Say hello to your new friend Kiki – self-styled this name is, like most Indonesian names – few people go by their given name, and most invent some moniker inspired by something from somewhere (even President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is known by everybody as SBY – repeat after me – Es Bay Yeh).
If anyone I’ve come into contact with so far is the Ultragrrrl of Jakarta, it’s Kiki. I’ve even started calling her Ultragggadis (‘gadis’ being the Indonesian word for a fetching young woman, though it’s literal translation is ‘virgin.’) Unlike Ultragrrrl, Kiki has a real job – as a graphic designer. Much like New York’s Sarah Lewitin, the former "Making Out With Ultragrrrl" columnist for Spin whom I have only seen from across a crowded nightclub so I ain’t claiming no personal knowledge here, Kiki has a sizable, not so hard to locate web presence where she keeps much of Jakarta up to date on what is happening in the indie rawk scene.
Such as it is.
Oh, wait. It’s more than you might expect.
Certainly more than I expected to find.
After all, there’s a lot to respect from Indonesia’s cultural output - consider for instance its gamelan milieu which is sui generis as far as I can tell in the world of music and dance. But in modern output, it’s another story. This is the country after all that produce a war criminal named Wiranto who resigned from the military only to launch his political career with a tour supporting his new album "For You My Indonesia." He and the aforementioned SBY both appeared last spring on "Indonesian Idol," where incumbent President Megawati’s failure to show couldn’t have helped out in the ratings, I mean polls - although I’m sure Indonesia’s Simon Cowell-alike didn’t tell SBY to keep his day job. And while I’m getting my digs in, let me tell you that most of the singers you see from this country look like people who took themselves too seriously at karaoke - they have mullets, bad wardrobes, horrendous mustaches, and end every verse they sing with throaty declarations of "cintamuuuu" ("I love you.") Yeah, what is Indonesian for "don’t quit your day job?"
Kiki called me up and said, “Come to Parc.” Parc is in Indonesia’s “Blok M” area, which is mostly known as a cash and carry spot for Indonesia’s foreign residents, and Indonesia’s prostitutes. You can also find bootleg DVDs and more taxis than the world would ever need.
In Blok M I also found my way to Parc, where Indonesia’s punk rock crowd collects – in whole or in part, I’m still figuring it out – no map was drafted in a day.
But before the rawk, we’re going to have to sit through some stuff. It’s Thursday night and there are four bands on the ticket. The first one is really serious reggae. So serious in fact, that from where I am in the bar, I cannot see them – the place is that crowded. The smoke is so heavy that I may as well be smoking. Some of the smoke may or may not have been the kind that can cause a death sentence and a really nasty diplomatic spat. I’m not really asking for the answer to that question. The audience is heavily dreadlocked, and singing along, swaying to the right, to the left.
At first, I think, “this is what Kiki has brought me out for?” The gilded cage feel I’ve been sweating since I got to Jakarta is more pronounced. I mean, okay, it’s not bad reggae, but I was expecting to hear someone channeling the spirit of Iggy Pop, the droning of a thousand badly tuned guitars. Now I’m just hearing ‘jah rasta-far-i” and watching way too many people sitting around with long looks on their faces, failing to drink any beer (more on that later).
But then the reggae band is over. And so is about 3/4 of the crowd. Seriously – the opening band picks up and walks out and that’s it – most of the crowd leaves with them. Before we couldn’t move, couldn’t see. Now we’re all standing at eye level with the next band, they’re just perched on the floor in front of us, not even on a raised platform let alone a proper stage.
And they start to play.
And it’s good. Real good. I’m surprised. They’re called Olive Tree. Three men play bass, guitar, drums, while the oddly dressed front lady jams along on a keyboard and sings in a strange voice. This is totally 80s-era indie electro-rock, updated to excellent effect a thousand times since, and it’s being played well, and it sounds good, and something from this set is going to get stuck in your head before it’s over. It’s not just that it’s a relief from the rasta – it’s that these people honestly and truly know how to play their instruments, they’re playing their own songs, they’re singing in Indonesian half the time, and they’re all doing it in sync. Really – this is a good band, solid, would be at home and welcomed back in any town that would have them.
Okay – I lied a little bit – I only caught half of this band’s set – too bad, I wish I had seen the whole thing. We’re hanging around outside halfway through the reggae set because none of the girls want to deal with all the cigarette smoke. Kiki has introduced me to some of her buddies milling around outside. “Don’t worry – people won’t be surprised – we’re always hanging around with bule,” referring to me with the slightly pejorative word for foreigners used in Indonesian slang (I still preer Singapore’s “ang mo,” translating as “red-headed boy” but meaning “white guy”).
Here’s what I discover – everyone of Kiki’s friends is in a band or wants to be. This one plays bass. The next one sings. This one tries to sound like Pearl Jam. Another one really loves Black Flag. I ask one of them if he’s playing rawk music for a living and he says “This is just a hobby.” And they all know each other – this is a small community of Indonesian rawkers, and they are all jamming on their occasionally mutually overlapping aficionado statuses together.
Band number three didn’t stick in my head…the lead singer showed up with a 70s-era tie he stole from his dad and a fake afro. The sound – think Jack Black singing “let’s get it on” at the end of High Fidelity. This isn’t really a hobby – this one is just for fun.
But now, it is time for what everyone has been waiting for – why the Indonesian rawk scene came out tonight. The main event is led by a band with the auspicious name of none other than “Teenage Death Star.” Or is it “TeenageDeathStar.” One of those. You’re not going to find them on iTunes, but maybe you should be able to.
The singer is wearing gigantic sunglasses, Tom Cruise-Top Gun-style, and it’s time to play really loud hardcore rawk, bust some ear drums, and break some bones. The eardrums bust cuz it’s loud. The bones break because a dozen members of the crowd are eagerly moshing. Eagerly. Like the kind that clubs decided they don’t have the insurance to cover anymore back home. And remember I said that there’s no stage, so sometimes the singer is screaming into the microphone while he’s trying to keep his balance because someone has just elbowed hard into his side.
The effort to to keep our rawk singer upright is led by your friendly neighborhood bouncer, a guy who works the door sometimes, who is so muscular that his cheek bones are bulging. He looks like he was bounced out of the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (armed forces) for bad manners. Everytime I see him give a boxing-style thrust to keep a mosher off the singer, or the drum set for that matter, he stops for a moment, and runs his hand over the back of his head – it’s that itchy feeling that anyone who has ever punched anyone else knows all about – it comes right after you make contact, and it practically begs you to connect again.
The show ends, and it’s just the singer falling down in one of the bleacher-like seats on the side of the “stage” and the band takes their gear back down to their ride. From channeling David Yow, seriously, to being ready for a nap.
At one point, the singer from TeenageDeathStar was handing around a pitcher filled with beer, a dozen straws jutting up over its spout. A band-member or a punter in the audience would grab hold, take a sip and hand it back around. That was most of the drinking I saw that night. I keep wondering “where the fuck are the sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll?” After all, these are mostly Muslims, at least their identity cards say so, right? Unlike Ultragrrl Sarah Lewitin who keeps saying she’s gonna stop drinking, Ultragggadis Kiki just doesn’t drink. I know we’ve got our whole straight-edge movement in America now, but is there counter-culture where there is no irresponsibility?
It’s not just that – it’s that all of the audience who really stick around seem to be buddies with the owner of the joint. So if these people are on the guest list, and if the ones who are drinking are getting comp’d by the boss, where is the intake? Can this place make money? I swing by on a Satruday night the second time, and the answer would seem to be "no." Kiki tells me that Parc has been open less than a year, and filled in the gap of another place that decided it didn’t want this crowd showing up for gigs at its bar any longer. Can Parc survive? Is the rawk crowd going to grow old, move deep south to Jakarta’s affordable suburbs, and lose their memories of the perfect bass groove to a two-hour commute?
I sure hope not. But I’m not even sure where the inspiration comes from. Everyone – everybody – wants to come to New York. At least three people have asked me “Have you been to CBGB’s?” We all know our suburban punks who sport expensive mall-bought copies of Sex Pistols t-shirts. This crowd is not that crowd. I joke with Kiki about a line from Liam Lynch’s “United States of Whatever,” a not so heavily rotated song in which he declares “So I went down to the beach and saw Kiki / she was all like…” and her friend says “Oh, that’s Liam Lynch, yah?” Which is to say that these people know a lot of shit about a lot of shit, at least as much as I do, and I’ve been living in three indie rawk cities over the course of my life, and this is not one of them.
As much as I can tell, these kids, most of whom ain’t kids no more, are the slightly arty upper middle class who have always made indie rawk what it is – people with enough time on their hands to do their own thing. And they’re doing it.
Meanwhile, for now at least, they are letting me watch, and Ima gonna see some more while I can.
