concert.

Saw Loser, a Singaporean hybrid band, was the 2nd opening act of the night. man, they are one good example of image-driven bands who try too hard. i’ve only heard of Saw Loser in passing, but i did not expect to see what was clearly a Greenday-’inspired’ band walking onstage to perform. white spiky hair, red necktie, black shirt .. all present. aiyo. their music was okay, i thought it wasnt too bad, but i really was just eying their very VERY dishy guitarist the whole time :D

but apparently Greenday hairstyles and sexy guitarists are not enough to win over the Singaporeans. throughout Saw Loser’s set, people kept booing and there were scattered yells of ‘get off the stage!’. i thought it was just a case of impatience on the crowd’s part, but then i asked around, and it turns out that Saw Loser is not very well-liked in Singapore. ‘arrogant’ and ‘lame’ were some of the adjectives i got. well, okay. but they got lengchai guitarist wor.

anyway, bla bla bla, insert 20-minute wait while roadies did sound checks .. and finally Fall Out Boy comes on stage!!!!! but big yawn for opening gambit, we got the same ole same ole Smoke Machine and Blinding White Light ‘do. geez. is a little bit of creativity too much to ask for?

i wish i could give you a long detailed blog about the awesomeness of the whole gig, but i honestly dont have a lot to say about Fall Out Boy’s 1-hour performance. the whole thing just fell a little bit short of my expectations. they performed as if they were barely there; only guitarist Joe Trohman made attempts to muster up some semblance of showmanship. it was all very lacklustre. the crowd went wildest only when they played old tracks like Dance Dance and Sugar, We’re Going Down. even when they did This Ain’t A Scene, the hall wasnt exploding as it should have. and i didnt like the light engineering either - it was poorly done, and just didnt maximize the performances the way good light engineering would.

i have something i want to say about my experience in this concert. from the very start of the show even before the opening acts came on, it was very clear that this crowd was an exceptionally pushy and rude one. throughout the event, my brother and i witnessed more than several tussles between people who were trying to shoulder their way to the front. all these vicious white girls were shoving small angsty asian girls, and in return the small angsty asian girls were bitching back in Mandarin. even the boys werent giving face to girls who were tiptoeing to get a better view; they had the nerve to push the girls’ heads down, and on a few occasions called them less than savoury names.

momentarily i was confused. the last standing-pit concert i went for was the Bangkok 100 Rock Festival, where as i recall, everyone was very friendly and they were all there to have a good time as one crowd. people were passing joints around and giving you space to move ahead if you wanted. even when Hoobastank and Simple Plan came to KL, the crowd was friendly and cooperative. Linkin Park was a little bit unpleasant thanks to a few jakun groups in the pit area, but overall it was bearable.

Fall Out Boy, on the other hand, was just oh my gawd. i was so bewildered, wondering what the hell is going on, is this not supposed to be a civilized country that has international acts coming to perform all the time? i mean, coming to a rock concert with high heels is pardonable, but this is a freaking ROCK CONCERT.. isnt there some unwritten rule that you are not allowed to be uptight at a rock concert?? just chill out and enjoy the music lah right. what’s with all the animosity and this massive free-for-all to get to the front??

the answer to that only dawned on me much much later when i was in my hotel room drinking diet coke and pondering the intricacies of contemporary concert-goer behavioural patterns : i kinda forgot that i was in the land that invented the word ‘kiasu’. haha.

there’s also a more universal problem about concerts these days. because we’re smack in the middle of the camera-phone and digital camera revolution, the typical average concert pit has now become a massive 3-hour congregation of people sticking their arms up in the air to take pictures. yeah sure, taking pictures is fine, but how do you have fun at a pit concert when you’re taking photos all the damn time? must worry about stability lah, must worry about composition lah, must worry about changing shutter speed lah .. aiyoh. it just gets in the way of personal satisfaction, and when too many people do it, it affects the concert crowd as a whole. have people forgotten how to enjoy music?

Fall Out Boy eventually sent a friend down to the pit to start a mosh. it was not bad at all, my brother was in it and he reports that it was a good mosh. haha i remember when these bunch of white guys tried to start a mosh pit when Incubus came to KL, and security came to stop them. kudos to Singaporean concert organizers for being happening!

the night ended with Fall Out Boy’s extremely gorgeous bassist Pete Wentz going down to the crowd for his dose of ego-inflating. that man is unbelievably hot despite his cockiness (at one point, girls were screaming his name, and he just rolled his eyes at them. gasp, the nerve), and how can a girl not swoon at his lyrical genius? for the uninformed, Pete Wentz is the one who pens the lyrics to FOB’s songs and comes up with their infamous song titles like ‘Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued’ and ‘I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me’.

and he’s sexy. which would explain why girls literally tore the shirt off his back when he was held over the crowd at the end of the show. and believe you me, catfights ensued after the show, over bits and shreds of his blue tshirt that ironically read, ‘Leave Me Alone’. hahaha oh girls. why do you feed such sarcasm!

and i must admit that the very moment Pete Wentz came onstage, the first thing i thought was, dude, i’ve seen your penis in all its shaved glory.

this is me sitting on the floor of the concert hall after the concert was over, on which i spotted bra cups, remains of sweat-stained clothing, a soiled sanitary pad and lots and lots and lots of discarded shoes.

i apologise, george, i have no videos! wait, actually i do. but you can barely hear anything from all the fuzz :(

Entry Filed under: Events, Photos, Travel

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