  Dusted Days 10 (December, 1996) In my soul, I am grumbling. This feels just like school. To be more exact, this feels like Saturdays at school, when you grudgingly whine about having to participate in your compulsory Extra Curricular Activity. Only thing is that I’m not at school, and this is not a school toilet. Here I am, looking into a cheap toilet mirror. The glass is chipped at one edge, and the mirrored backing has worn off at parts, the corner of my reflected face is fragmented in a spider web configuration that follows the broken part of the mirror’s edge.
I carefully light the green circular tin can, heating up the bottom. I hold my little disposable lighter flame there till I cannot bear the heat any longer. The tin is the ouchies. I wince at the heat and I put the tin down. It clatters in that flat, hollow echo that is synonymous with public restrooms. I wait for awhile.
After a while, I pick the tin up and work off the lid. Inside is the dark green camouflage paste that has melted from its usual solid form. Carefully, using two fingers, I scrape up a bit of the coloured paste, and apply a dark line across the crest of my cheekbones. I look at myself, my face now having two lines of dark green under the eyes, like an American Football player. Not exactly the look I was going for. It needs work.
“Oi Saw. Here.”, my Malay friend nudges me with his elbow and puts a black tube at the edge of my wash basin. In return, I give him the can of green paste. I pick up the tube and squeeze the dark inky paste onto my palm. I work it out and I begin to put dark dots down the centre of my brow and furrow line, all the way down the ridge of my nose... I finish my look and it’s not bad at all.
Quite convincing. I turn to face my compatriots. They give me the thumbs up. Ben Heng, (Yes. TCS Ben Heng) aka. Frankenstein, rips open a cheap packet of toy feathers.
It looks like the kind of packet you would find at an old shop in Chinatown. Dusty cardboard and cheap plastic packaging, held together with one staple. He counts the number of dusty coloured plastic feathers “Wah lan.”, he moans. “Not enough feathers.” Another of our group comes into the toilet. In his hand he is carrying 3 pieces of vanguard sheet that have been glued/stapled together to roughly fit around our temples like cardboard crowns. The idea is to glue the feathers to the rings, making headdresses.
American Indian Headdresses. Apache Headdresses. The problem is there are seven of us, and we only have material for three headdresses. We are nothing but a bunch of worthless, bald headed recruits. This is Nee Soon School of Basic Military Training, and tonight is the CO evening talent time. For the past few days, while our campmates have been slogging with practice drills and doing exhausting chores and route marches, the seven of us have had the luxury of doing nothing more than sitting in an air conditioned room, tinkering away on our guitars.
The best part of all is that it’s sanctioned by the Company Line. All this time that Nee Soon’s been around, Alpha Company has been remarkable in the fact that it has never placed, let alone won anything for the CO evening. Its become something of a long-established joke in the camp and Alpha (or Apache company) as we are called, are desperate to break the duck. This year Apache is surprisingly gifted in the musical department. We have one semi-professional singer, one Malay wedding guitarist, one Peranakan Gen X-wannabe guitarist (Me), one Chinese thespian-guitarist (Frankenstein), one Indian guitarist, one Eurasian guitarist who speaks in an accent that no one can understand (He studied in Yankville) and one more Malay guy who has absolutely no musical bone in his body but reckons he can cut it with a tambourine (He sucks. ) With this incredible guitar overdose, the powers that be of Alpha company (that rhymes!
) hatch a diabolical plan to bring CO evening to its knees. We are christened “the 7 little Indian boys” and we have been given 3 days, aside from the usual Army torture of exercise and verbal abuse, to get our act together. Since nobody in the actual company hierarchy knows anything about music, we are left to our own devices. And so, we get down to the grindstone and we hammer out a set of 3 songs. Considering the CO and just about every senior person there is going to be as uncool as our parents and into crap like Barry Manilow and stuff, we decide to try the Eagles. And so we work at it.
We spend whatever free time we have (In the Army, that’s not much), working on material and bandying ideas. Finally we get our play list. It’s not exactly what I would love to play, but for a night off and 3 days of shirking duties, I’d even play Whitney Houston. 1) Hotel California - Eagles 2) La Bamba – Richie Valens 3) Love will keep us alive - Eagles We are finishing our practice on the eve of the actual event when I’m asked for input by the band. “Saw. The song, this part a little bit empty.
How?”, questions our O fearless leader, as we jangle away in the cosy air-conditioned briefing room. Its funny, but somehow vocalists always wield so much power in a musical cooperative. “How? Like that lor”, I answer shrugging. I try to persuade him to get the wedding music guy to come up with a solo, but everybody else including the wedding guy doesn’t want him to play another solo. He already has three.
They look at me because I’m probably next up in the hierarchy. Not really thinking about it, I say “Sure. I’ll play a little something” and I just shrug it off again. I hardly worry about it at all. Until I actually do start worrying, then I curse my thick-headedness. Now with not much time to go, I’m standing here in front of this mirror, with paint on my face, and I’m absolutely bloody terrified.
It’s about half an hour before the show starts. Who am I kidding? I CAN’T BLOODY SOLO! Guys who know me through music know that I can write songs. I can write rhythm licks and play them. Heck.
I can even sing somewhat. But for the life of me I have never in my entire playing time, ever managed a proper solo, not one that arises from that place in guys like Jimi Hendrix, you know what I mean? I’m not one of those guys who can get an artistic hard-on and then proceed to play the musical equivalent of an eargasmic 279-note doggie-style exhibitionist sextravaganza by feeling alone. I just never seem to remember the shapes of scales on the fret board. I can play a solo by rote, maybe. But seeing how this solo in “Love will keep us alive” doesn’t even exist in the actual song, I am screwed.
So for me, trying to solo is like the inaugural sex with someone new. Every bit is nerve wracking and you only realise how lousy you were, by the degree of silence when you finally finish, if you manage to finish at all. The rest of Alpha seems to have faith in us and other than the solo thing and the guy who can’t play a tambourine on time even if someone held a revolver to his head, every thing else is hunky dory. The PC even sends two non-players home to get their guitars when he hears them talking about having them. All of us can tell that Alpha wants this bad. It’s going to be our necks if we suck.
The two poor joes come back with their instruments. One is a sweet looking Martin guitar and the other is a pretty fine 12-string. I decide to ditch the $15 Mat Yoyo guitar that I borrowed from someone in camp and use the 12 string. It is like silk to my ears. I am one man, playing two guitars at once now. Snap back to reality.
The hall is jam packed. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Hotel, Kilo, Ninja... the list goes on and on, company after company are marched in and packed into the hall. The first bits are formalities, the CO addressing us about being recruits, and our responsibilities to our country and so on. I glance over and look at my fellow Indians. We look like idiots. With permission, we have torn off our training vest sleeves to look rugged (actually we just look destitute), and we have worn our number 4 trousers, so we all look like Guile from Street Fighter.
We did the obligatory war paint thing as a homage to our company call sign. Alpha Company. The Apaches. Of us Indians, the ones with headdresses look like peacocks. O fearless leader has decided to hijack most of the feathers for himself, so he looks like Old Chief One Broken Horn with a long feathered train, while we just look like parakeets who have been left alone for too long, moulting and in serious disrepair. One feather here, two feathers there.
I have one feather, and I look like Pocahontas. It gets on my nerves and I pluck it off. “Here Chief”. I hand the irritating thing over to fearless leader, “you just got promoted.” The night gets underway and I guess because it IS the Singapore Army that we are talking about, most of the acts frankly, erm, suck. Here’s a sample of some of them... There’s some lame sketch about Army fashion, where they get recruits to walk out in various prohibited combinations of the Army uniform. Things like a long four shirt with PT shorts and slippers, or a singlet with helmet, boxer shorts and boots.
You know, Stupid crap. Then some guy voices over like it’s a catwalk in Milan or something... AV: “This combination is fabulous for the modern soldier, combining elegance and sexuality in one simple yet flamboyant combination”... Erm okay. It just looks like a towel, shorts and a bar of soap to me. I feel pity for the guy modelling. He should have killed himself yesterday. “I’m too sexy” plays in the background and when the skit ends, the audience does not clap as much as it does sigh in relief.
Another skit has the people of Delta company working overtime backstage. They have 4 recruits standing on lockboxes on stage, the rest of them are behind going crazy with the lighting intensity knobs. Some techno garbage is playing on the AV and the lights are going on and off like strobes. My best guess is that its some kind of dance performance where the dancers kind of swivel around with their hips where they stand, while the lights go spastic. Music Box Dancer ‘96. The music is sickening Chinese style techno and I guess nobody from Delta company thought about doing an end user value study when they thought about this monstrosity.
The CO is whispering into his assistant’s ear. My best guess at what he’s saying is “I want urine tests done for this whole platoon.” As the night progresses, I am steadily getting more concerned, I run through the finger positions in my head, trying to visually photograph every step that I had thought up in practice before we got to the hall. I glance at my watch and I’m clammy in the palms. Why didn’t I just beg wedding guy to do it? The night progresses. Hotel company do a skit where they cover their heads and draw faces on their bellies.
Each belly button is a mouth and each set of nipples are eyes, with makeup to finish the caricatures. Then they have some dialogue thing in Army lingo and the bellies jiggle as they talk. Its cheap toilet humour but it works, everyone laughs. The Army is not a breeding ground for high brow types. Turd jokes rule in this part of town. One other act goes on stage and plays some musical number and sings.
I do believe its Jamiroquai. The guy tries to perform and play and almost pulls it off. He has balls for going up solo, but unfortunately he cocks up his playing and straight away, gets a whole number of boos. The crowd are imbeciles, but what do you expect? It’s the Army. Finally we’re up and for some reason, we’re the last ones to go on stage.
We do a short skit where we come out all disorganised and Broken Horn plays the Sergeant, telling us to get in line and all that. We get the chuckle here and there. Tough crowd. We decided to cut out the comedic horseshit and settle down. We pull out the chairs and settle down, tuning and mic-ing up. A slight hum grows from the audience.
They are growing restless, but are exercising restraint because we look fairly interesting with 5 guitars on stage. We start with “Hotel California”. As soon as the tambourine begins and the first plucking notes of the song begin, the roar becomes deafening. Seeing how most of my Army batch were predominantly of Chinese education, I certainly had not expected this. As I play, I feel my face getting red hot. My blood is heating up and the creeping feeling of hairs beginning to stand undulates up and down the back of my neck.
I have had this feeling before. This is the rush of performance adrenaline. It is exquisite. The five guitars swim between each other effortlessly, the layers of melody ebb and flow as the mood of the song steadily fills the hall. One Horn hits the mic and starts to sing and straight away the audience cheers. He is smack on pitch and the spirit of the song is too tempting to resist.
We were right on the money with the songs we picked. I have to physically stop myself from unconsciously speeding up as I play from the rush I’m getting. It may be a cliché, but in music, when everything clicks and a group of people play as one, the results can simply floor you. I’m playing and even I’m floored. An echoed staccato fills the ambience of the hall. The mob have decided to clap along with us.
I can hear some in the crowd singing along. The Chinese educated ones. They sing along loudly and with gusto, and like the karaoke videos that taught them the song, get almost every single lyric wrong. But it is ok lah. Rock never die (sic). The song ends to a thunderous applause.
Time for the next one. I play the intro to La Bamba. I’m the only one who knows the riff. On a twelve string the riff takes on a whole different dimension, but the madness continues, the crowd sings alone with each chorus “LA LA LA LA LA BAMBA ! LA LA LA LA LA BAMBA Oy esposito”... It fades off very quickly from here on in.
I don’t blame them. I don’t even know most of the lyrics myself. The clapping continues through the song though, which is a god send considering Tambourine dude is crapping up a simple 4/4 beat with masterful non-precision. Somehow I think he wanted in on the group for the off pass and not for his playing prowess or some musical ideal. La Bamba ends and now its time for “Love will keep us alive”. Tambourino sits this out, we deny him the pleasure of mangling this rhythm like he did previously.
The slow song starts, and unlike the rest, the crowd goes silent. This is not an audience participation song. This is a song that reminds you of missing girlfriends and lovers on the outside. I think about my girl, Chloe, once my closest female friend and now a testament to the fact that sometimes, best friends don’t necessarily make best boyfriend/girlfriends. But that’s another story altogether. One Horn is masterful.
Holding his hand over his heart in the same pop star fashion that would have panties flying on stage at Tom Jones, he nudges, caresses, lifts and drags the audience through the performance with his voice, which is pretty f-ing good. I never thought a Malay guy could enrapture such a large Chinese audience, but somehow, he’s done it. He sings on. Carrying through the second chorus and then I prepare for my solo. Crapfucky! What the hell was my solo again ???
I am seconds away from my grand 12 string guitar solo and I’ve forgotten the damn thing. My flushing face is now almost on fire. My mind is thinking a hundred things at once. I search my memory for the patterns and shapes that I had visioned before, but they are not there. I’ve got no time. Oh god.... I’ve got no fuckiin time!
...will keep us alive”, One Horn ends his part, and turns to me with a smile. Time to dance, little monkey. First note, seventh fret. That’s all I know at this point. I play and as I play that note I rack my brain to craft the shapes following that note. I have never done this before successfully.
I am begging. I keep on playing, so far no death. Pleading with the spirits of guitar playing to grant me this one moment of illumination. One moment against all the times I ever screwed up a solo in the home, in my playing ever, in my life. Still no death. This one time I fight, for every single note that follows the last, trying to remember where I had gone wrong in the past, the places I had gone off the tracks and slammed headfirst into the wall of the wrong freaking notes.
I’m still alive. I lay it all down the line. I need this now more than ever. The eyes are on me. The song is on me. The spirit of this night and the seven of us, rests on this moment, I cannot fail.
Like a tap dancer on a sea of broken glass, like a game of minesweeper, I wade through the numerous death-traps that lie in store for me on the fret board. I play this solo like its going to be the last solo I play in my life. I bend strings to pitch, I try simple arpeggios, I do mad things that I would call myself crazy at even trying, were it not for the fact that a lot rested on this moment. This 16 bars are frozen for me for all eternity. This is the day I took a leap of faith into the divine. The day I laid it out on the line for the music.
I could have failed spectacularly, the equaliser was all on me and everyone listened. And terrified yet faithfully, I kept playing. My solo ends. One Horn smiles and turns to finish the song. I can see a moisture in his eyes. The solo was not only unblemished, it was beautiful.
Then like a wave that hits a sand bank, the cheers and applause washes up in a tide that sweeps me, bathes me, and takes me to a place that transcends the cold grey walls of this Army Camp, past the stupid, ignorant faces of the officers, past the glare and headlights of the stage. My spirit is soaring, and I am drunk on the bliss of my heavenly experience. It is one of the moments when I feel the love for something greater and purer than light. Purer that any words can ever express. It is a place that is all that is beautiful and uplifting about the power and humanity of music. And this moment is all mine.
Several hours later... It’s almost a fog in here. The smoking area is unbelievably loud. One Horn takes a big swig from the bottle of champagne, and hands it over to me. I take the bottle from him and swig too, laughing as I do. Charles the platoon clown retells the story of our performance to a packed smoking box of people, in Hokkien of course. Tambourino and the rest are handing out Kit-Kats to the rest of Alpha.
Some get a piece, some break a piece and share the chocolate. Some are humming “Hotel California” as they finish their cigarettes and head up to the showers. Frankenstein, me and One Horn all suck back deeply on our cigarettes, exhaling deeply and delighting in the post performance buzz. “Oi. Saw.” I glance up from the steps and it’s the Platoon Sergeant. He holds out the passes for tommorow evening off.
I take them from him. “Finished so quickly?”, he asks, looking at the green cellophane that is all that’s left of the prize hamper, lying in the trash bin. We nod casually, motioning to the goodies that are being shared all around now. He shrugs it off. He leans in to me and pats me around the shoulders then drops something in my lap and walks away. I faintly hear, “Good job guys”, as he leaves.
I pick up the trophy from my lap and look at it. The inscription reads: To: ALPHA COY BMTC (NEE SOON) C.O’s EVENING DECEMBER 1996 1st place CHAMPIONS 
