Where's the soul in rock and roll?

[fgl]

I don't agree that the future is in the hands of the youth here. The future of music is in the hands of BRO FGL! seriously, what do kids know of the 70s and 80s music? Look at you at RETRO GROOVE! u completely owns the stage and kick ass, u are not scary, u are brilliant!
All the youths knows only late 90s music or 00's music, but u bring out the soul man, the soul of Rock n Roll! FGL FGL!

If the batch whose been thru the happening scene don't guide the youth here, it will be forever like this, dead! they can pose for a few good years,but they r not musicians at heart. Don't let it die man, please guide them.

wow - thanks bro for the kind words .. but I am only 1 man - thats why we have soft SBC band collective, a new other band collective called IAM BROKEN which some friends of mind are getting into the swing etc ...

The youth of Singapore need not be concerned with any particular generation or period of music - what WE must do is to support our local talent. This applies not only to recording acts but also wage earning "cari makan" musicians .... TOO MANY FT's spoiling the cari makan market ...

The older generation may have a myopic view of this - but the youth of Singapore can start to change all this ..

SINGAPOREANS FOR SINGAPORE MUSICIANS!

 

[evodia]

You know, many people don't really like talking about this in threads cause it may end up being stagnant or being closed down due to arguments, but really kudos to the TS who actually cared abt the souls or rock & roll..

it doesn't matter what race you are when you are playing an English song, it depends on what "genre" your playing. And Thats the real facts..

not many people this days really appreciates rock, EXCEPT for the true rock & roll listeners.

Easy said, nowadays, people only wanna listen to songs that they wanna listen.. I think everybody does!

so can they really be called as universal music listeners? can they appreciate old school, mainstream, underground or whatsoever rock music? , haha *wink* are they really open up to it..? this applies on the majorities yeah.

Yes, local people have talents! Go around and sniff around, you can really find good rock bands..

as in really undiscovered rock bands.. in singapore!

Exposure is hard, really hard in this country..

why? you decide..

Well to answer to the main topic is...

maybe people lose their soul of rock & roll due to generation, nowadays music, or... they don't want to listen to it anymore..

or their just plain old? Lol, it applies to some musicians..

i feel that most locals thinks that local bands aren't that good enough unlike the international bands,

differences is.. international bands = start out with open minded supporters.. really supporting due to any genre played to them..
local bands = start out with... people like friends.. cause i got no one to come and watch me play? or keep playing for YEARS until they really got noticed..

sad isn't it?

OH yeah, 1 more thing, most bands in the world, got contracts by labels, cause record labels go sniffing around the local scene..

for this country... ehhhh... hardly hear anything like that here, if a band do gets that kinda thing, do tell me, i wanna know that label..


Local bands are great, they release very good ep's and albums..

but, sadly their not really expose that much..

the question is, would people buy your cd's? would the public or radio takes in your songs..?

would the radio play as much local band music as much as the internationals?

how long can this "independent" music scene prolong?

when would the local appreciate local ENGLISH MUSIC?


just an opinion..

to support local music, instead of saying it..

prove it when i meant local.. i meant any GENRE..


ONLY US the LOCALS can CHANGE the MUSIC scene in THIS country!

peace..

 

[AzNjT]

differences is.. international bands = start out with open minded supporters.. really supporting due to any genre played to them..
local bands = start out with... people like friends.. cause i got no one to come and watch me play? or keep playing for YEARS until they really got noticed..

Difference is. "International" bands ARE actually good.
If you are a great live performer and your material is good, what's stopping you from using the internet to get your name out?
Fact is, like I said, there are local acts that are very mediocre and dull. Who wants to support for the sake of supporting a shitty band?

Please someone show me these "Good" bands, as long as it wouldn't make me face-palm. Long ago I asked the same thing but the end result was just as predicted.

 

[chungmun77]

My take on this is that our souls have been channeled into the harsh reality of life, the Singaporean way of life. The most creative thing we do is cheat 10 minutes on our parking coupon, or fold the tabs so we can re-use the same coupon.

When we are so pegged down by all the mundane yet "necessary" issues of just surviving and staying on the right side of the law and the various mind-boggling policies, there isn't much left of the soul for music. Of course there are artistes who have blossomed despite a stifling environment, but for every 1 of them, there are 4 million who didn't.

Soul of rock and roll? One must be in pain to write, they say. Well, we are flat-liners. Nothing bumping our heart-rate up, despite how exciting we think our lives are. Look at the rock and rollers of yore; they've had their own background stories which they then drew on, using music as a form of expression. What have we Singaporeans got to draw on?

We might have ABRSM this and Grade 8 that, but how to categorize creativity? A true knack of melody and rhythm? We all think we're rockstars in our rooms and jam studios, but how many of us feel our ego getting smashed to smithereens the minute we hear our own recording? If we can't even feel good about our own music, what more others?

From my myopic point of view, I've seen friends who displayed tremendous talent but were stymied by national service, then the need to find employment, then financial obligations kick in, which all runs concurrently with family/spousal/partner obligations. It would take true maverick to break this mould. At this point, seeing how the general population is, we'll all be jiving to trance in clubs. I'll be doing my paraplegic moves on the dancefloor to DJ Whatevertheycallthemselves.

Pardon my long-winded rant, chaps. Have a good weekend!

 

[ridethetiger]

maybe people lose their soul of rock & roll due to generation, nowadays music, or... they don't want to listen to it anymore..

or their just plain old? Lol, it applies to some musicians..

Thats why i wanna Kudos and salute FGL brother,how many people upon reaching 29 yrs old, sell away their pedals amd guitars? and at age 39 hang up the guitar they loved the most on the wall,never to touch it again? a lot. The skilled player after a while get rusty and that's it, the passion gone forever. How many can go into the 40s and still rock out? FGL,u deserves our respects!

 

[ridethetiger]

From my myopic point of view, I've seen friends who displayed tremendous talent but were stymied by national service, then the need to find employment, then financial obligations kick in, which all runs concurrently with family/spousal/partner obligations. It would take true maverick to break this mould. At this point, seeing how the general population is, we'll all be jiving to trance in clubs. I'll be doing my paraplegic moves on the dancefloor to DJ Whatevertheycallthemselves.

now, i am a student of logic, so if financial obligations do run concurrently with family/spouse/partner's obligations. Then why don't real musicians break the mould? is there a law binding us to have to go into that mould? I know of musicians who dont have a bf/gf, not interested in marriage,and all out falling in love with music. I am not recommending this approach to everyone,but only those interested.Since we all know, jobs does interrupt in serious music making.

 

[evodia]

Originally Posted by: AzNjT

"Fact is, like I said, there are local acts that are very mediocre and dull. Who wants to support for the sake of supporting a shitty band?

Please someone show me these "Good" bands, as long as it wouldn't make me face-palm. Long ago I asked the same thing but the end result was just as predicted. "



Lol dude, It's just seems that you really need to go and explore more.. i mean really more..

you think this bands didn't use the net to get their name out? im sure they do, like myspace, facebook, YOUTUBE, but hack! Who do you think actually cares about the band without people spamming and tagging their videos to people, we as "music local supporters"
also must have the initiative on checking out new bands on our own, theres alot of bands which i may not know their name, but hack, they really have good music, you just gotta explore more dude, why not you go to the net like you said and find those bands, rather than people spoon feeding you all this bands on a silver platter lol!

and yet, i see most local bands myspace are getting slow or dead!
hah! i wonder why? hmmm..

If you think most local bands are very mediocre and dull, i guess if you had a band, urs must be the same too huh? ; )


maybe this bands are mediocre and dull its because we don't give them a chance or support them truely so that they can really show their true potential, dude, even international bands sucks! at first.. but slowly they get better in their future shows.. you should know that right?


just saying peace.. ; )

 

[AzNjT]

no I'm not in any bands actually. It's the same deal as I mentioned above.
I'm not asking to be spoon fed, I'm asking to be shown the GOOD bands so that I can eat my own words as going through the videos on YouTube is just painnful. I really do want to support the music scene, but it's very mediocre.

So if you could do me a favour, please pm me some videos of the bands you think can do sg some justice. I WANT to support these bands AND the local scene, honestly. I'm not even going to filter any genres out.

Just please prove me wrong. Good music is Good music.

Lastly, of course there are shitty international bands, duh, I use the term "International" to refer to bands that are not from Here, it doesn't matter where the bands are from. The point you are missing is that the Good bands have GOOD Music and put on KILLER shows. The majority of videos of local bands that I've seen are very sad.

ps: how can anyone SUPPORT when the music/band is crap? that's my point. ^^^^^^^^^^

 

[ridethetiger]

Aiyah,the fact is we don't support Singaporeans,we lack the love for ourselves, we will not buy tickets to see Singaporean bands. We will hardly come if we have no connections with people from a particular band. And that's it, No love, that's what it is. Sad but true,yeah?

That being said, AzNjT has a point there too because to me,and also to a lot of people, an Average Singaporean band cannot compare to an Average philipino band.Come on,admit it.

 

[xfigox]

That being said, AzNjT has a point there too because to me,and also to a lot of people, an Average Singaporean band cannot compare to an Average philipino band.Come on,admit it.

Filipinos can definitely sing, and pretty darn well too. Recently watched a musical and guess what the female lead was Filipino and the rest of the cast just pales in comparison to her vocal ability.

In this internet age, anyone can form a band and there's a SHIT TONNES of music out there, both good and band (mostly bad ones). Personally for me, when I'm just looking around for new bands to listen to, I won't be bothered to listen to the whole song. Most of the time the first 20 seconds will determine if I'm gonna continue to listen. *edit: And most of the time the song is ruined by crappy vocals.

And for the case for SG bands, I feel that there is a lack of vocal talents, especially if you're doing genres where there isn't much going on music wise (like pop rock,alt rock etc.). If you've got a shitty vocalist, I'm definitely not gonna listen to your band, simple as that.

 

[AzNjT]

I would buy tickets and CDs though, just finding a kick-ass band that's from here is more strenuous than looking for Good music FROM else where.

 

[ridethetiger]

Filipinos can definitely sing, and pretty darn well too. Recently watched a musical and guess what the female lead was Filipino and the rest of the cast just pales in comparison to her vocal ability.

And for the case for SG bands, I feel that there is a lack of vocal talents, especially if you're doing genres where there isn't much going on music wise (like pop rock,alt rock etc.). If you've got a shitty vocalist, I'm definitely not gonna listen to your band, simple as that.

Ah..we are getting into the main problem,the main issue,man i fully agree with what xfigox said.Having been around soft and seen my friends advertising for vocalists n attending their auditions. I must say vocals here really cannot hold a candle to Filipinos. I don't know whats wrong here.But those idols programmes really make fun of dreaming vocalists. How many times we saw great guitarists in Singapore and sometimes superb bassists with 5 strings turning up for auditions. But vocals wise, its so hard to find a shiny Diamond in the Singapore context.

 

[skipper53]

I'd say there are JUST enough good ones to keep a healthy, unsaturated pool of good local vocalists. At least I see enough of them in the church circle i frequent who are also into regular comtempo music. but yes there's a LARGE portion who are just kidding themselves, i know my fair share as well.

Guitarists and bassists... arent all that hard to find in Singapore honestly. take a train on a saturday afternoon and u'll know what i mean. a decent starter guitar/bass is easily available on our shores even for the most cash strapped. practice the same stairway to heaven riff a million times get another friend interested, get the military band drummer friend to play basic beats on a drum kit, jam often enough. rock out to smells like teen spirit. learn a few more pop rock songs, suddenly you discover the gain knob can go very far so you smoke ur way through master of puppets. Cos you are the next big thing to hit the singaporean music scene and u need to be the limelight grabbing lead guitar sligner you come to soft and advertise that your band is looking for a singer and your looking to write originals soon and do serious gigging.

lol sound familiar?

 

[centralcatchment]

This is probably a very biased point of view because I'm a songwriter. Unless the band is a covers band, the songwriter is the most important part of the band. Yet there's something about music - for some reason people don't like to talk about songwriting. Maybe it's because the work is invisible. Maybe it is so intangible, what makes a song great. Maybe it's the mentality, reinforced by the government, that if you cannot measure it, it doesn't exist.

One band that I will unhesitatingly say is international standard (their records, dunno about their shows) is Humpback Oak. (There are probably others that I'm unaware of because the publicity is so poor.) And Humpback Oak had great songs (although the lyrics are mediocre). And I will go back to what I said about a Singaporean identity, when you listen to "Pained Stained Morning" or "Ghostfather" it is truly Singaporean. That feeling of being hemmed in, unsure of your identity, stuck in a rat race. I can't think of any angmoh bands who can come up with their stuff.

Singapore has some good songwriters. Dick Lee, the Lee brothers, Chen Jiaming, we don't really have that much to be ashamed of. But sometimes I wish bands would take the songwriting more seriously. To the guy (xfigox) who said that there's not much going on in alt pop musically, songwriting is what's going on. Most of the time, a song has either succeeded or failed before the first note is played. Writing a pop song is not easy at least for me because I spent 10 years writing crap before coming up with anything decent.

Songwriting wise, not much impressed me in the last 10 years, local or international. I'm looking for a sense of "that was clever, how did they come up with that?" Nirvana gave me that feeling. Steely Dan gave me that feeling. The newer bands? I am impressed with a few sonically but not in the traditional songwriting sense. (Animal Collective, lovelovelovelove Buttons, etc.)

Anyway 90% of everything is crap. The reason why "international artists" look better than Singaporeans is because you only see the 10% from overseas, you don't see the crap 90%.

Edit: above, I mentioned a band called lovelovelovelove Buttons. I think there's a script which censors out the 4 letter f word. The actual name of that band is 4 letter f word Buttons. It is truly unfortunate that a well intentioned script has prevented me from talking about a band that I like.

 

[AzNjT]

Cool story bro.....
show us the good sg bands.

 

[PatheinRaindropMoe]

good and bad is of one personal preference, not an absolute fact.

If we mixed up fact and personal perferences, whats left, prolly just a delusional definition of good and bad things out there.

Hehe, softies lotsa that...

 

[centralcatchment]

Yeh, people should always understand that they are always talking about personal preferences. But at the same time there is also good and bad. Otherwise that would mean that everytime somebody on this thread disses Singapore bands, they are doing it out of irrational hatred for Singapore and I dun think that's true right?

And it's true, so far I've only been able to name 1 Singapore band that I really like.

 

[guitarist.justin]

Anyway 90% of everything is crap. The reason why "international artists" look better than Singaporeans is because you only see the 10% from overseas, you don't see the crap 90%.

Yeah agreed man, we have a skewed P.O.V. Anyws, since singapore is a country of only 5 mil., maybe in future there should be more South East Asian Festivals yah? im not very sure how many joined SEA music events or forums there are out there, but if you guys know pls share anyw, i never believed singaporean music sucks. never will. those bands mentioned by drumsolo86 are rly good, and ive seen some of them live. but these guys aren't getting enough exposure which led me to the question if we(Consumers+musicians) lost the true meaning of ignoring the restraints of classical music theory and the desparate attitude of "let me play or ill die" or "I really really have to see them play even if it means sneaking in/running from my house/ponning school or work."

 

[guitarist.justin]

oh and here's a list of stuff i wanna hear about:
1)How the weather is so damn hot
2)More references to local people,places..etc.(Yes i know, done before. dont flame me tks.)
3)Eternal stress of school, army, work. Living in a tuition nation
4)Lamenting and Whining about our materialistic/superficial country and complaining that we complain too much(irony much HEHEHEH)
5)Totalitarian Government
6)Wanting to escape the fast-paced life to chill on a beach(i.e Sentosa)
7)Being jealous of the over-acheivers in school/work.
8)Studying and working our butts off
9)The general apathetic mindset amongst locals towards the arts

Very depressing list i know, but misery loves company.:m
So!! WHAT ARE THE THINGS YOU WANNA HEAR ABOUT?

 

[zazin]

yeh bro! he got da SOUL!