I Am Mystery Jets-Lagged – Part II
Blaine Harrison
William Rees
Kapil Trivedi
Kai Fish
(Continued on from Part I)
Hit after hit, they sprung (very T-Pain), to the crowds of mostly youths, mostly teenagers, mostly happy and cheerful teenagers, mostly younger than I am, mostly blah – fuckery. They gave an all to their energized performance; I gave them my screams, clappings, handwavings and lousy karaoke vocals.
Crowd’s and my personal own favourite for the night had to be “Young Love”, got me into a crazy clapping frenzy, and despite no Laura Marling, their performance was still Aced. And who can not resist singing along to such contagious pop lyrics? Not far behind, “Half In Love With Elizabeth” scored well with the crowd too, getting everyone to go “do-do-do-do” with togetherness.
Noticeably, Blaine was not at his best; he arrived onstage in stitches, and was seated throughout the night’s performance, but still gave a hella of a show in terms of presence and vocals. Funny though how his legs clasped together when he sang, the habits and quirks of musicians. The crowd behind, beside me would have probably deemed me as an insane lunatic, tapping, shaking, moving, waving, bobbing, but that was alright – for one night I may just as well be, releasing and connecting with the music I love. The two blondes in front of me were spontaneous as well, unlike several of the boring Singapore crowd, and (now) I secretly gave them my cheers, for being a little bit of my courage to lose myself.
“Alas Agnes”, “You Can’t Fool Me Dennis”, “The Boy Who Ran Away”, “Diamonds In The Dark”, “Flakes”; the noticeable several tunes sang during the hour-long performance, which was oh-too-short. The hour was up – but not quite, as they promised to be doing a “little bit of DJing” thereafter, so they said before exiting the stage after the encore.
People stayed and danced, socialized; people left for the night. I was split between decisions and had wanted to stay on to hear the music that they liked themselves, and to try to get their autographs. After all, what was the bringing of the carrier and the CD of Twenty One within for? And midway through the performance, I had wanted to, instead of presenting the CD for autographing, rip off my pink Fred Perry polo tee and let them sign that instead. And don’t wash it for the rest of me life. Maybe it is a little thankful yes-no, I didn’t do it.
I grabbed a drink to try to sort out my thoughts on decisions, and lingered on, and had wanted to leave, even despite two of them (William and Kai) (naming them like we’re buddies!) (Awesome!) keeping to their promises and beginning to spin records, on certains reasons:
1) cheaper public transportation;
2) maybe work tomorrow;
3) it seemd a little hard to get autographs in a club in the dark;
4) I was getting lonely and bored.
No, that shouldn’t be in a club! And I caught sight of something – someone giving something to be autographed and it getting signed and returned back. That sparked some interest, but as the music progressed on, and a relative amount of crowd swarmed on the dancefloor, I felt disheartened, discouraged. Surely, I thought, I won’t be able to get through that crowd. And more autographs were signed and the kid within me pushed and got what he wanted for, as I thought, Heck, why not? There is definitely a way to sneak through the young dancing crowd and I decided to go do. And I did. The kid within me got what he wanted, darn him, and yea, thanks!
When in front, I was like a kid, with a moment of not knowing what do, and up above, they were DJing away. With some other people enquiring about their signatures, I chipped along too, taking out the CD I had, and standing on tiptoe to hand it over to them above. I looked up, and I thought I saw a slight grin of approval by the receiving Kai that amongst the number of papers, bags, handphones to capture a shot of themselves, there were – more than just mine – a few CDs, people who actually bothered to purchase CDs these days, and I was one. I wanted to tell them, whisper, that I secretly download too, but I do make exceptions like this. I was worried too; what if the CD wasn’t returned to me, and some young bastard decided to acknowledge it as his own, in the frenzy of the night scene?
Fool. I got it back nonetheless, and didn’t wait till I left. I gave a last look at the two members of MJs; the interiors, though it was slightly dark; the carefree dancing into the night youths, and made my silent exit. Once outside, I looked, and saw that they had autographed the CD itself instead of the booklet, which I had slipped out for them to sign on convenience terms. But yea, I didn’t mind. It was what I had wanted still.
I am Mystery Jets-lagged, still am, and in need of recovery. And I hope they continue to make good music and to come back again for another round. I want to still be there. In the meantime, more Twenty One please.
This post entry has been totally biased on the part of the author. For more unbiasedness, view MTV Asia’s review here.
A CJ Ang's 