Force of Nature on Our Differences

It was 7:30pm, 18th March, 2005. That's 1/2 an hour after the concert was supposed to commence. The ground area in front of the stage was still empty.

Lauryn Hill started the night anyway, accompanied with her own 8 piece band just to accompany her sing with her guitar. She's not bothered by the crowd-just concentrated on strumming her guitar and feeling her songs, 8 songs altogether. I thought she must be really tired and need to quickly retreat to her hotel room.

There's at least a 10 minute interval between singers to keep rearranging the stage. I felt sorry for those performers, our most generous fans were an hour late, the rest were tired after a day's work and the air conditioning wasn't that efficient.

There's a good mixture of all races and age that night, 13,000 of us who donated up to more than RM10mil towards the Tsunami victims. Tis a trust for a long run.


Sheila Majid. After many times of being reluctant to sing the songs she sang while being under R.A.P, finally, all that hatred for her ex-producer/husband was put aside.
All renditions that night were her classics. Manusia (Allahyarham P. Ramlee's), Warna, and what's nice was that she sang Ikhlas Tapi Jauh together with Anuar Zain and Dayang Nurfaizah, the same exact way as in the album. That song must've been really close to her heart as I'm sure she hadn't the chance to sing it often.
The one thing we just have to give it to Roslan Aziz is his capabilities in bringing out the best in singers under his care. They rose to their greatest heights only while they were under his recording company.

Sorry, Zainal Abidin's album after R.A.P was not really worth his and anyone's investments. World beat is still his genre and his music with Headwind in the 80's shall be evergreen.

Wyclef Jean, who would have known that they command the crowd with such gusto? They told us exhausted crowd to stand up, we stood up. When they allowed us to sit down for 3 minutes, we sat. When he asked us to wave our lighted cellphones side to side, the indoor stadium looked fabulous.
Lauryn Hill's gestures looked rather distant though, when she reappeared to sing with them. On and on again Wyclef asked the audience to give her a big hand and cheer towards the reunited Fugees (for the night). It was a matter of minutes when Lauryn was seen smiling and alive singing their famous numbers. They had certainly rejoiced.

Backstreet's Back Alright! I don't care what y'all would say. Love them mucho! They brought their own 5 piece band. What they have which we hardly see among the other boy bands is their bond, how much they enjoy each other's company. Every step they take on the stage takes into consideration of possible photography finish and angles. It's really timely that we have this concert and they need to promote their upcoming album in June. I hope they'd continue to produce songs with meaningful lyrics and choruses on well built climax. My dream to listen to "Love You More Than That" was actually fulfilled.

Boyz II Men, yeaappp it's obvious how much we all miss them. They succeeded to activate the crowd although it was just on minus one and with one less singer, without much effort. It's definitely that resonating voices. One obvious thing was, they put Innuendo and Ruffedge to shame, can't hear a single word they were singing.

The ultimate freestyler performer, Black Eyed Peas. During their performance, their female member, Fergie's talent shone so bright. These people are circuslike singers, they played band equipment and sang at the same time, they wiggle their legs, jumped from one end to the other throught out all their err... 5 songs (Let's Get Retarded, Shut Up, Hey Mama, Where's The Love, and sth). Fergie, her screams were melodic, she held her microphone, sang and did summersault at the same time! She's got the voice capacity of Avril and Amy Lee put together. "She's macho and sexy at the same time", that's what my friend, Ariff said. They got to do last performance and finished at 2:45 a.m. complete with two turn tables accompanying their show.

Everything direct and indirect that we witnessed was so inspiring!

***

If they could bring Madonna in, I'll go clad in cone bra. Credit wise I'll suffer, but nevermind, for this Jew, I'd pay.
If they could bring Phil Collins, please please hold it in a place like Istana Budaya, Arena of All Stars or something, this guy is all about his musical equipment.
If they could bring Shakira in, please provide standing crowd.