I arrived at my hotel in Kuala Lumpur at 11 PM last night, dead tired, wiped out, demoralized, plane-flighted out. But I remembered that in this city last year on the Wednesday night, I found a fabulous place to play, a bar called Urban Attic, which had a huge stage and was partly inside and partly outside. So last night, despite sending emails to the Urban Attic blog – which I noticed was terribly out of date – and I received no response, so I decided to head over, with my guitar, to see what the action was like. I was delighted to find that it was only 10 minutes walk from my hotel over to CapSquare, where the Urban Attic is located.
So I walked through the heat and humidity and found my way there…only to find the Urban Attic closed and lifeless. What a shame. It does not look closed down, however, unless they’ve left everything in it, the bar, the sign for Ladies’ Night on Saturday, etc. But compared to last year, this was a real downer. So I returned to the hotel with no answer as to what’s happening with the Urban Attic in general, but the knowledge that I’d done all I could to find a place to play on my first night.
I will also retrace my steps from last year to another venue, and that is the Hard Rock Cafe Kuala Lumpur. It turns out the Hard Rock is also right next to my hotel. Last year I went to the Hard Rock Cafe to listen to Eddie and the Robbers, the band of Eddie Jordan, the former F1 team owner. I blogged about Eddie and the Robbers on my NYT F1 blog site. When Eddie told me in the paddock in Australia that he was returning again, this time with a trio, and he invited me over, I decided to go a step further. I later wrote to him and asked if I could play one of my songs with his band at the Hard Rock Cafe tonight. He said yes. So in principle, that’s what I’ll be doing tonight. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to it. If the Urban Attic turned out to be a downer compared to last year, the Hard Rock Cafe experience – which was also enormous last year – could turn out to be even bigger this year!