Plis Deh Jakarta!

So Jakarta aspires to become an international music city. It makes sense, given the amount of large-scale music events and festivals recently held in Jakarta. One thing: if Jakarta can manage to convert the howling din of daily honking from cars, buses, motorcycles and sate sellers into music, it certainly would earn that title.

Maybe Plis Deh Jakarta can start a side business selling musical car horns?

Overheard at Java Jazz Festival 2009:

“Yuk kita nonton RAN aja, Tohpati kurang ngejazz nih….”

Thanks to Dika.

To all its good intentions – really, somebody had to do it – the Jakarta Rock Parade failed to meet a lot of people’s expectations, even the bands who expected to get paid. Many of the high-profile bands who were scheduled to go on weren’t paid a downpayment on the performance (as is the standard procedure), so they boycotted the event with disgust. That, and the event was marred by mismanagement (the event organiser appointed to run the event almost backed off at the last minute, also due to payment problems) and even worse promotion. The event was quiet, to say the least.

One of the defunct stages, since a lot of the bands did not play. When there was a band playing, there was at least 20-30 stragglers around the stage watching with disinterest.

The merchandise stalls, which were just basically tables with stuff on top, really. But as you can see, The Police made an appearance although they forgot to bring their instruments.

So, friends at the JRP committe – I know you tried, really, really hard, at one point even selling your handphone to pay a band; so thumbs up for effort. Thumbs down for actual result.