DJ Bunga: All These Long Island Teas That We’ve Drunk

By Alif Omar Mahfix  •  29 Oct 2012 in Last Word

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One of Twilight Actiongirl’s more prolific members (by that we mean their biggest whore), DJ Bunga pens a love letter to tag and all the regulars who had partied at Bar Amber, then Loft, then Barsonic, and still kept coming throughout the whole 9 years of their career. JUICE was almost teary-eyed ourselves reading this…

9 years is a long time. Some people don’t even ever have a relationship that lasted that long, and in clubland/party scene that’s practically an eternity. For sure, Twilight Actiongirl was an anomaly; while what we were playing were definitely nothing new (and we’ve never claim that it was), the setting and the 4 members of TAG definitely were. None of us took lessons on DJing or looked remotely like 1, except for the always impeccably stylish Xu of course. Our vastly different backgrounds (journalist, stylist, record company guy, and photographer) reflected the music policy: never before in KL did a club night have a playlist that was as free-ranging or as random as ours.

We started Twilight Actiongirl because no one else did and we were sick of having nowhere to go on a Friday night that played the kind of music that we and our friends wanted to listen to. We gave it a shot to see how long we can run with it. Apparently very long.

Our methods of promotion were decidedly old skool and punk rock. Black and white photocopied flyers and word of mouth were the key back in the day rather than social media. We couldn’t if we wanted to; this was pre-Facebook / Myspace / Twitter-everything. From our monthly and then bi-monthly nights at Bar Amber, TAG’s following grew over the course of 2004. When Bar Amber closed down, by some bizarre twist of fate and through the recommendation of one of our regulars, we ended up at the Loft; a tiny bar space at one of the biggest clubs in KL, Zouk.

The irony of a decidedly non-commercial night in a well-known clubbing institution was not lost on us. We’re in.

And for the next four years, nights at The Loft became well-known for its potent mix of rock‘n’roll, electro punk funk, affordable but potent as hell Long Island Tea and frozen Margaritas. Rampant stagediving by punters (and the DJs); a first in KL’s night scene: checked. Forgotten lo-fi surf punk Malay nuggets: checked. Drunkenly pressing the eject-button mid-song in the middle of peak hour: checked. Huge football-terrace-karaoke sing-alongs: checked.

All these and more helped to make Friday nights at the Loft the sort of stuff that got more than a few TAGgers teary-eyed when Zouk undergone major renovations and we had to say goodbye to our home for the period of 2004 to 2008. To see some regulars shedding tears at the final TAG night at the Loft spoke volumes on what the night meant to them.

And the people who come to TAG nights are a motley, random bunch: blue collar workers, fashionistas, professionals, hipsters, or just college kids having their first taste of club land.  And I love it more for it. To be inclusive and accepting of people from different backgrounds and races; united by a common goal which is just to have a hell of a night out partying to music that all of us enjoy – that was what we set out to do and it still have not changed to this day.

Three generations of TAG kakis have come and gone but the one common thing that all of them have is a real and genuine love for music of all kinds and a hell-bent fervour to back it up on the dancefloor. Life-long friends were made, some fell in love (and got hitched), some fell out of love, while others have moved on but through it all the sense of camaraderie that TAG kakis shared is something that I’ve not seen elsewhere.  You know a club night is special when even your bartender sings along with the customers word-for-word.

TAG regulars are not just party-goers, they’re a family.

So on behalf of the other TAG guys, I’d like to thank our friends and families for the support and helping us along the way, to the guys and gals at Zouk for letting us do what we do and giving us a home, and finally to everyone who had danced, sang or share a jug of long island tea with us throughout all these years.

To paraphrase a mainstream song, “here’s a toast to all those who hear us all too well.”  Thanks for the love for the past 9 years, looking forward to the next one.

Cheers,
Bunga

Follow Bunga on Twitter at @bungactiongirl, or follow TAG at @twilightaction, or better yet follow both.