Rockaway 09: How To Party Like A Rock Star

“FREE”...a word that will pack a house and guarantee you a rockin’ crowd in Malaysia these days. Throw in a dozen of the year’s biggest draws and it’s a safe bet kids will actually ditch ‘Rock Band’ to cheer on some of the year’s largest and most popular local rockers. With TV3’s anniversary-celebrating ‘Inspirasiku’ pop bash happening at the same time over at Merdeka Square and the nefarious Pesta Malam Indonesia 3 also happening in Bukit Jalil, loyalties were tested to see who truly rocked among KL’s young.

Free concerts may not be the healthiest thing for music appreciation in this country and our music industry in general for the long run, but...if it’s your bag, hey, may as well enjoy it, like the 5,000 teens who came and rocked their Saturday away at the ‘Rockaway ‘09’ concert themed ‘One Buck Short & Friends’. Who would pay for good live music churned by our own bands out of nothing but legit talent plus blood, sweat and tears anyway right? Ask yourself that. The truth is still out there.

Well anyway with One Buck Short curating, things were destined to get crazy fun and it did: bands enjoyed a good stage and a wild crowd, lead singers showed love to the punk poppers, front row teens threw up life-sized cutouts of One Buck Short members during the band’s curtain-closing set, and bands later partied with fans at Space on Asian Heritage Row at the after party hosted by indie rock DJ crew Twilight Actiongirl.

Though it was One Buck Short’s night, the show was clearly about the spirit of bonding between the bands on the bill. The new Capsquare Mall has been upping it stakes as the hot spot for rock gigs this year and while a full-blown festival may have seemed a little overwhelming at first, most things gelled on the night.

Before colourful openers Car Crash Hearts and Medusa reminded us we were in 2009 with their emo/disco appetisers, concertgoers were stunned by the arty turns of Deng Deng Etc, who sang in Cantonese over edgy guitar rock and Seven Collar T-Shirt, who returned to the big stage with an evolved collection of songs from their upcoming third album.

Indie darlings The Times, Couple and Pesawat were late evening treats for the young crowd as they jangled their way through sing-along sets and lived up to their billing as the hottest trio on the radio right now. The rest were indie concert standards like Bunkface, Estranged (with Butterfingers’ Kadax on bass) and Bittersweet, who all drew the Topshop rockers out.

Cassandra, Restraint and Love Me Butch drew quite another set of checked shirts and black tees with their heavier tones, with Restraint starting mosh pits and LMB inspiring euphoric movement amongst the mob of checked shirts and emo bangs with their sweeter melodies and startling new songs like “Throw Me In” and “Come Out, Come Out”, their current single.

Wrapping up early for a festival, at around a half-hour before midnight, this first of presumably many ‘Rockaway’ concerts was closed with the biggest hits of the night, Pop Shuvit, who were out-sung by their own fans during ‘Marabahaya’ and ‘Oh Shizuka’, and One Buck Short, who had so much fun being kings of the night that leg cramps and life-sized cutouts of themselves couldn’t stop them from shaking the stage. A stellar cameo by manager and friend, They Will Kill Us All guitarist Edwin Raj on the killer new track ‘Revolution’ then sset up the perfect pre-hangover moment for these triumphant new age Malaysian rock stars.

*‘Rockaway ’09: One Buck Short & Friends’ was brought to you by Jack & Jill Rollercoaster Chips. Relive the concert at http://rockaway2009.com.