The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

Posted: 08 Feb 2013 05:17 PM PST

FEB 9 — It's not every day that you're lucky enough to feel goose bumps at a concert. Even when watching an international act do their thing onstage, it's very rare that the experience becomes something so special that you're likely to remember it for the rest of your life. So when that happens at a local concert, not a big one with giant corporate backing, but a humble indie event with a marked focus on fringe local acts, it's simply a cause for celebration.

Those clued in to the hipper side of the Malaysian indie scene would be familiar with the series of shows called "Mull; Debauch to Kuala Lumpur" which saw its third instalment last weekend. Their second show last year, held at the Actors Studio in Lot 10 was successful enough (especially for something this niche) that tickets were sold out. That's probably why they've opted for a slightly bigger venue this time around at Pentas 2, KL Performing Arts Centre, Sentul.

A collaboration between Senipekik and The Wknd, they're joined this year by Converse as the event's presenters and there can be no doubting that the obvious highlight of this edition's lineup is an all-too rare performance by Kuching-based indie pop living legends Nice Stupid Playground. Contemporaries of OAG and part of that historic period when the indie label Positive Tone ruled the local English language music scene with not just their guitar bands but also plenty of historically important hip hop and R 'n' B acts like Poetic Ammo, Too Phat and Innuendo, Nice Stupid Playground felt even more special to us fans because they never made it big, despite an absolute gem of an album in their debut "My Life is My Parents' Biggest Television."

Other bands in the lineup this time are equally exciting, like local post-rock pioneers Damn Dirty Apes from Penang, cult Ipoh band Shizuka (Ben Aman), They Will Kills Us All, Deepset, Man Under Zero Effort, our very own Arcade Fire-meets-Broken Social Scene multi-member band Khottal from Malacca and newbies Medinee from Johor Baru (made up of a few members of Laila's Lounge). But for a nostalgic fan of the 90s like me, when getting my band Couple's debut demo tape reviewed on the same page as Nice Stupid Playground's latest demo tape in The Sun newspaper in 1996 seemed like a very big deal, there's no getting around it — I was totally there for Nice Stupid Playground.

I remember seeing them live in KL sometime in the early 2000s at a small venue with a really terrible sound system that didn't do their sweet brand of indie pop any justice at all. And I was just hoping that this time around I would finally see and hear the magic that all us fans have loved and found in their music, and boy, did we get more than we wished for!

The biggest change from the last time I saw them live was that this time around singer Charles Rossem is no longer toting a guitar, opting to jump and dance around the stage like an enthusiastic teenager. And for a guy who's surely in his late thirties (I myself will be 36 this year, so he must be at least a few years older), that is such a refreshing and inspiring sight. Opening with "Girlfriday", which can be found on their debut album and also on that aforementioned demo tape, I was singing along immediately and bopping like a teenage fangirl.

And that pace and excitement never wavered throughout their set, even when they played ballads, as Charles' wonderful voice is as steady as a rock, sounding almost exactly like it does on CD. But that goose-bump moment I was talking about arrived towards the end of their set. It first came during their rendition of single "Stereo Girl", which still has one of the best-looking music videos in Malaysian history. Charles had been egging the crowd to dance along with him all night, and probably decided to spread his enthusiasm by stepping off the stage and singing the whole song right there in the crowd. You simply had to be there to know and feel the euphoria in the room as everyone sang along, surrounding Charles, taking their own shots at singing into the microphone and lifting Charles around the room, all while he's still singing.

If that was already a jolt of "what the hell happened there", what happened during their last song "Bedroom Window", in which Charles invited a member of the audience onstage to take the microphone and sing the song (with the audience loudly singing along of course) was simply an occasion too joyous for words. No disrespect to the other bands who played that night, but anyone who was there and witnessed these two goose-bump moments will surely agree with me, it was a night that will live long in our memories. Very Nice indeed.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

Sport’s twin evils

Posted: 08 Feb 2013 05:05 PM PST

FEB 9 — The integrity of sport — and football in particular — has been thrown into doubt in recent weeks with the emergence from the shadows of two serious credibility threats: doping and match-fixing.

To begin with the former, Lance Armstrong's admission that he used performance-enhancing drugs throughout his cycling career has thrust the issue of doping firmly into the spotlight.

During his infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey, Armstrong clearly implied that he wasn't alone: he was doping to give himself a "level playing field" — by which he clearly meant all his opponents were doping as well.

Although Armstrong has proven himself to be a masterful liar, it's tough to doubt that he's telling the truth on this occasion; the likelihood is that cycling has been riddled with doping for many years. Even if Armstrong's case was extreme, it almost certainly wasn't unique.

And if we accept that proposition, it would be naive in the extreme to argue that cycling was the only sport to have been affected. If cyclists and their teams found a way to enhance their physical capabilities without being detected in drugs tests, it would be entirely logical for that knowledge to find its way into other sports.

In light of Armstrong's revelations, it's very difficult to argue that any sport is completely clean and now, slowly, one by one, other disciplines are coming under the microscope and the true scale of doping is being revealed.

The most high-profile example is the ongoing legal case against 'doping doctor' Eufemiano Fuentes, who is currently on trial in Madrid after an enormous amount of evidence was seized from his premises in 2006.

The case against Fuentes are complicated due to the specific laws that he is alleged to have broken, but the essential fact that he supplied a wide range of athletes — by no means simply restricted to cycling — is undisputed.

Fuentes has openly admitted that he also 'worked with' athletes from other sports and, although he is forbidden from naming him due to the technicalities of the case, suspicions are being aired.

First in the firing line is the Spanish Primera Division's Real Sociedad, whose former president Inaki Badiola has claimed that he uncovered evidence that the club had been buying doping products on the black market, probably from Fuentes, for six years prior to his arrival in 2008.

Badiola's claims appear to be backed up by evidence: one of the codenames used by Fuentes in the documents seized by police was 'RSOC'. What else can that possibly mean if not shorthand for Real Sociedad?

And if Sociedad were doping, can we really believe they were the only club in Spain to do so? And if Spanish clubs were successfully doping, surely that expertise and those products would have crossed the border into other European countries? And so it continues, potentially leading us to an Armstrong-type scenario whereby everyone was doping simply to keep up with everybody else.

This week also saw an announcement by European police force Europol that they are investigating 680 football matches that took place between 2008 and 2011 for evidence of match-fixing, including a Champions' League tie between Liverpool and Hungarian side Debrecen.

This appears to be an enormous number, far more than most people would have initially suspected. We've known for a long time that fixing occasionally rears its ugly head, especially in Italy, where famous old Juventus were stripped of their Serie A title in 2006 for influencing referees.

But we've always hoped that these were relatively isolated cases, and that English football, in particular, was immune. Now it's difficult to be so certain, and we might need to start preparing ourselves for the possibility that far more matches are fixed than ever previously envisaged.

It's difficult to find room for optimism amidst these depressing stories, but I'm going to try.

For starters, in a wider context, 680 matches is actually a pretty small number.

This weekend, and every weekend for nine months, 46 professional fixtures will take place in England. Over the course of a full season, a grand total of 2,036 league games are contested, and that figure approaches 3,000 matches with the inclusion of cup competitions.

That's just club football in one country in one season, and if those figures are replicated over a four-year period across the 30 leagues that are under investigation it provides a total of something like 300,000 games — before the plethora of international fixtures are even considered.

Although this is only extremely rough mathematics, 680 suspicious games out of a total of 300,000 fixtures — around 0.2 per cent — is really an insignificant figure, meaning you'd have to watch more than 400 games before you found one that was fixed.

Of course, the 680 games being investigated by Europol might just be the tip of the iceberg, with the true number of dodgy dealings affecting a far greater proportion of fixtures.

But I would like to believe that isn't so, in the same way that I'd like to believe doping is not as widespread as the Armstrong and Fuentes cases might suggest. My evidence for that optimism is flimsy, and goes no further than the fact that I worked for a professional club (Reading) for 11 years and never saw or heard even a hint of match-fixing or doping.

Maybe I was blind to it; maybe it was going on behind my back. Those possibilities cannot be discounted, but the honest truth is that I was never given any reason to consider that any of our players or opponents were doping, or that any of our games had been subjected to any form of match-fixing.

Yes, a number of our players 'bulked up' their physique in a short space of time, especially after our promotion to the Premier League in 2006, but I put that down to an intensive programme in the weights room, which played a big part in the weekly training regime.

Yes, strange errors and debateable refereeing decisions sometimes occurred within games (I particularly remember one game at Millwall where we had three very strong penalty appeals turned down), but I never believed these were anything but honest mistakes.

And so, until proven wrong, I will continue to believe that doping and match-fixing are exceptions in football, rather than the rule. The opposite is too unpleasant to contemplate.

In the current climate, though, it's impossible not to hold those beliefs with a little less certainty than ever before.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

Sabtu, 9 Februari 2013

The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion

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