SLANK - Santos Party House, NY - 01/Nov/2008

http://dynamite.terra.com.br/blog/coisassoltasemny/post.cfm/slank-sanots-party-house-ny-01-nov-2008

It's always good going to different venues sometimes, and this show really gave me this opportunity. Santos Party House, the venue where the concert took place, is located in Chinatown, Manhattan's Chinese neighborhood, and this wasn't by accident.

Albeit Slank not being Chinese - they're from Indonesia - Chinatown serves as an "Asian yard" on the island and this was proven immediately upon the band's entrance – everybody seemed to know the lyrics of the songs by heart (and I'm not referring to the ones in English, but the Indonesian ones!).

The first band of the evening was called Fan Tan and albeit not being an Asian band (they're American) they have two of their members (the bassist and the drummer, a couple of siblings) of Indonesian descent and they make very interesting music - a mix of '80s Goth and Rush, and with great quality.

Their concert is very professional and will greatly please the "'80s Post-Punk" crowd. Check their sound here: http://www.myspace.com/fantanrock

The next band was The Notorious MSG; like Slank, also Indonesian, and something to behold.

First of all, a guy comes upon the stage (looking like he plays in a Lynyrd Skynyrd-type band) wielding a guitar shaped like a M-16 machine gun. He starts playing the "Top Gun" theme. Comes the drummer (this one, an Asian guy). So three Asian guys come upon the stage wearing giant wigs and singing rap, but not the modern kind of rap, '80s rap (the one you heard around when "The Cosby Show" was part of the regular TV programming)!

But this is not all – one of them wears metal bands patches on his vest (including a Slayer one!); from time to time they made corny Menudo-like poses (and ended the show posing shirtless!); at a certain time, one of them plays percussion (accompanying the drummer, who sometimes plays the bass!) while the other two take turns singing corny romantic '80s songs karaoke-style!

Does it seem completely crazy to you? Well, only being there to have a precise idea of how crazy it was! And wanna know what? It was really fun, those guys are very charismatic and funny, enough to make someone who doesn't like either rap (like myself, it doesn't matter when it's from or what style the rap is!) or romantic '80s songs (corny or not) to spend a nice time without checking the watch every minute. It goes without saying the crowd loved them.

Finally we had Slank onstage and the result was as expected - pandemonium in the house. It's worth saying that this band is in Indonesia (where they've sold over 15 million records) what Titãs or Barão Vermelho are in Brazil, i.e., extremely popular (read my review on their latest CD here).

They played several songs from their new CD (their first in English), like the cadenced "Devilinu", they partying "Drug Me Up" and "Do Something", and a couple of ballads, but the bulk of the show was composed by Indonesian hits, all of them with choruses undeniably catchy – and which the crowd, obviously, knew by heart (a minor detail: my wife and I were among the only 10 non-Asian people in the house)!

With a very popular material and a captive audience, the band didn't need too much effort to give a well-succeeded concert, delivering what the audience wanted, and this is the most important thing.

The only strange thing was that they didn't come back for an encore - and it wasn't for lack of material: their latest CD is the seventeenth in their career...

Micki Mihich