It was exactly a month ago that I woke up in the late morning, rubbed my eyes groggily, yawned and wondered what day it was. While allowing my brain cells and bodily joints to reactivate from their slumber, I stretched and then broke out into a sleep grin as I realized I had just spent the whole entire night feasting my eyes and ears to the rock beats of my favorite band of all time, Dewa's Valentine Concert at Jakarta's Hard Rock Café. Man, no wonder I was so beat! Still in Indonesia, I made a mental note that I had three more days before I had to head back home to KL. I wasn't ready to wake up just yet, so I pulled the bed covers up to my nose again and snoozed off for a little bit, dreaming that I was personally introduced to each Dewa member (damn I knew we should have stayed back that night to meet them, tengok lah sampai termimpi-mimpi jumpa all of them.)

When I did finally wake up, I realized it was Friday, February 15th. What was going on that day? Surely there were no more V-day concerts, V-day was yesterday, damn it. Dewa, Padi and Modjo were crowd stealers when they performed at various places in Jakarta for V-day for audiences of lovers, young and old. So would there still be anyone having a concert after V-day? Why, Yovie Widianto, his band NUno and Audy stood up to the challenge, of course! Lambat satu hari pun takpe lah. So who the heck are all these people? It really doesn’t matter; the point is, I was about to attend another concert in bursting-with-music-gigs Jakarta and this time it was going to be held at one of my favorite hangouts in town, Kafe Taman Semanggi, also known as Ka-Te-eS (KTS).

So who is Yovie Widianto? He's not a singer, but a composer. Yovie is well-known for being part of a 8-member sentimental-pop group called Kahitna. This young man is a talented song-writer and musician, one of Indonesia's finest. He has written love ballads for many artists such as Ruth Sahanaya, Lingua, Warna, Bening, just to name a few, and for Kahitna, of course. Yovie's songs are almost always hits because they touch the soul and are simple to relate to. I personally like them because they’re sentimental and catchy, sometimes jazzy with a dash of creative pop, accompanied by simple yet lovely lyrics and artists with the right kind of vocals.

NUno ni pulak is a band that Yovie pulled together (apparently NUno is short for Numero Uno), so all the musicians in NUno are also drummers and guitarists in other bands such as drummer Rama from ADA Band (which incidently sudah bubar or disbanded) and some others that I can't remember. The musicians in NUno except Yovie (who plays keyboard) have not stayed constant though; NUno three months ago may not necessarily be NUno today. Audy on the other hand is this 22-year-old Indonesian female solo singer who is quite popular back in her homeland; certainly can't blame her for attracting so much attention, she is quite a head-turner, ok lah at singing I suppose.

(Start of flash back music...)

I came to know of Yovie's work in 1997 when Kahitna managed to break into the Malaysian music market with their 2nd album, Kahitna II, with a single called Cantik (Cantik, ingin rasa hati berbisik… remember that one?). Cantik was played on Malaysian radio airwaves (the Malay-speaking stations in particular lah) quite often, but weird (as the Malaysian music industry always is), Kahitna's album was difficult to find here, in fact virtually non-existent. A friend of mine, Paooz, got lucky though; he managed to get Harry Suhardiman, percussionist for Kahitna (and an IRC buddy of ours!) to send him a copy of Kahitna’s CD with Harry’s signature. To this day, I envy the dude.

However, I managed to bag my own copy of Kahitna's album later that year through a friend, Zie, who visits Jakarta regularly (family-in-law kat sana mah). Nowadays you can probably find the album here in Malaysia; I occasionally stumbled upon it in 1998-99 while mindlessly window-shopping at the music stores, but now it's again quite hard to find unless lady luck decides to smile upon you. (In my humble opinion,she’s quite stuck up, that lady luck, especially about letting me find my favorite music here). Thus, after Dewa, Kahitna became my 2nd most favorite group from Indonesia (woah, very different type of music these two bands). Couldn't really blame me lah, back then my scope of Indonesian music was quite limited due to lack of resources. Kahitna wasn't bad, and they still aren't. In fact I think they're sweet. People like Evita can't stand them because they're too sappy, kurang macho haha. Yovie-NUno is more upbeat though, jazzier, compared to Kahitna songs. In fact when Yovie wanted to write songs for NUno, he claimed to have stayed away from his Kahitna friends so that he can get away from the sound-influences of Kahitna; didn't want NUno to become another Kahitna.

Come see Yovie, NUno and Audy!

(Flash back music takes you back to present day...)

Anyway, so back to this Yovie concert at KTS: I swear I had never waited so long to watch a concert in my life. You think waiting one or two hours is bad? Try something like four hours, I kid you not, dear friends. I don’t know what the deal was with putting up "Yovie, NUno and Audy 8:00pm" on the promotional banner, Evita and I were there around 8pm but nothing had started. I was however told that the reason why the sponsors waited so long to have the show start is to wait for more people to come in, which they usually do at around close to midnight. Huh? Well ok, I thought grumbling, trying to muster a little ounce of patience for this event. A stage was set up at the end of Kafe Taman Semanggi, which is this huge open area surrounded by open air restaurants with an exposed middle where they sometimes have stages for concerts similar to this one. I am quite fond KTS, definitely a happening place to just sit down, relax, grab dinner, chill with friends while you listen to live music or terrible karaoke-singing by some inconsiderate patrons in the karaoke-restaurant next door.

Prior to Yovie's appearance, there was a band called Pixel who was jamming away at the front of the stage, whom I took no notice of; didn’t know their songs, wasn’t converted into a fan either after listening to them play. At last, Yovie and co. finally came on stage at around 11pm, which is like midnight Malaysian time? I was getting quite irritated, nasib baik lah Evita’s friends were around to kind of keep my mind off the tardiness of the concert; they're quite a rowdy and hilarious bunch, enunciated R's and all (Indonesians!). So while we waited we hung out at restaurant, some of us had (very late) dinner (biasa, nasi goreng and all its glorious condiments of sambal and kripik singkong, teh botol to wash it down of course!); I remember having roti bakar (toast) with melted chocolate and oozing cheese (trying to be different lah konon), quite delightful. Pandu, a guy friend, kata nak traktir (belanja) I makan, but tak sure whether he picked up the tab or not. Evita might have beat him to it. Hehe.

At last Yovie and his band have started jamming, and the concert is on! They played songs from Yovie and NUno's debut album called "Semua Bintang." Their hit single from that album is called "Indah Ku Ingat Dirimu," which is essentially a song about how this one person wants this other person to break up with their current lover so that they can be together:

"Tersimpan pesan untukmu, tinggalkan saja pacarmu!"

Somebody was literally yelling that part of the lyrics everytime the vocalist for NUno sang it; I could only roar with laughter everytime I heard her scream it with all her might; no big mystery there on which part of the song was her favorite.

When all songs were sang and all hearts were fulfilled, I was encouraged by my friends to drop by backstage and meet Yovie, which I did of course. I didn't get to talk much to Yovie, biasalah artists are always surrounded by other people, though I did congratulate him on a show well done and told him I was a big fan all the way from seberang. Nice chap he was, sweating like mad but strangely was sporting a rather thick-looking long-sleeve t-shirt in the warm night (go figures).

I had other interesting encounters on that post-Valentine night at KTS prior to the Yovie concert, which I will not reveal in this article of course. (This is one of my many ways of trying to get you back to visit this website! *Grin*) So come back for a part II on Fairy's adventures at KTS ya!