February 2012
6 posts
crimpitycrimpitynownow asked: Hey there! Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading your "A day in the life" post about Kasabian and The Vaccines. I've got the same job as you, only at the other side of the world, in Norway, so it was fun to read that it's exactly the same no matter where in the world you go. Only difference I could find is that we don't get the roundtable interviews, we only get...
jhnmyr:
Here’s a clip of the first single off...
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A Day In The Life (Kasabian And The Vaccines...
Here’s how my day went when I interviewed Kasabian and The Vaccines and covered their concert at Fort Canning Park, Singapore. It’s not necessarily representative of all the interviews and concert reportage I do, but it should give you a rough idea of what this particular aspect of my job is like.
11:30 Arrive at Plaza Singapura because I am craving Subway and that particular branch...
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From Despair To Where
To mark the anniversary of the last time Manic Street Preachers co-lyricist and barely-competent guitarist Richey Edwards was seen alive in 1995, the NME has made him their cover story and asked fans to submit their own stories regarding what Richey meant to them.
I don’t really have a Richey story, unless you count talking about him at length during an interview with Nicky Wire when the...
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The Boys In The Band Are Back In Town
Two nights ago was Sir Dandy And The Boys In The Band’s first gig of 2012, for yet another relatively high-profile event. This time it was for Love Garage, with a line-up of international names and local live acts and DJs. Considering we hadn’t played together since late December, we figured it might be a good idea to rehearse before the show.
You see, this is a band that rarely...
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In The Mix
I made a mixtape last night. Well, not really a tape, more like a streaming playlist. I thought about uploading all the songs on to a filesharing site, but I decided they’re not really mine to give away en masse. I think there is a difference between uploading songs to a filesharing website and recording those same songs onto a cassette or CD, even though on the surface they seem the same....
January 2012
19 posts
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WatchSongs About Girls: A Mixtape
This is probably the laziest mixtape I’ve ever made. I just looked for songs with the word “girl” in the title on my iPod, picked 14 tracks, arranged them in some sort of coherent storyline, and voila. But while sorting through it all, it got me thinking that however much I think I understand the opposite sex, I always end up discovering that I...
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Surviving Laneway
In a few weeks’ time the Laneway Festival will reach our shores again. Well, not really our shores, more like Singapore’s. But it’ll feel like our shores if last year’s festival was any indication, what with Indonesians travelling in droves to attend and see all those cool bands. Felt like any other gig in Jakarta with many familiar faces, except there were a lot more...
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Degenerate Evolution (To The Brandals With Love)
This next story begins sometime in 2003 with me talking to the new customer service guy at my regular CD shop and ends last night with me helping prevent the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ drummer getting knocked over by a moshpit the abovementioned customer service guy helped cause. Telling the story won’t take nine years, though it may feel like so if you’re not really interested. And if...
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I'm Addicted. To Setlists.
I wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I was just like any ordinary concertgoer, assuming that at any gig I went to, the artist would play all the hits, and even do them on demand if I stood near the stage and shouted loudly enough. That assumption was only strengthened when I went to the Hootie & The Blowfish gig at Jakarta’s old Hard Rock Cafe on March 19, 1997, with...
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Changing Address
Attention followers: I have changed my blog address from the pompous, self-absorbed becauseiamhasief.tumblr.com to the less-pompous, but still self-absorbed in its own way hasiefardiasyah.tumblr.com . I still stand by my reasons for choosing the original URL, but it just occurred to me that I would rather have my real name on any social network I’m involved with. Unlike Facebook, Twitter and...
pigsdontfly asked: That WSATC shirt you wore on the pic look so tight on you. Mwahahaha
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My First Gig (Talking To Myself About Duran Duran)
I don’t know if going to my first concert at age 14 can be considered late, but I didn’t really have much choice before that. I was too young to go to gigs when my family lived in the U.K., and then we moved to Saudi Arabia, which is pretty much a hell hole when it comes to popular culture. Though to be fair, popular culture isn’t exactly why people go to Saudi Arabia. There are...
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One Monday Afternoon In Cikini
“Go international”. You hear Indonesian artists say that all the time, but how often does it actually happen? And what does it actually mean, anyway? In recent years more and more bands have had the opportunity to perform overseas, but does it really count if the people you’re playing for are Indonesian diplomats, students and labour workers? And if the people who invited you to...
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hellofake asked: Mas Hasief, Ngefans bercampur irilah sama tulisan" konsernya mas Hasief... Mau nanya Konser yang paling berkesan selama mas nonton itu apa? Dan paling ditunggu-tunggu siapa? Mampir-mampir mas ke Tumblr saya terima kasihh.. :D
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Anyone Can Play Guitar
I had given up any aspirations of playing in bands by the time I hit my mid-twenties and graduated from university. Not that I seriously pursued music in my teen years. There was that one gig I played at my junior high graduation party, but I suspect I was asked to sing only because I had decent English pronunciation, not because I could sing like I was the second coming of Kurt Cobain. (Though in...
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If It's Good Enough For You
Just saw a post from Dodgy on my Facebook timeline, promoting their upcoming album Stand Upright In A Cool Place, the first one from the UK band - or at least the seminal incarnation of it - in 15 years. The lengthy wait isn’t because they were being psycho perfectionists like Axl Rose working on Chinese Democracy, but because they weren’t even together for most of those 15 years. At...
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Get Your Facts Straight
Was looking at Pure Saturday videos on YouTube, and I found “Di Bangku Taman”, the last official music video they’ve done (circa late 2008/early 2009), even though the song itself first came out almost a decade earlier on 1999’s Utopia album.
Confused? Here’s the explanation: the “Di Bangku Taman” used in this video is a new version from 2007’s Time...
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How I Got Foster The People To Play A Weezer Song
How did I get Foster The People to cover Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” in Jakarta? Here’s the story. I already knew FTP frontman Mark Foster was a Weezer fan, and when he was a teenager who had just moved to Los Angeles he even met Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo at a party and asked him how to play “Say It Ain’t So”.
Fast forward to almost a decade later...
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tumblrbot asked: WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?
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ch0cobi asked: mau nanya nih, kalo misalkan mau nonton konser di luar negri gimana ya? misalkan beli tiketnya dan lain2 + kasih tips2nya dong :D soalnya tadi sempet iri ngeliat harga tiket katy di manila jauh lebih murah. thx before :)
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I Was There: A Concert Bootleg Mixtape
This is a re-post of something I put on my Facebook notes page a few months ago. Since I now have this proper blog, I might as well put it here, too. I’ll probably do more stuff like this in the future, if I can be bothered. Carry on!
When you’ve been to quite a few concerts, maybe at some point later on you’ll end up thinking, “I wish I could relive that moment.” It’s certainly happened to...
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How it all began
January 11, 2001. That’s when I took the first step of being a writer, or at least someone who gets paid to write. Not that I’ve had that date brandished in my memory to carry with me until my dying breath - I just checked a folder in a long-unused e-mail account, and lo and behold, there it was.
A little background: around that time I was still studying International Relations at the...
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There is no escape
I am writing this on the tumblr app for BlackBerry in my right hand while my left hand’s on the steering wheel as I’m driving home from the office. What this means is that, provided my BlackBerry provider doesn’t fuck up, I can blog from anywhere, at any time. So be afraid. Be very afraid. Especially if you’re driving in front of me or in my opposite direction.
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Because nobody asked for it, you got it
Hello. Welcome to Hasief Ardiasyah’s tumblr blog by me, Hasief Ardiasyah. I have finally bitten the bullet and started up another blog. Considering the last one I made was promptly abandoned within a few months and was so long ago that I’ve forgotten where I made it, don’t get your hopes up too high for this one. But maybe if enough people read this and find it enjoyable, or at...