Record Store Day, or colloquially known as support-your-local-indie-record-store-by-buying-stuff day. is a relatively new scene in this part of the world where music lovers temporarily halt their charging of credit cards at online stores, haul ass to the nearest indie record store, and charge their cards there instead! presently, there are four cool indie record stores in the vicinity of Kuala Lumpur that stock fantastic vinyl records at prices that aren't Joe's MACs! yours truly has always had a pleasant time thumbing through the records and chatting with the owners of their respective establishments, and an even better time finding records that i don't have to exorbitantly ship from the U.K, or the U.S.!
but i digress. the fantastic Teenage Head Records recently hosted a Record Store Day event - a carnival of sorts with food trucks, crates of music to dig through, and best of all, free in-store gigs! it has to be said that yours truly's other (read: primary) interest besides crate digging in Teenage Head Records' RSD event was to catch Liyana Fizi's in-store performance. hell, it was free! and so was the parking!
i arrived half-an-hour before Liyana Fizi's scheduled performance and snagged a couple of awesome records (for the curious, it was Grouper's latest offering, Ruins, and the English version of Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express) while checking out the band that was playing at the moment - Mystery Tapes. i told myself that the bloke in the center looked exactly like Zack Yusof, and when he spoke in between songs, i knew immediately that the bloke in the center that looked exactly like Zack Yusof was indeed Zack Yusof of 33RPM fame! today i learned that Zack Yusof has a band, and they're alright.
after a rather indifferent reception by the in-store crowd (all busy thumbing through records, i assume), an immediate influx of people entering the store signalled the advent of the next performer - Liyana Fizi herself. she came in discreetly and set herself up by the amp, with her camera crew poised and ready to shoot her opening number. it suddenly got crowded, and the air-conditioner started giving up the ghost - which kind of reminded me of a gig i attended last year where there wasn't even a hint of ventilated air in the hall. Miss Liyana opened her set with the tender Jatuh, and the crowd immediately fell into a lull, with only the sound of Liyana's lone acoustic guitar and her lovely voice. tender and intimate sounds about right in describing the overall vibe of Liyana Fizi's performance - the sound of my razor-like lens as it is searching for a focus point sounds like a sawmill in the room! woe is the cameraman with a noisy lens! halfway through her set, Miss Liyana bantered a little bit about being sweaty and received a song request from a gentleman in the back to play Ternyata, which is yours truly's favourite Liyana Fizi song ever. that song alone was enough for me to call this the gig of the year. Miss Liyana played a couple more songs after that, including one that paid tribute to a close friend of hers, Izaad Amir. it was a brisk five-song set, but it felt rapturous and soul-enriching. i'm guessing the rest of the air-con-busting crowd partly shared the same awe-inspiring feels as yours truly. sweaty and elated, the crowd dispersed and let the air-conditioner magically heal itself before the next performance - of which Miss Liyana encouraged the crowd to stick around and check out. jokes on her. i only came for her set!
outside, i got myself some Record Store Day souvenirs, thumbed through some more crates, watched the fans take selfies with Miss Liyana, worked up the nerve to approach Miss Liyana, and took a photograph with her. i bought some fantastic records, watched a great (free!) gig, got some pictures with Miss Liyana, and even got my photograph featured in Liyana Fizi's Instagram feed.
it was a good day.
