The first jamming studio that was a significant part of my life was some dingy place in Clarke Quay. I don’t remember the name. I remember that it was a shophouse, on the second or third floor. I remember it was small, dark, cramped. The first time I went jamming, barely knowing anything about music, and only haven’t played a little bit on the bass – with tabs from the internet, and number in my head going “1-1-1-1-5-5-5-5-3-3-3-3” – basically a ‘paint by numbers’ sort of system. I was in a room with a really good guitarist and a really good drummer, and they both knew what they were doing. It was all I could do to keep up.
I was irrationally excited about the band, and talked a lot about what we could do, what we ought to be named and so on. I was too socially inept and insensitive to realised that they weren’t having it. They were underwhelmed and unimpressed, and asked me to leave the band. I remember it was one of the most stressful, painful experiences of my life. It would have felt silly to say that a few years ago, but now that I have 10+ years to reflect on I realise that it’s actually true. I don’t blame or fault them for it – none of them were trying to give me a bad experience. But I was young and naive and hopeful, and they just happened to be the people to break it to me how narrow-minded and solipsistic I was.
We used to go to eat at a kopitiam nearby after our jams. I remember bringing my bass to school one day, lugging it around all day (I personally thought it was somehow cool to do that, even if nobody else probably actually cared). Then I went all the way to the studio. I remember taking off my shirt, and wearing a shitty $30 chain I had saved up to buy from 77th Street. I had a picture of that, I’m not sure who took it. I think I put it on my Friendster page, which is now gone. I also used it as one of my MSN Messenger display pictures – that’s also now gone.
There were a couple of other small studios I had been to. There was one at Simei called Wee Lee, and it was in an industrial warehouse type space. There were Chinese ladies (from PRC) who were doing some tailoring work. The lifts were large and clunky, capable of carrying literal forklifts. I remember getting electric shocks from the microphones when my teeth accidentally bumped into them. We went there when we were students, in our school uniforms, with our school bags strewn everywhere, trying to play Metallica and Guns n’ Roses. It’s interesting how everybody was pretty much trying to play the same 50 or so songs.
The second jamming studio that mattered to me was Fourtones. It was along North Bridge Road – also walking distance from Clarke Quay MRT. There were two white stone lions at the entrance. I still remember Nazri (Nash, we called him)’s phone number. You’d have to go up a narrow staircase to get to the studio, and walk past a KTV or Karaoke pub or something. (With the benefit of hindsight – any place where you can have hostesses is going to attract a clientele with much more spending power. Some guy with a guitar, however good he is, is simply never going to get as much money as a squished up pair of tits and batting eyelids. Worse if it’s several guys, with a whole bunch of equipment that they need to lug around. But we were young and naive and we believed that if you played 3 chords and the truth, with enough emotion, it would bowl people over – the masses would congregate and cheer and whoop. Beatlemania could be recreated if only we had the right configuration, the right songs.)
Once you’re up the stairs, you’d get in the door, and you’d be in a dark-ish common area that’s really narrow (because most of the space is taken up by the jamming rooms). It’s dark, carpeted. You take off your shoes. There’s a soft ottoman-type couch to sit on. And then you enter whichever room you’ve booked. There’s something about the architecture of the experience that’s worth talking about – you walk off the streets, then you go up the stairs, through one door, into a dark place, take off your shoes, and then go into another – there’s something almost religious about that experience.
It was always nice to hear other bands playing in the other rooms, or to go early and catch a band playing in the room before yours. It was… kind of like running into other characters in a multiplayer video game. It reminded you that you were not alone, that there are others like you.
There are other studios that I’ve spent time in.I would also go to L Cube studios, which at the time was at Duxton Hill. We would scout the bars around the area afterwards to look for places that could potentially be live music venues for concerts we were organising. From time to time I would “session” for some friends’ band or other, because their bassist was not going to be able to make it for some show.
Beat Merchants, in Bugis, Arab Street, Haji Lane, somewhere around that area – from before it became cool. You know, looking back I feel like there’s a difference between the “malay” jamming studios and the “chinese” jamming studios. (I don’t know if there are any “indian” jamming studios”. And… I do actually remember once jamming at the literal Eurasian Association, and it was like a school classroom, something a bit… churchy?). I might be projecting here. I’ll need to visit more jamming studios these days to have a more informed opinion.
It’s interesting to think about it now on hindsight – some jamming studios have a certain soul to them. You kinda wanna hang out in them, linger there after you’re done, go early… there’s a chance you might meet some of the cooler older musicians. Some people might be noodling on acoustic guitars in the lounge area, some people might be smoking…. It was just really chill. It was so different from everything I was familiar with before that. It’s not like a coffeeshop, or a bar. It’s a space of its own. I suppose it might be similar to something like a ballet studio, or a lab… but there’s something about studios that’s really special to me. Something about all the equipment just sitting around, with so much possibility in them. Rows and rows of guitars and basses hanging around, all the strings and pedals, infinite possibilities.
There was a time where video game arcades was an amazing place to hang out with your friends… and then multiplayer games came out on console and desktop, and internet became ubiquitous, and people would start playing online with their friends… and soon it wasn’t so necessary to go to the arcade anymore. The old timers would keep going, but the new kids wouldn’t bother. And so that would decline. It seemed like something similar would happen to music – that synthesisers, youtube, home recording and so on would allow people to make and play music, and collaborate, without having to go to these central places quite as much. But of course it’s not the same thing. Every day, there are still new kids picking up guitars and drums and discovering the rudeness of rock and roll and turning it all up to 11. That’s probably never going to change.
I guess what’s interesting to me that I want to talk about is – it’s interesting how all of this is related. The guitars, the music, the rock and roll, the hair, the clothes, the CDs, the poses, the studios, the spaces. I’m going to be talking about Singapore, and part of how to think about Singapore is the architecture – and the architecture of jamming studios is something to think about. What’s missing? The colours, the smells? The posters, the gig posters, so many gig posters. Photos of international musicians visiting. Sometimes there’s a signed guitar from some legendary gig, like some guitar signed by someone from Metallica back in 1997 or something. These things become precious talismans, like a strand of hair from the Buddha – a promise of mayhem and carnage, that there will be noise.