Oooh la la la

I've never been for any of big concert acts that have been coming through KL over the last few years. I missed out on Incubus, No Doubt, Black Eyed Peas, and all the other cobras who have slithered through these here parts. The last big concert I went for in KL was Shaggy. As a kid I remember going for Paula Abdul, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, and oh baby, Color Me Badd.

Then this whole tsunami aid Forces of Nature concert thingy came about and out of a lack of better things to do on a Friday night and annoyed that I tend to miss out on all the best watercooler type conversations the next day, I decided to make my grand appearance, alongside Dayang Nurfaizah, Annuar Zain, Innuendo, Ruth Sahanaya, Yumiko Cheng, Nicholas Tse, Black Eyed Peas, Boys 2 Men, Lauren Hill, Wyclef, and of baby, the Backstreet Boys.

I went with Tronics and a mineral water bottle filled with Gin and Tonic and had a nice buzz by the time we got to the National Sports Complex in Bukit Jalil. We walked around outside, had a burger, looked at chicks (By the way, I was once again wonderfully reminded that KL is full of hot chicks... they just don't work in my industry or happen to go clubbing a lot, which sucks), stared at the red carpet arrival area for a while no one was arriving and then took our seats.

Paula Abdul came on stage and welcomed everyone, which was weird. Not wierd like frat kids, but weird like "What the hell is she doing here?" This was a feeling that was constantly repeated throughout the night as random ass celebrities from far away kept coming on stage to tell us to "remember the victims of the tsunami" and also that they were a force of nature. Jodi Watley (who?), Lance Bass, Joey Fat One, Michelle Yeoh, Jackie Chan (who sang!), Eric Morales and someone introduced as the First Lady of Hip Hop. My cousin DotCom Man muttered something about her being Russel Simmon's wife and somebody else said she was Tata Young. A normal blogger would have done some homework by this stage and provided you with a link to either Tata Young or Russel Simmon's wife but I am way too lazy and the mouse is out of reach right now.

From the start I knew it was going to be an interesting evening. I was hoping for interesting in the sense that I was actually enjoying it instead of making sociological hob-servations of the state of Malaysian society. The first hob-servation I made was that instead of a sea of kids standing in the front of the stage screaming for some love, they put all the VIPS and invited dorks there... on those blue banquet chairs. One thing about Malaysians is that if you give us a chair, we will sit on it (unlike other people who take the chair to dinner, or perhaps the zoo) and it is going to take some serious cajoling to get us off of our asses... which didn't happen until later on in the show.

Lauren Hill opened the show with some wonderfully sung but terribly low energy acoustic numbers before she broke it down with X Factor and Doo Wop (That Thing). She was brilliant but the chairs won. After that Innuendo and the local cobras came on. No disrespect to the local industry, but aiyoh, I couldn't wait for them to be finished. Shiela Majid came on next to prove that Malaysian artists don't have to be crap and she absolutely rocked it. She sang Warna, Sinaran (of course), and Ikhlas Tapi Jauh. Now, Ikhlas Tapi Jauh would make my All Time Favorite Songs Box Set, somewhere in the middle of Disc 2 which is very impressive but they replaced Zainal Abidin and Amir Yussof's respective parts with a wooden Annuar Zain and a permagrinned Dayang which made it terrible. Still, it is very fun to sing along to... even while completely rooted to your seat.

Boys 2 Men came on next (i think... not sure) and they had us on our feet in no time, except for the VIPs who paid so much for their seats that they refused to stand up. B2M were amazinglah. I was singing along to the parts that I knew and pretending at the parts that I didn't... they sang Mama, Water Runs Dry, On Bended Knee, I'll Make Love to You, and End of the Road. The B2M Classics as they call it.

I can't remember the rest of the concert because Clef completely dominated all the storage space that I was saving for everyone else. This man absofuckinglutely rocked it. I felt like I was watching a DVD of one of his concerts. His DJ started it off with some brilliant scratching, throwing together some of the choicest hooks in hip hop over the last 20 years or so before the Preacher's Son walked on stage, struck a pose, and launched into No Woman, No Cry. After that, he said something along the lines of:

26 hours... 26 hours... That's how long I had to fly to get to Malaysia. 26 hours! So, if I see a single one of you sitting down, then Wyclef is going to come and get you. STAND UP! And you better bounce to this next song, I don't care if you are young or old, you better stand up and jump around!

Upon which he started singing House of Pain's Jump Around before neatly going into Stayin' Alive, which was definitely the shiznit when it first came out way back during The Carnival (which in my opinion is one of the top 10 hip hop albums of all time. If you don't have it, you suck). Then in trademark Wyclef style, he politely asked if he could play his geee-tar. The audience thought about it for a second and then politely acquiesced... I mean, it's Wyclef... if he wants to play his guitar on stage then, I mean, I guess it should be ok. Besides, he said that we could sit down for the next 3 minutes.

He didn't play his guitar though, he became his guitar. I always knew he could pluck a 5 stringer here and there but this man borders on virtuoso material. He was doing the behind the back, he was playing with his teeth, he was dipping in and out of Guantanamera and making it sound like he was playing Johnny Be Good. He then got everyone to hold up their handphones and turn on the screens as the stadium lights dimmed down. He started to play Knockin' on Heaven's Door and this was truly beautiful and pretty much the only truly creatively fitting moment to remember the tsunami victims the whole night. The stadium was a sea of little dots of light of all sorts of colors, swaying left to right and singing along with Mr.Jean.

The best part though, was when Clef looked backstage for a moment, got excited and then proceeded to invite Lauren Hill onstage.

My jaw dropped.

The Fugees were having a reunion in Kuala Lumpur and I was there to watch it (Pras doesn't count, ok?). The last time they had played together on the same stage was at Dave Chappelle's party in Ft.Greene in 2004 and before that, absolute yonks (probably at some point while they were promoting The Score). The crowd were going bananas and a whole bunch of other fruit as well. I was a Carmen Miranda headdress.

They sang Fugee-La and Ready or Not before Clef started doing the We're Not Worthy bow to L-Boogie. He promptly reminded the crowd that what was going on was a very emotional moment for him and that they were watching something very rare. The people in the audience who already knew this were on Cloud 9. I was somewhere on Cloud 17. Maybe it was my imagination but I could have sworn there was a hint of regret and apology in Wyclef's voice. I mean, when Pras calls you the cancer that broke up the Fugees, shitttttttttttttttttt, you know done fucked up then.

Lauren Hill waved to the crowd and left the stage. 5 minutes later (which are a blur to me), Clef suddenly ran over to his keyboardist and took over from him and started playing a tune which was really familiar but no one in the audience could place it.

Clef: "Come on Legend, let's do this"

Lauren: "Oh, you want to do this one?"

Clef: "Absolutely"

and then L-Boogie walked on stage again. Before we could catch our breath, she snatched the rest of it out of our collective grasp.

Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words...

and by that point I had already died.

Proof