i'm a one man band? i doubt it.....

a bit of history: i started to play the guitar at 16years old. play a really damn cheap guitar. still remembered that i bought it with my 'red-packet' money, or 'ang pow'-which means red packet. cost me bout 60 to 70 bucks. learn it all myself, except occasionally i will learn from a friend of mine. other than that, i start all of it from scratch (but took like 3 months of class) never learnt anything useful from there. so i quit...and didn't pay the last month's fee. hahaha

to tell the truth, my playing never took off to a new level that time. maybe i was new playing it. and i had difficulty transcribing songs and figuring the chords, not like steve vai... he can tell the chords when he listens to one. wish i got that skill or how to learn to aquire that skill. back to my playing, i was still playing those simple chords. C, Am F, G or G Em C D and etc. maybe i would add in some easy hammer-ons/pull-offs on the chords a played, just to make it sound melodious. but that didnt help me, playing still sucked. hahah... i used to buy a lot of reference books, for guitars. chord book, song book (those popular song books-with the current hits and etc stuff), all kind of books i could find in my hometown. but i never used those books properly, i would just learn all the songs halfway, then i'm done already. i'm don't learn from songs. lazy..i guess, and last time i was not internet savvy, don't even knows how to operate a PC (where a lot of my frens were so into those PC, processor thingy. they are rich i guess, and their parent can fund their obsessions). not like today, finding songs/tabs are so easy. just search for it in the net. any how, my guitar remains my best companion all those years, night or day, rain or shine, exams...?? nehhh i don't give a damn. i would play it...used to sleep with holding my 'axe' last time. after a few frustrating years playing the 'kapok', i finally send my kapok to 'hell'...i smashed it to pieces. actually smashing an axe is quite a wonderful experience. i really know how pete townshend, and those guys felt when they smashed their axe. u really felt like a rockstar...hahah.. too bad dave don't have a proper axe to break....

electric guitar phase: i got my electric axe a hofma (now still using it, not to say i hate it now, but it's got some problems here and there. actually i was the one responsible for those problems.) i used to think that the guitar neck is flat. i have this problem thinking that the shop who sold me the axe was ripping me off. but there's nothing wrong with my axe, i just don't understand the string vibration mechanism. haha...used to remove some of my frets, and file it myself. so because of it, there's something wrong with my frets. and, at one point i actually 'accidently' damaged my electric axe. so with some screws and a kind of chemical, i glued it back. (and i stopped playing it for quite a while. i disassemble it and put in the cupboard. i can't stand living without it, so i fix it back. D-I-Y style.) i used to open my axe to repair a few times. just wanna explore the anatomy of it...and clean up volume and tone port. it was giving me the scratchy sound when playing with it. and also 'installed' the flyod rose bridge (minus the locking nut) myself. the crartsmanship is damn poor. hey's it's just a hofma, if it was broken, so be it. if i had a fender strat or tele, i won't do that. i don't even have a proper amp. i'm using my dad's 'home entertainment system' to play my axe. i would plug in my cables to the karaoke (mic input) machine, which runs through a pioneer amp. so to get 'distortion', i turn up the level of gain at the mic input, and try not to turn up the volume of the amp too much. so..after a few years of playing with 'my set-up', the speaker finally can't take it. in short, i had ruined my dad's pair of speaker. and i don't have any guitar efx processors. too poor for that also. a few years ago, i bought a crappy amm, a prince amp with crappy distortion. yuck!!!!

the smashing pumpkins phase: i bought a pumpkins album when i'm in F4. i was skipping maths tuition class that day. i'm one of those people who doesnt believe or HATED tuitions. my tuition usually lasted for less than 3 months. i'm still wondering how i manage to secure a place in penang, without any tuition at all in F6. call it lucky?? no..i worked hard also, but i don't have the additional information/tips that could secure me more marks, my friend had when they went for tuitions. back to the pumpkins, i was so obsessed with them, till now i will listen to the 'mellon collie' album, one of my favourites of all time. from then i tried to figure out how billy corgan did all those catchy/heavy riffs. and sometimes wrote some pretty cute songs that i like. eventhough during that period, i hated those cute songs. i was so into slayers, korns, metallica, megadeth, etc. but i enjoy those 'cute' songs from pumpkins ie lily (my one and only). so...to cut my story short, i went to tower records one time with a few friends. it was my first time there. and i saw the original mellon collie tabs. without thinking twice, i grabbed it and paying the the nearest counter. even it costs like hell. and i still dont know how to read tabs (tablature). so i studied the inside for quite long. finally i figured it out. and i tried to play the songs. not sure whats the first song i learnt. probably 'galapogos'. from that day on, i try to absord billy's style and philosophy in guitar playing and song-writings (directly or undirectly). hmmm...should call myself pumpkin boy. the band got drummer boy, kidney boy and 'playboy'.
so my playing 'improved' a tiny bit. al least i'm not recycling C Am F G all the time...

Uni Phase: this was one of the phase that i improved a lot. thanks to the exposure to other musicians esp dave. the wanderers also played a tiny part. the first i played with dave..hmm... my first impression was..fuck this guy memang ganas like fuck. can goreng also (or in simple language..play fast licks). can churn out songs like a radio. people named the songs, and he will play it (eps chyn will request songs from dave) i used to feel inferior playing alongside dave (and wonder how i can be like that). he was like fucking terror. and my confidence was below zero...and all i played is pumpkins' stuff. i can't play other's songs...never care to learn it...

"bugger, u memang kejam last time...."
and we formed an unofficial 'guitar partnership' which lasted till now. and we're quite well known last time (in our first/second year) because 1) we play quite different from the rest 2) our size. (when we walked together. they will see a huge contrast. hahaha...one is huge, and is tiny. not like the 'batman-robin' partnership, it was more to king kong-mickey mouse partnership.)
so beginning from there, i was improving. thank god....but not that terror like dave said yesterday. that i'm a one man band."...... "i'm terror..no shit".... "not many people plays like me". my God...i don't think i'm that good lah. just trying to do my own stuff (with my own signatures) there were hell a lot for me to improve on. a lot of styles that i had never heard of. my technical skill is like eewwwww, sucked!! i could never play fast, that's for sure. hahah....AND ONE MORE THING, MEETING THE REST OF THE BJ MEMBER IS A BLISS IN LIFE. AT LEAST I DON'T NEED TO PLAY ALONE... THANK YOU GUYS FOR BEING WONDERFUL BAND MEMBERS!! NOBODY CAN'T REPLACE YOU ALL, NOT EVEN J*****N. ROCK ON!!!!!