Hikayat Skuter Hijau...: Forgive me Blogger, for I (might) have sinned

Life as a teen in Kuala Lumpur of the early 90's was pretty dire especially if one was into anything other than mainstream, radio-friendly music. There was no YouTube or Vimeo and bands were nowhere close to putting up their music and videos on MySpace, Facebook or the like. Mid-way through the decade though, there was a glimmer of hope when Malaysians welcomed cable television (the now defunct Mega TV) which was quickly followed by Astro's satelite offering.

Brilliant if you could somehow convince your parents that channels like MTV and Kerrang! were as important as the air you breathed in as a teenager. Not brilliant if your parents were just coming around to accepting the concept of colour television in the first place and seriously believed that TV Pendidikan is great.

So, what's a teenager to do? Well one option was to do without meals or walk instead of getting the bus. After all, a decent imported CD (yes, we didn't have iTunes or MP3s back then either) costs as much as 100 fares on KL's infamous Bas Mini. The other option was to go underground and enjoy the home-grown gig scene.

The underground scene back then was a melting pot of ideas from all around the world. There were influences of ska, punk and indie from the UK, some scary metal from Scandinivia then grunge and hardcore from the far-flung cities of North America. Amazing really when you think that the world was more or less still offline back then. But kids being kids, we made do with the pieces of musical scraps that we had back then. Of course, this lack of musical sources didn't stifle the ambitions of some of us who were convinced that they could form a band that would one day take over the world.

So, it was in this period of my life that I learnt the various unwritten but widely spoken rules of forming a rock-type band. One of which was permanently stuck in my mind: Never ever wear you own band's t-shirt. Never. Not in a million a years. It just looks daft. Even if the person wearing it is the ugly drummer that you normally try to push as far back as you can on the stage so that it wouldn't ruin the photo.

It's a cardinal sin. A shameless act of self-promotion. Something that I would never do (if I ever formed a successful band). I believe in this unwritten rule so much that I've even tried to apply it to my other endeavours including this wee little spot on the interweb.

But, in the event another, totally unconnected band wore your band's t-shirt, then that would be a different story altogether. In fact, depending on the band of course, this act could be deemed to be the epitome of cool for the band on the t-shirt and the band wearing the t-shirt. Seriously.

Applying this principle to life in general and blogging in particular, I therefore unashamedly share with you, the readers of Hikayat Skuter Hijau... the fact that this blog (this entry to be exact) was featured in The Star's All the R.Age blog recently. Thanks to the other band, Ian-ything Goes, of course.