Nothing lasts forever

Last night’s gig by Guns N’ Roses marked the end of an era.

It was a great gig; the band was tight and everyone pulled out all stops to give their all.

Kudos to Slash, especially – he was holding the act together with his instrumental pieces.

However, Axl Rose’s singing was a stark reminder of how we are all mortal.

His vocals aren’t as good as they used to be – understandably so, because of age and a lifetime of various forms of abuse.

He demonstrated a much more limited vocal range and inconsistent singing quality e.g. songs like “Sweet Child Of Mine” were pitch perfect and performed to almost album-like quality, to the note.

On other songs it was especially apparent that he was masking the decreased ability to reach a certain pitch by slurring his words or taking tonal shortcuts.

I thought this mortality was most ironically epitomised during “November Rain”, when he sang the line “nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain” and “Knocking On Heaven’s Door”:

Mama take this badge from me
I can’t use it anymore
It’s getting dark too dark to see
Feels like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door

The performance aside, I want to detail some of the experiences for posterity, and also, in case it’s good feedback for anyone who wants to organise a concert:

  1. The drive there was terrible.At one point, the jam along Changi Coast Road got so bad that people started getting out of their cars and running to the venue.

    The organisers have to recognise that the venue has serious transportation limitations.

    First, there are zero public transport options.

    Second, there is only one two-lane road going in:

    My sister and I were joking that LAMC Productions should’ve just should’ve organised a ferry service from Harbourfront to Changi Ferry Terminal.

    With the coastal hook, it would provide gig-goers an alternative mode of transport plus get commuters there in a quicker time and with a more scenic view.

    While stuck in the jam, I also had some time to think about whether we should’ve taken the shuttle bus.

    Because it wasn’t mandatory, taking the shuttle bus wouldn’t have helped.

    So there’s a need to give a larger incentive to get people to take the shuttle bus e.g. disallow parking at the venue, give discounts for early birds, etc.

  2. The gig management itself was terrible.
    • No one collected our tickets at the door, which made me feel like we shouldn’t have bought tickets.
    • For Pen B tickets holders, part of the view was blocked; the organisers had erected some kind of barrier, for reasons I know not.

      If you buy a more expensive VIP or Pen A ticket, you pay more to be closer to the action.

      If you buy a cheaper ticket, you do so with the cognisance that you will be farther from the stage – but your view shouldn’t be blocked.
    • At some point in the night, they closed the token top-up counters (we could only pay using a token, which we had to top-up using cash or credit).

      I had $10 left in my token and the money was non-refundable. So if there weren’t any items with which I could spend the $10, I would’ve been shorted.

      I’m not sure if they had announced beforehand that top-up counters would be closed.

      Even if they did, who would remember/who would want to take a break from music they wanted to listen to, just to top-up their tokens before the counter closed?
    • Last but not least, it seems they didn’t check the tickets.So at a later point in the night, we managed to get into Pen A because no one seemed to care.

      That was the saving grace of the night – but it also made me wonder if I should’ve bought tickets at all…

UPDATE: LAMC Productions’ Ross Knudson breaks down what went wrong at Guns N’ Roses’ show in Singapore.

Ozymandias

Come, it's time to go. (ILLUSTRATION: Ashley Virgilius Leong)
Come, it’s time to go. (ILLUSTRATION: Ashley Virgilius Leong)

I didn’t have anything textual or visual to add to the conversation.

So I went down the aural route instead; I created a playlist I call “Ozymandias”.

  1. Street Fighting Man by The Rolling Stones
  2. Pride (In The Name Of Love) by U2
  3. Eye In The Sky by The Alan Parsons Project
  4. If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next by Manic Street Preachers
  5. Behind Blue Eyes by The Who
  6. Everybody Hurts by R.E.M.
  7. I Will Follow You Into The Dark by Death Cab For Cutie
  8. Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) by Green Day
  9. Viva La Vida by Coldplay
  10. Closing Time by Semisonic

Listen to it here on YouTube.

Interestingly, none of the artists that came to mind when creating it were Singaporean…

Mix-tape.

So it was Teachers’ Day last week.

I think my, er, advice worked – I received enough Ferrero Rocher to set up my own distribution centre.

Jokes aside, one present which stood out was the Teachers’ Day video done by 10A04.

Initially, when they bounded up to me to give me the DVD, I was like, “Wow! Mix-tape for me?

I was genuinely elated; I remember thinking: Wow, these piglets have grown! They put their PW skills to use and realised that a mix-tape would be a great gift for me because:

  • I like music,
  • Mix-tapes have symbolic value, in that they hearken back to an era that I often romanticise, and
  • Mix-tapes have artistic value, in that the choice of songs are not arbitrary but curated in order to achieve a certain effect on/send a certain message to the listener e.g. I’ve chosen these songs that I know you like because I want you to know I care, or I’ve chosen 12 of my favourite songs because I want to share my music with you (a deeply personal gesture, IMO).

Sadly, my happiness lasted for a while, because I soon found out that:

  1. It wasn’t a mix-tape, but a video, and
  2. ALL THE OTHER TEACHERS THAT TAUGHT 10A04 ALSO RECEIVED THE SAME VIDEO.

Wah lao eh! Felt somewhat cheated lor. LOL… Kidding, ya.

I really like the video; in fact, I like it so much that I want to share it with all of you here:

Click on this link in case you can’t see the embedded video.

Nice right? (BTW if you want to watch more stuff by Ansen Goh and Co., check out “A Measured Distance Away” and ObscuRed.sg .)

I’m so glad they came together to do this, not only because the video shows how much they’ve grown as a class, but also because receiving the gift has made me re-evaluate my ‘preferred present list’ – I’ve just included a section called ‘Digital Art’.

So thanks, kiddos, for all the love. I’m proud of all of you.