Blue Wednesday @ Annexe Gallery

By Ben Liew  •  in Reports
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It was the first mid-week of 2010. We intercepted a transmission from the future from pure beings of light and folk parody duo The Panda Head Curry. “Oi! Come here and eat some roti!” And with local indie rockers Deserters and Singaporean psych slingers The Stoned Revivals on the bill as well, we just had to have a nibble.

Surprisingly, the gallery was packed with about 70 plus people. Pretty impressive since the show was supposed to be one of those intimate thingies.

When JUICE got there, The Stoned Revivals were already playing a lively set. Their guitarist had a cool way of strumming his guitar that made him look like he was slicing giant chillies. We dug their post-rockish blues funk and slurry melodies. Deserters went up next. With frontman Zack’s usual swagger, the band followed suit and gave us a fair dosage of melodramatic Brit-inspired indie.

But all in all, everyone who was there knew that The Panda Head Curry was the act to end all acts (probably because everyone would either be deaf or mortified later). Before coming out, organiser and Annexe media manager Jerome Kugan announced to the crowd that TPHC would not perform until they “feel your love”.

With cheers and screams from unlikely groupies (including one Zee Avi), Lord and General Panda emerged onstage slowly as though to the tune of Bowie’s ‘Heroes’. Lord Panda did a rant on the Allah-issue. “If you want to say the word Allah, first, you have to… Sunat!!!” – signaling General Panda to break into opener ‘Sunat’ (a song about the fear of circumcision song from their debut album 1000 Homo Humpbacks).

They continued on with “hits” like ‘Projek Khinzir Raksaksa (PKR)’, ‘Finland People’ and ‘Lim Guan Ng, Emperor of Penang’. Somewhere in the middle, the duo did a heartfelt rendition of bi-polar singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston’s ‘Devil Town’ which was accompanied by Zee Avi (probably the only one who knew the song apart from us) from the floor.

After about an hour, the crowd still did not want to leave. They couldn’t get enough so to cap it off, TPHC did a cover of Ben’s B!tches’ infamous ‘Aku Suka Jolok’. And we’re sure the week got better for everyone after that. Jolok!

Blue Wednesday happened on Wednesday 6 January 2010. Go say hi to them at www.myspace.com/thestonedrevivals for The Stoned Revivals, www.myspace.com/deserterstheband for Deserters and pandaheadcurry.blogspot.com or Facebook page for The Panda Head Curry? For more on Blue Wednesday and other events at the Annexe Gallery, visit their website here. To see what made the night turn red, checkout our gallery.

Images Shirin Jauhari