Still Searching

I thought Innuendo was the worst live act I've seen, but Search just took the crown last night. Allow me to gripe from the start of the whole disaster called Di Awan Biru concert in Bukit Kiara on Saturday.

Firstly, the ticketing agent must be out of their minds. Tickets bought only entitled you to a reference number. Tickets are to be collected at the venue itself. No surprise when hundreds of people were shoving and pushing their way to collect the tickets from the 5 or so available redemption counters. The counters were placed right next to each other with no breathing space, and there was no one to control the crowd. Even worse, it's placed right next to the entrance point - which is another point of contention.

I don't know why, but seemingly the guys at the entrance chose to open only two narrow channels for people to pass. It might've worked swell earlier but it's almost 9pm and everyone was trying to get it, 2 channels just won't do it. After so many people telling them to open up more channels, they opened another one. God, can't someone with brains be in charge?

Now that we're through, and made our way to the field, we thought things will go smoothly from now on. Wrong. Search was late by an hour, which I was already expecting so I don't really see that as a problem. Then when they started the first song, Amy's mic weren't on! Great way to steal the thunder, well done sound engineer! The fireworks and flameburst on stage was cool, but we came to see Search and not the pyrotechnics.

Second song, Balada Pemuzik Jalanan was cut short by guess what, a power outage on the stage. Everything went quiet and dark suddenly and we were treated to a blast of spotlight while they rectified the error. The crowd was getting very annoyed now. Took them a while to get things done too. Given that the sound system was very bad in the first place, this is not helping matters. Amy's mic were on too slow on some songs, the bass' amp was very very bad, and the keyboard was way too loud. Somebody shoot the sound engineer, please.

Also I must say, Search did not meet the crowd's expectations. Come on, crowd favourites like Rozana, Kejora and Meniti Titian Usang were not played! Even the hugely popular Gadisku was only part of a medley. WTF??? Isabella was marred by Kid's erratic amp (sounds very much like my jamming sessions back in the days at Zai Am Studio, Kuala Kangsar honestly). Then they resorted to some solo jamming sessions by Yazid and Din which no one wanted to hear thank you very much.

Fantasia Bulan Madu? By the time they played that, a sizeable crowd has already left. I left halfway through Fantasia Bulan Madu too. The murmurs from the leaving crowd all have the same flavour - disappointment.

Should somehow someone connected with Search came upon this, know that most os us had to brave hours of traffic jam just to get to the venue, and had to tussle to get tickets at the redemption counter, then more pushing and shoving just to get in. No one complained very much in expectation of a stellar performance by Search, but we all left bitterly dissapointed.

I say, give it up. Retire. Let Search be something of a memory rather than serve this kind of half-assed effort to the fans. Honestly Amy, langsung tak berbaloi wa pegi wa cakap sama lu, ok?