Search live in Dublin

There’s been a growing trend of Malaysian celebrities popping over to Dublin lately. It might be a quick trip to buy the latest season’s designer handbags (with your beloved old Dato'), visiting relatives or playing the odd gig. The people at Tourism Ireland must be doing some good work over in the Far East, eh?

Anyway, to add to that ever-growing list, Search (the Malaysian rock legends and not some search engine rival to Google) flew over to Ireland last weekend to do at least two of the above. While I didn’t join their wives and entourage shopping around Grafton Street, I did get to go to their gig in Temple Bar. Here's the band performing one of their hit songs that night...

I was right at the front and centre throughout the gig. So, until Astro or Melodi come out with their official coverage of the whole thing, this is as good as it gets.

It seemed quite odd paying €25 to see Search in Dublin when about a quarter of a century ago, I remember being dragged by my Pak Ngah to the annual Pesta Pulau Pinang to watch them play live for around 5 ringgit (around a euro these days and probably a lot less then).

Fortunately, although ticket prices have gone sky-high since the Pesta Pulau Pinang days, Search has remained at their semi-stoned, face-melting, rocking best!

Also, worthy of a mention are Malaysian veterans to the UK gig scene, Hujan and Dublin-based M. Nasir protégés, Dub Apokalipto. Hujan definitely exceeded my expectations of them. They're so good that I'm working on getting all their CDs as I write. To put this into perspective, as far as I can remember, the last time I've bought a CD was probably close to 10 years ago!