the stone roses

The Stone Roses
Lapangan D Senayan
23.02.2013

Unfortunately, I didn’t grow up listening to or being a part of a band that played Stone Roses. Before I met the guys from Disco in Disguise, I only knew a few of Stone Roses’ songs from MTV.

But being a part of the band that was heavily influenced by the Manchester music scene, surely I felt highly obligated to see them performing.

It was the first concert I’ve gone to this year (as I’ve been very busy preparing for Supper Snapshots exhibitions), and what a great kick to start.

The blokes were still as awesome as ever, as if they didn’t age (that much). They still played brilliantly, they had really good communication with the crowd, and the stage visuals were stuning. Plus, the crowd was amazingly great. They all sang along to the songs and seemed to have an absolutely jolly good time. Although unfortunately there were reports about some white trash who were throwing beers around and smashing people around them as if they were the coolest dudes on the planet.

I stood on the front left, far from the reportedly annoying dudes. Jammed in the middle of die-hard fans, it was a surreal experience. It reached its climax when the band started to play Fools’ Gold. OMG, I felt like everybody at the venue was lifted up to the psychadelic magenta sky.

I always have the magenta colour in my head every time I listen to The Stone Roses – mostly because “Fools’ Gold” and “I Wanna Be Adored” were the two videos that I often saw on MTV in my teens.

(..which explains the tone of my photos)

“I Wanna Be Adored” btw, was the opener. And I could hear everybody sang synchronisely like a choir, like a roar. And then Ian started to make some monkey moves – after all, he is Ian “monkey” Brown! Now I could clearly see why he was called that way 😛

He also started to give away some of his tambourines, throwing them to the crowd. But they were not the common circular tambourines, they were the modern, stick tambourines. I took a closer look and realised that they were of Latin Percussions. I said to myself, “Oei, LP tambourines! I could use one for Skipping Salamander School!” 😉
But of course I have never been tall enough to grab stuff thrown from the stage. Oh well..

For the next 1.5 hours the band played all their anthems from their (only) two albums, the 1989 self-titled album and Second Coming. “Ten Storey Love Songs”, “Sally Cinnamon”, “Waterfall”, “Made of Stone”, “Love Spreads”, “She Bangs the Drums” – you name it, they played it. But, if you wished for “Elephant Stone” – which was not featured in those two albums – no, they would not play that one.

The gig was a part of their reunion tour, as the four original members of The Stone Roses finally reformed in 2012. Loads of my friends actually went to Singapore last year to see their gig, being rather pessimistic that there would be no chance of them to perform in Jakarta. I think the band (in particular Ian Brown) was so impressed by the Indonesian crowd, realising that they had a huge fanbase here and decided to drop by.

the original line-up (top to bottom): Ian Brown, John Squire, Mani, Reni

However, there were some flaws at the concert, such as: a) The sound system was really bad. I remembered that I condemned myself for forgetting to bring ear plug, and had to ask for some tissues from a girl stood next to me so I could stuffed my ears and prevented further damage. b) The venue was very muddy, and c) There were humongous fans in front of the stage.

Anyway, it was an awesome concert nevertheless. And for those of you Manchester United fans, the night went even better when Ian took a Manchester United flag from the fans, unfurled it, and kissed it before he gave it back to the crowd. That evening, Manchester United won 2-0 against QPR at Old Trafford.