October Blues Fest 2010 Bangkok, THI

EC Live In Singapore, 14th February 2011

Band Lineup

Eric Clapton – guitar, vocals
Chris Stainton – keyboards
Tim Carmon - keyboards
Willie Weeks – bass
Steve Gadd – drums
Michelle John – backing vocals
Sharon White – backing vocals

Set List

01. Key To The Highway
02. Going Down Slow
03. Hoochie Coochie Man
04. Old Love
05. I Shot The Sheriff
06. Driftin'
07. Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
08. River Runs Deep
09. Rocking Chair
10. Same Old Blues*
11. When Somebody Thinks You're Wonderful
12. Layla
13. Badge
14. Wonderful Tonight
15. Before You Accuse Me
16. Little Queen Of Spades
17. Crossroads
18. Further On Up The Road

* song by JJ Cale; not the song of the same title from EC's album Behind The Sun

The Prince's Trust Rock Gala 2010

Me and the Mrs. visited the Royal Albert Hall in London once again to get a dose of Royalty and to experience a very regal concert; The Prince's Trust Rock Gala 2010 on 17th November.

Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor performed with Keane’s frontman Tom Chaplin and Alison Moyet sang with Jamie Cullum in front of special guests TRH The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall at the Royal Albert Hall. The music extravaganza, which was filmed in 3D, was hosted by comedians Rob Brydon and Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage.

Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Jools Holland, Tom Jones, Paloma Faith, Midge Ure, Mike & The Mechanics, Mark King and Status Quo also performed at the event making it a night to remember.

The Rock Galas of the 80’s were formed when the UK economy was gripped by inflation, strikes and high unemployment following recession. Britain’s youth had little hope and no future. The Trust called upon supporters including Phil Collins, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Brian May and Tina Turner to form ‘super groups’, raising money to help the most disadvantaged young people.

PRINCE'S TRUST ROCK GALA, Benefit Appearance

Royal Albert Hall London

United Kingdom

Band Lineup

Hosts:
Dame Edna Everage (Barry Humphries)
Rob Brydon

The Prince's Trust All Stars (House Band):
Midge Ure - Musical Director, vocals, guitar
Mark Brzezicki - drums
Jamie Cullum - vocals, keyboards
Snake Davis - Saxophone
Guy Fletcher - keyboards, backing vocals
Simon Gardner - Trumpet
Mark King - bass
Neil Sidwell - Trombone
Johnny Thirkell - Trumpet

Musical Guests:
Tom Chaplin (Keane) - vocals
Eric Clapton - guitar, vocals
Phil Collins - drums, vocals
Paloma Faith - vocals
Jools Holland - keyboards
Tom Jones - vocals
Brian May - guitar
Mike & The Mechanics: Mike Rutherford, Andrew Roachford, Tim Howar
Alison Moyet
Chris Stainton - keyboards (EC's set)
Status Quo: Francis Rossi, Rick Parfitt, Andrew Brown, John Edwards, Matt Letley
Roger Taylor - drums, vocals
Ruby Turner - vocals

Complete Setlist:

01. Rockin' All Over The World - Status Quo
02. Whatever You Want - Status Quo
03. I'm All Over It - Jamie Cullum
04. Feeling Good - Alison Moyet
05. Heatwave / Can't Hurry Love / My Girl - Phil Collins
06. Running In The Family - Mark King
07. Vienna - Midge Ure
08. Over My Shoulder - Mike & The Mechanics
09. All I Need Is A Miracle - Mike & The Mechanics
Interval
10. To Love A Child - Jools Holland & Ruby Turner
11. Strange Things Happen - Jools Holland & Tom Jones
12. Burning Hell - Tom Jones
13. Glory of Love - Jools Holland & Tom Jones
14. Smoke & Mirrors - Paloma Faith
15. New York - Paloma Faith
16. Rocking Chair - Eric Clapton
17. Same Old Blues - Eric Clapton
18. Little Queen Of Spades - Eric Clapton
19. Crossroads - Eric Clapton
20. Days Of Our Lives - Brian May, Roger Taylor & Tom Chaplin
21. Last Horizon - Brian May, Roger Taylor & Tom Chaplin
22. Hard Live - Brian May, Roger Taylor & Tom Chaplin
23. Seven Seas Of Rye - Brian May, Roger Taylor & Tom Chaplin
24. We Will Rock You - All Star Finale*

* Status Quo, Eric Clapton and Jools Holland did not take part in the All Star Finale

Fete de la Musique 2010 Edition & KL Mini Crossroads Guitar Festival

with our good friend Asrif of Fedhi




Alam Shah struttin' it out with classic late 80s numbers!
Slowhand with classic BB and Hendrix cover tunes
Ray Cheong jamming with The TCBB on "The Thrill Is Gone"
Zhin bloosin' it up

This post is two fold: two great events in the city fueled further our burning desire and love of the blues music. The photos say it all.... Fete de la Musique was held on 20th June 2010 at Palate Palette, KL and The KL Mini Crossroads Guitar Festival on the 15th of August 2010 at Artista Bar & Restaurant in Tropicanna City Mall, PJ. We played some classic blues numbers in tribute to the blues legends who influenced us. At both venues I think we thrilled the audiences who were expecting something more voguish in place of some ancient black tunes.. :-) Nevertheless, we also saw some OTAIs (veteran music lovers) lurking around the place enjoying the music with stoic reactions; clearly still old school :-p. What more can I say, do drop by our FB page to view the live footages, and more. Cheers!

The TCBB Goes Unplugged (At Our Maiden Gig)

That's right. The Terence Chong Blues Band (TCBB) played at Daikanyama Restaurant & Sake Bar in Changkat Bukit Bintang last Wednesday by privileged invitation. The theme of the performance was RAW Acoustic Sing Along No.2.

As Paul McCartney once said. "Well, this is Unplugged, where everyone removes their plugs and go crazy..." Ha ha, but truly I reckon only a seasoned musician like Paul would dare say that :-D... we sure had a lot of fun on this one tonight.

Nice atmosphere at this fancy fusion Japanese restaurant. The lower floor houses the diner and the bar while the upper floor was where most of the action took presence. The bar and couches there felt really comfy and perfect for acoustic sets. The TCBB started off the 1st set at 9pm with blues standards, paying homage to Howlin Wolf, Robert Johnson, and Eric Clapton. While I must personally admit that this genre may be quite primitive to some of our audience that night, nevertheless, we managed to add touches of foot-tapping and percussions (courtesy of Salahuddin) to contemporarise the music further. We were pleasantly greeted with shouts and claps from the supportive audience which paved way for us to play even more spiritedly in the next 2 sets till the stroke of midnight.

Both Imran and Ivan were in super form that night, and played one of their best performance together in the band. Occasionally Imran would awe the audience with his tasty and bendy blues licks while stunning them with his cool Chris Cornell-like vocals, such as on 'Something' & 'Bell Bottom Blues'. Those SM57s surely made the acoustic guitars sound larger than life in the performance hall. He also belted out a spontaneous rendition of Soundgarden's 'Black Hole Sun' at the end of the 3rd set which I thought was splendid. Great job!

Between breaks, our trump card Ivan would both nonchalantly and wantonly tease the crowd with either exquisite snippets from Richard Clayderman's piano catalog or with some extremely complicated finger pinched harmonics which one imagined only Eric Johnson could do. All this was accomplished via his Godin nylon stringed semi-acoustic electric guitar thru a MIDI controller capable of any sound one could imagine, except the acoustic guitar :-p Ivan, IMHO stole the show for the evening with his fine cheeky touches :-)

Salahx our passionate blues based drummer made his presence felt with a djembe (a conga-like instrument), a cylindrical shaker, bottleneck slide guitar, and his new found talent: the kazoo. The crowd went bonkers in the middle of the 2nd set when Salahx gave them a taster of this wind instrument to the tune of Jesse Fuller's composition of 'San Francisco Bay Blues'. Definitely the crowd pleaser :-D

While the 2nd set concentrated on assorted love songs, the 3rd set was completely an opposite. From Muddy Water's 'Hoochie Coochie Man' to Big Bill Broonzy's 'Hey Hey' to Robert Johnson's 'Crossroads Blues', it was definitely rockin' (even by my bluesy standards). Most of the songs here we normally do electrically, so you could imagine how the acoustic guitars had sounded.. :-) Rizal Ross sportingly sang Bob Dylan's 'All Along The Watchtower' and the Cream classic 'Sunshine Of Your Love' to add mojo to the night.

Our other blues brother Ali also took the stage with his anthems: 'Wonderful Tonight' and Freddie King's 'Have You Ever Loved A Woman'. Powerful and beautiful solo on the Godin mate!

Just before we concluded, Prema Yin (a friend of Bari, the manager of Daikanyama) graciously stunned the audience once again with her Memphis R&B vocals on Etta James' 'At Last', CCR's 'Proud Mary', and Whitney Houston's 'Greatest Love of All'. A lovely and potential knockout in the local scene, for sure! What a diva!

We're definitely yearning for another gig pretty soon. Stay tuned bros and siss!

Thanks Bari! :-)