Meeting Lunarin

Caught Lunarin at library@esplanade tonight.



I was disappointed.

Yeah, that's right.

Disappointed that they only played a 30-minute set! Not enough!

At the end of their 20-minute acoustical set, I would've shouted for an encore but it seemed wrong for a librarian to break a library rule. Luckily a few people in the audience were less chicken than me. But still they sounded hesitant when they said, "More" (I suspected it was a "library thing").


So Lunarin's vocalist/ bassist and guitarist obliged by performing 'Silverpiece'. Kinda poetic, as a final song in their last gig of the year.

At the very end, the two band members had to tell the audience to leave. Show's over folks.

I've seen quite a few performances at EPCL and this was the first time the audience had to be told the session was over.

They didn't want to leave. That much was clear.

Their lead singer turned out to be quite a joker. The dry and sardonic kind. Not that what she said was necessarily untrue. Most of the time. Must be a lawyer thing. If you manage to read this post, you'll see what I mean. Heh.

At one point, she said they didn't know where their drummer was -- whether he was dead or alive. And that the person in the audience who looked like their drummer wasn't him.

Turned out he was indeed present [click on the image to see the note in Flickr]:


Linda said this was their last gig of the year because they were running out of money and couldn't play free gigs anymore. At that point, I thought, "Oh boy, I'm sorry the library couldn't pay for them to play at the library".


Then she said they would have to spend their money carefully, on the more important things. Like alcohol.

Um, let me retract that earlier thought then.



They say you cannot judge a book by its cover. The same is true for a band who says they play "gothic heavy metal rock". Don't judge the musicians by the music they play -- at least for this group.

When I introduced myself to Eng Teck and Kah Whye Wye, I was expecting either cool responses or gruff one-liners.

Didn't happen.

Those two guys were very soft-spoken. Unassuming. Polite and shy even. Man, they can't be rockers, can they? But they are.

So who says rockers can't be gentlemen?

Eng Teck's the lawyer, and Kah Whye's Wye's the engineer. I told them I thought it was the other way around. Forgive me guys, I'm an ignorant librarian. Don't write me into your next song.

And their vocalist is, well, vocal.

She did all the talking. Not that the audience minded.

I don't know her at all, other than a few emails in the course of arranging for the loan promotion, as part of their gig at the library. In fact, she did all the emailing too. She wasn't that intimidating as I thought a laywer-rocker-babe would be.

We met and shook hands, finally. She wanted to give me a hug even. Only as a thank you gesture of course (she gave hugs to some people earlier, so it's not what you think).

But being the prude that I was, I pulled back in horror. I only hug my wife and my dog. Besides, what if my wife got to hear about it?

So we only shook hands again (honest, my dear).

Once again, a big thank you again, Lunarin, for contributing your time and energy for a library event.

Two lawyers and an engineer.

Playing Gothic Rock.

Inspiring stuff.

There are five autographed copies of their CD to give away, as part of the loan promotion at the library@esplanade (5th June to 2nd July 2007). BTW, I'm not the one who was responsible for bringing in Lunarin to library@esplanade. You have to thank my other colleagues for that.

p.s. Thanks to Brennan, ModCentric, and Kevin for turning up too.
[17 June 07 update: Lunarin says "We is like librarians"]