Part 5: Jakarta & Kuala Lumpur (the censored show) [ Part 1] [ Part 2] [ Part 3 ] [ Part 4 ] [ Part 5 ] by neko: Intro (the Jakarta experience) I'm leaving Australia Tuesday night and can't say I'm too happy about it. There's of course two more shows to look forward to and then the Southeast Asia thing will be a whole experience on it's own. While Australia felt very safe and secure, I have no idea what Indonesia will be like, it's definitely one to keep my sense for adventure going. Also my friend Katie abandons me to stay longer in Australia (the lucky bitch), so I'm on my own in Singapore Tuesday night, then off to Jakarta Wednesday morning with budgetairline 'valuair.com', which is an adventure by itself already. At the airport in Jakarta (which looks more like a Bali beach hut than an airport!) I grab the first best taxi to the hotel. Big mistake, no aircon being a major issue when its 34 degrees and super humid outside. The drive itself is scary as shit as well, but interesting, to say the least. 1 hour for £5, can't really ask for much more I guess. Once there, before even getting into hotel, the taxi gets stopped and every piece of luggage i have gets scanned with a bomb detector. "Because of all terrorist, you know, hahaha!", my taxi driver jokes in broken English. Right then. I make it to the entrance and before entering the hotel have once more put myself and every piece of luggage to the subject of airport security-style metal detectors. Scared? Not sure, probably better that way than without the detectors. Once checked in also meet my friend Yuki, who has come over all the way from Japan. As the hotel isn't really all THAT nice (supposedly it's one of the best in town - not sure who came up with that) and we decide we want to see something in town, being girls obviously 'shopping' is highest on the list. So, concierge tells us to go to "Sarina mall", 20 min taxi ride away. Another very scary taxi ride later we get there. The 'mall' turns out to be a 3 story run down shop with clothes from the 80's. Obvisouly I must sound like a typical stupid westerner here, coming from London to this poor country. No one here believes you're here as tourist anyways, whenever random taxi/ concierge bloke asks what I'm doing here and I say 'holiday' (I usually dont bother going into the whole "there's this band I quite like ..." story) they probably think I'm rather strange. But anwyays, we decide to go back and that it probably will be best not to leave the hotel at all until the gig next day. I'm usually the first one who wants to check out everything in a new city I'm in, but this isn't really the kind of place where you just walk around as a foreigner. You can't really walk anywhere as the distances are huge. So it is pool for the rest of the day, dinner and drinks at hotel and pool again all next day. Which is very nice actually as the weather is great and hot and all. The band and their people are staying in the same hotel as well (enjoying the cockroaches and funny smell a lot too, ewww) and are very nice to offer us a lift to venue and back with them in the evening, so no need to jump on dodgy taxi and fear for life anymore. Thursday, 17th March 2005: Pekan Raya Jakarta (Indonesia) We get to venue about 8.30pm and check out the support band (who I have forgotten the name of again). It's a group of DJs with a guitarist and they are actually bloody amazing. Not that many of the Indonesian's are impressed by these though. It's a quite unusually high venue with a massive stage, whereas the actual audience area isn't that big or overcrowded. People are politely standing and sitting there in anticipation of what's to come. Overall it's a very different vibe to Australian or European shows, but in a very friendly and polite way. At 9pm the support act is leaving and one of the DJs remains to warm up for Prodigy. Again, cool shit, breakbeats and stuff. The people in the venue only start getting up once the band are just about to come on, apparent by the Exterminator track and then of course the Wake Up Intro and Wake Up. The crowd seem a bit like they haven't heard this track (and probably many of them haven't ever heard AONO at all indeed) but are very excited when they see Keith and Maxim go on stage. Their Law, being from an older album, seems to be a bit more known, but it's also mainly Maxim's efforts now getting the audience to get into it. He interacts by getting them to shout along and it works. The sound is a bit shit tonight, kind of coming and going. At the end of Warning then it has fucked up quite a bit, but funnily enought this is a good thing as it now actually lets you hear the live guitar, which turns out to sound quite cool in Warning once you actually hear it! Then the show goes on with Breathe, Spitfire, Girls / More Girls, Back to School, Firestarter, Action radar, Mindfields. The sound is still a bit shite and tracks are in general a bit more cut off without the nice links in between, but does the audiece care? Not really. Overall it feels really different than at the Oz shows, Firestarter and Breathe are definitely the audience favourites. It's a bit what I'd call an 'MTV audience'. Not so surprising anyways as it's the first time Prodigy are playing in Indonesia! Not many bands come here, so it's a very special occasion for all these people and I can see many smiles on people's faces. Despite the excitement though and jumping around to the music, people remain polite and there is none of that aggressiveness and "push to the front" as you'd have it in many other countries. As the band leave then, people shout for more, and it's the third Fat of The Land single they're mostly shouting for: "Smack My Bitch Up! Smack My Bitch Up!" So of course the band return for the usual encore: Poison, SMBU, intro beats, Out Of Space As expected, SMBU is the track most people know. Overall a quite different show to usual. With many people probably only having heard the main singles it's still quite impressive how well the new stuff is received. Nice one. Later end up having Caipiroshkas in the 24h diner of the hotel as nothing else is open. Classy. Saturday, 19th March 2005: KL Tower - Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) I'm leaving Jakarta on Friday morning and it looks like the rainy season has just come back again as it's pouring it down. Can't say I'm too unhappy about leaving here (except that dodgy flight with "air asia" to KL ). KL itself is amazing. Already the fact that their airport actually looks like an airport and our hotel looks like a hotel! With the F1 on the same weekend the whole city is totally buzzing. Our hotel is totally in the middle of everything, can see the KL Tower from the window and close to the supposedly two main going out areas. It's very hot though, 36 degrees and super humid, so as soon as you step outside the heat is just killing you. Gets me a bit worried about the band, the gig is outside, so at least Kieron and Keith are going to really feel this. The venue is unusual, to say the least. KL has got this tower on a hill in the city centre and that's where they're going to play, outside. After some cocktails in town we get there about 9pm, still all super hot. The tower has a visitor area and at the other end of a very long and quite narrow standing area is the rather small stage where they're going to play. The event itself is a Renault F1 Pit Party, so it's heavily sponsored by Mild Seven cigarettes and has a slightly corporate feel. Lots of security as well. A support 'DJ' and an 'MC' come on. Holy shit, what is this? 'DJ KITT' is playing all kinds of slow ballads and the other guy is singing along to it. Ha ha. With it being in this rather warm setting and all the palm tress and KL skyline at the back I suddenly feel like on some random package holiday party. Not that I ever do package holidays, but that's what I imagine it to be like. In a way I quite enjoy the cheesiness of it, it's funny. I'm looking forward to this gig now. I know that it will be a slightly different one tonight as the band are not allowed to swear at all. Yes, no 'fuck', 'smack', 'bitch' or whatever so in the days before there had been talks by band about not playing tracks like Their Law at all and I wonder how they will make this one work now. Thank god that support singer is leaving the stage after 10 and now makes room for Prodigy. Despite the event being slightly corporate there seems to be a quite a big Prodigy fan base here, waiting in anticipation. Shortly after 11 then the familiar Wake Up Intro marks the start of the show (no Exterminator tonight - will I ever be able to listen to this again without thinking the Prodigy are about to come on?). Then of course Wake Up. "It's been a long time ... " Has it? the band have never even played here before! Then it gets really interesting.... they actually start playing Their Law. Everyone who's ever heard this track live knows that obviously the "Fuck 'em, and their law" is one of the main samples used and the f-word is generally quite heavily featured, so how in the world are they going to make this one work? Basically it seems like Liam's changed some stuff around and it just goes "Crack down at sun down" everytime you usually hear the "Fuck 'em and their law". I dont think too many people even notice, but i can't help cracking up when I hear it. Maxim obviously also has to go along with this and goes "Crack down at sun down" over and over again. You can see in his face that he is very focused not to say any of what he usually does. I later mention this to him, but he has none of it. "I am always very focused", he grins. oooo-kay! There's no Warning tonight (more due to time restrictions than anything else I hear) so it goes straight into Breathe. No swearing in this one and they can play as usual, same as for Spitfire. Audience reaction is quite impressive throughout. The audience area is very narrow but quite long, but people are jumping up and down way until to the back. There seem to be quite a fair amount of people from the UK here with lots of people appearing to know most of the album tracks played. There's no Girls tonight either, so we go straight into Back to School. I dont remember the exact lyrics, but there definitely is no "build bombs" in it tonight! Maxim makes it work very well though and it sounds really cool as well. They then stay on stage and play the intro beats and Out Of Space, which is extremely well received again by the audience and then it's all over already. The End I guess all good things come to an end and as this tour was an extremely good thing it's probably time for it to end else I'd get too used to all this well too easily. Had such an amazing time travelling around and on this tour, ..... oooooooh, getting all emotional now.... Soooooo, big big thanks have to go to the whole band for having been so cool with me every single time I saw them and of course also massive thanks to John Fairs and Mike Champion. Back to London the next day ... [ Part 1] [ Part 2] [ Part 3 ] [ Part 4 ] [ Part 5 ] back to prodigy live [go home] (If you copy this, please link back to this URL) www.nekosite.co.uk - copyright © 1998-2005 by neko - all rights reserved |
