Adam's Top Twelve List of Strange and Weird Band Performances:

12) Wanch Jam Night with Spermatic Chord: Arthur just got back to hk the night before, my bassist james never met him before, arthur never met james before... so they were introduced to each other minutes before the performance... we had no practice but played the most metalcore heavy sounding stuff ever played at the wanch... it was scary, and marcus' leg was still in a cast.... its strange but quite normal compared with the rest of this list

11) Boys in the well at the Wanch in August: Boys in the well was one of my little side project things where we try to be creative and go for the musical extremes eg experimental scales structures and expecially time signature. we had a song where the time signature changed within every bar of most of the song, also had many random unexpected technically challenging parts... this was a weird show because we performed in front of a bunch of 50 year olds sipping their beer who were expecting cheesy blues... from the looks on their faces it definitely wasn't their cup of tea, they didn't hate us though, in fact i got to know some of those old expats. they didn't like it but were shocked by it... just what we intended

10) West Island School "Nite Life": this was a very long time ago when i first started playing in bands. one of my first bands called Los Bastardos.... it consisted of improvised heavy metal... i look back on it and think that it was silly and probably sounded pretty bad. i met adrian the bassist on the day of the performance, we didn't even get time to practice. i was obsessed with double bassdrums at that time and set up 2 drum kits instead of one.... very silly. i think we sounded like crap, but i guess everybody has to start somewhere, thats how i started

9) Medic Festival 2003: performed as a 2 piece only drums and guitar... also had Gigi on vocals for 2 songs. We played a lot of improvised stuff..... the strangeness about this performance was that it was located just above the medical libary of hku. and the library was still open... we really pissed some people off i believe... also it was a strange audience

8) 2001 Teenage Band Competition finals: The Despair Factor, my band ages ago strangely got into the finals of the competition... proably by luck and by our creativity. the show was at Ko Shan Theatre, it was fucking huge.... lots of audience... anyway Tim the bassist was sick, he had bronchitis and he decided to screw himself up more by geting drunk on a bottle of red wine and to chain smoke to aggravate his bronchitis, he was coughing like crazy. this resulted in us performing with a sick drunk bassist... we looked eccentric and tim was just running all over stange and played everything wrong.... i was drumming topless and wore flipflops. the guitars and the drums were played accurately but the bass was horrific, luckily he was not louder than the gutiar or it would have been obvious... but i think his behaviour was awful. then singaporean band Opposition party came and played and all my friends ran on stage and danced the security tried to stop us but failed... very memorable and very messed up

7) Molotov Cock at the Wanch Sept 2003: Molotov Cock was a joke... not really a band... we practiced once and decided to go perform in public. we didn't have actual songs but had musical ideas instead. i just rewired a drum machine so that it can be plugged to amps so i brought that over. we thought it would just be a performance that we enjoyed more than the audience, but strangely the 50 year old expats loved us.... in fact more than ever expected.... when we were too tired to play they told us to stay on, and when the other bands that usually plays at the bar went on stage the crowd told them to piss off and wanted us on again.... this old guy who lives in discovery bay bought us drinks and asked if we could play at his daughter's birthday party the following week.... we wanted to but richard was leaving hk in a few days... and this guy said he would have paid us.... if not in cash he said he would pay us in drugs.... very messed up.... but that would have been very interesting if it happened... we wouldn't have any use for the drugs though because none of us smoke up... hhehe

6) SIS Skoolapalooza 2003: Very strange indeed. Spermatic Chord were invited to play but vocalist not ready, backup vocalist not in hk, bassist had broken radius and drummer just got his leg in a cast the day before.... so i ended up performing this show as a one man band.... playing video game music tunes on guitar, eg super mario bros, super mario world, tetris etc the title themes etc.... i got a friend who does not normally drum to drum for me but that was disasterous. but the video game music turned out good.... somehow annoying too, because now all the international school kids associate me with video game music and not my actual band music

5) Joint University Christmas Ball 2003: This is one of my favourite strange performances.... the sound didn't turn out too well and we only had 1 guitar when we wanted to use 2, it was at the academy of medicine, in a posh hall with round tables and people dressed formally and we played remixes of my old songs..... had funky electronic drums etc... no drummer. there was a dance floor just in front of us, it would have been even more messed up if people danced, hehe

4) CUHK College Carnival: somehow the organisers of this event got refered to me.... quite randomly, they asked me to play at their carnival. i told them i don't play cantopop songs and i don't really know any popular english songs either, so he got my warning and said that its cool. but then later he comes to me complaining if we could try to play some cantopop, i told him to fuck off and find another band, but then he realised it was their fault for finding us and not thinking carefully. after some negotiation , and them begging us to play i said ok, and then i asked how long they wanted us to play.... then it was crazy.... he told us to play for 2 hours.... non stop.... i laughed my head off... and agreed. so we went there and marcus and i improvised all our songs.... we had a replacement bassist and it was disasterous when we wanted to play cooler stuff so we stuck with simpler bass lines etc. we played a lot of latin jazz funk and blues... and ended up improvising at the carnival for nearly 2 hours.... it wasn't as tiring as expected but still very messed up. i should have gotten paid for that

3) West island school, last day of year 13 frenzy: on my last day of year 13 we were there to wreck havoc and cause trouble, so i set up a live band at the entrance to our school.... not to play music but to play antimusic. we set up our equipment for a sound check and intended to perform at 8am but somehow we went out of control and started earlier before 7:30 waking people up. we had james on full volume guitar and johan on drums they played relatively normal stuff to keep a rhythm, then there was amin and i , we both had megaphones, amin had a melodian thing miked up, he was playing noisying cd samples on full volume. i had my mini electric guitar completely out of tune on purpose and played with a guitar slide and i had a microphone put to full volume and i was just screaming on the top of my voice the most random awful noise anybody could have imagined.... people at sassoon road would have heard our noise because it was so loud. police came to stop us but we continued for a while until we got a final warning and my deputy principal came to stop us personally... that was very memorable... we fufilled our initial intentions

2) Bush On Fire at a Bus stop in aberdeen: got invited to play at this abedeen seafront teenage arts thing.... it turned out to be located exactly where this bus stop was... I was performing with Bush On Fire, one of my more extreme experiemental bands.... with weird time signatures and styles. so there we were performing while people waited for buses, people got off buses thinking "what the fuck is this strange music". the audience was unstable as passersby just walked by watched for a while and left.... it was silly but an experience

1) Mid Autumn Festival 2002: The people at the Warehouse asked me to perform at their variety performance on mid autumn festival.... i thought it would be a bandshow so i agreed. i performed with Bush On Fire i just made my home made tennis racket bass which could be pluged to a guitar amp and we wanted to test it out, arthur was still in hk and had his analogue synth so he brought that over. we were there to perform our avant garde experimental music.... then when we got there it freaked me out. it was a family event, there were lots of senior citizens, only 2 bands played, this band that played mid autumn festival related songs, and then there was us..... a very strange combination. the audience were sitting on seats.... on seats far away from the stage, there were a bunch of hip hop kids dancing to my bush on fire drum tracks..... the senior citizens were sitting at the back.... it was stange enough.... then came our music. vivek played my tennis racket bass, and we sang our song that involved weird time signatures acting different voices and using a pitchshifter on a tennis racket. then afterwards i took out a pair of chopsticks and i converted the tennis racket into a percussion instrument and simulated electronic drums. arthur played synth and we improvised some of our song ideas. it was a cool concept but the audience was just messed up. then the manager of the warehouse was there... he strangely enjoyed us, not just a little bit.... but he actually love it immensely.... i was shocked to find out my first "fan" turned out to be the owner of the Warehouse, after that show i think the staff at the warehouse asked me to perform with my tennis racket at their events in around 6 different occasions, each time i was busy but in the future i don't mind, my tennis racket is still at home, ready to be plugged into an amp.... hahahah