we dressed the same ways, only our accents change, so have a nice day

So. Anyone catch the Java Rocking Land 2010 last weekend? Well I did, for the whole three days. But I wasn't a devout visitor though, I just watched what I wanted to watch, and one or two more. And I only stayed for the international bands. Because if it's one of ours, then heck, I can catch that anytime. These are the very few bands that I saw:

1. Smashing Pumpkins
Anti climactic. They performed many new songs, or old songs that were either too rockin' or too dreadfully dragging, and they didn't come out for the encore. And there was supposed to be an encore! Boo, Billy Corgan, I know you're like, a god, but you can't do that to your fans. And you know, why don't you just please the crowd? For a not-yet-hardcore fan like me, the holy trinity of 1979, Perfect and Try Try Try would've been good. I would've asked for the less-known The Boy, Thirty Three, Meladori Magpie or a bit of cover job like Landslide, but that would be too much. And you know, the Pumpkins isn't quite the Pumpkins without Iha and D'arcy. The only things that saved Mr. Corgan were Tonight, Tonight--which was beyond! And well, the fact that he had me at "Time is never time at all".

2. Arkarna
I've seen them live on their heyday and it was super, so I didn't actually want to see them last Saturday, because I don't want to ruin it. But I was waiting for Stereophonics and had nothing to do, so. Ollie the lead man is the only remaining original member of the band. That kinda takes away the charm a bit. Again, I don't know most of the songs, although they did perform Future's Overrated, Eat Me and of course, So Little Time. Ollie pathetically missed few notes. All in all, it was like, wrap it up, wrap it up, boy.

3. Stereophonics!!!
Exclamation marks!!! To be honest, it wasn't the Pumpkins that made me hurry up and buy the tickets, but listening to Dakota while driving one morning made me do so. And boy oh boy, was I right or what? Stereophonics was perfect. No, I'm not exaggerating. They are perfect. Kelly Jones's voice is the talk of the day. That, and the band's overall performance never missed a beat. And they performed 90% of the songs that I expected them to perform. Dude. This might be the best gig I've seen this year.

4. The Wolfmother
If you're young, and you're hip, chances are you have them in your IPod. Well, I'm bordering on ancient, so I never really listened to these guys from down under. But Gema was really psyched on this one, so I stayed a while for these hairy dudes. They're pretty good. You know, rock and rollin. Good performance too, no off-key moment, and the lead vocalist sounded Robert Plant-ish, which was very cool for a young dude like him. But I feel like I would've appreciated them more if I had listened to some of their songs beforehand.

5. Mutemath
I wasn't planning to catch this one--I had never listened to them before--but I did. My comment? Interesting. Their sound was so eclectic. I couldn't get used to them, because one song sounded very different from the next. But that's not a bad thing. At one point, one song (I know none of the titles) sounded like Sting's. At another, it sounded like an edgier Coldplay. What really caught my attention was their performance. It was, festive, if I may say so. The interesting-looking vocalist liked to dance around geekily, and he played the keyboard with his legs flailing up in the air. He sort of cartwheeled over his keyboard, he took a set of drumsticks and start banging on his keyboard, the mic stand, the additional drums. In fact, at some point, there were three people from the band banging three sets of drumsticks on things. Wild.

Aaaand, that's it. That's all I saw. I was planning to see The Vines, but I came so late, they were just wrapping up the last song when I got there. But that's ok. Stereophonics tops my chart this year, even more than Kula Shaker. It just what I needed after starting the year with the good-but-mundane Kings of Convenience and Belle and Sebastian.

Yeahhhhh, Jakarta, let's bring more acts here!