Amir Yusoff<\/a>, and two newbies. You may come to watch Amir, but discover someone new in the process. We\u00c3\u00adve had performers who are jobless, professionals, and waitresses. The only thing we insist on is that you sing your own songs and that you can\u00c3\u00adt bring a band. It\u00c3\u00ads an acoustic show.<\/p>\nThe energy in the room is amazingly supportive. People sit or stand for hours, just listening. I think it\u00c3\u00ads because these performers are telling stories about their lives, their experiences. In between, they\u00c3\u00adll chat about their songs. All communities need this because these songs come from the contact points of our society \u00c3\u00b1 the writers were moved enough to write about their experiences and surely there should be a place to accommodate this. May be one out of 100 singers will ever make it big, but that\u00c3\u00ads not what it\u00c3\u00ads all about. Once music transcends entertainment, it becomes more about self-expression and communion.<\/p>\n
The open-mike session has unearthed some serious talent. We\u00c3\u00adve made efforts to publicise this to the labels, but so far, no one\u00c3\u00ads turned up. I guess we are labelled as \u00c3\u00acEnglish\u00c3\u00ae music (and hence cater to a small market), which is not true. People sing in all sorts of languages. The labels are essentially foreign outposts of US companies. If you are earning a salary of RM20,000 a month, why should you risk your job pushing an local unknown (instead of the American Top 40)? You can\u00c3\u00adt blame these guys. The industry is in flux; the big labels cannot continue putting the entire blame (for the plunging profits) on the likes of Napster.<\/p>\n
KL needs more people like Evelyn. She had already started No Black Tie to support local artistes even before I met her, including Joe Kidd\u00c3\u00ads Unclogged and Hassan Brown\u00c3\u00ads Acoustic Jam. She is passionate about this and deserves this success. She may sell some drinks on a good night, but the cover charge, minus expenses, goes entirely to the performers. For both of us this is a labour of love.\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n
EVELYN HII<\/u>, Owner of No Black Tie<\/p>\n
No Black Tie began as a concept where I\u00c3\u00add get people together to play classical music at various venues. But one day we thought, wouldn\u00c3\u00adt it be great if we could offer this kind of platform to all musicians? And that\u00c3\u00ads how we opened the series to different types of music, took over this venue, and finally we were performing No Black Tie at No Black Tie. As serendipity would have it, when I was in KL, I rented a room just down the road in what was then called 2020 coffee shop!<\/p>\n
Pete first came here with his guitar in December 2000 one Sunday night to do a recording. I remember the floor was newly varnished and the recording was beautiful. A few months later, Joe Kidd proposed doing Unclogged here and one of the performers was Pete. Later, Pete came back from a New York music festival, excited about this concept of a songwriters\u00c3\u00ad round. We launched it with Pete, Julian Mokhtar, Rabbit and Sei Hon and it was a success from the start. What I love about it is the atmosphere. There\u00c3\u00ads so much camaraderie and genuine friendship all around that it makes it easier for people to step up to a mike. In a way, I was surprised that this was a KL audience \u00c3\u00b1 we\u00c3\u00adre so used to blasting music. But yes, I suppose we set the tone; this place is about appreciating music. And there\u00c3\u00ads absolutely no politics among the performers. They\u00c3\u00adre up there, supporting each other. Pete makes sure it\u00c3\u00ads a good mix \u00c3\u00b1 that there are those who can help the \u00c3\u00abshy\u00c3\u00ad ones; give them a nudge to say, \u00c3\u00abHey, come on, you can do it.\u00c3\u00ad<\/p>\n
The feedback has been amazing. Both Pete and I get lots of phone calls from people who want to perform. People find the music refreshing; it fills a gap. Its completely different from mainstream pop, which churns out the same old stuff. Here, performers reach out to the audience and vice versa. I always tell people that you get out of it as much as you put in.<\/p>\n
I think there\u00c3\u00ads always been an audience for a place like this. KLites are more ready for it. The networking has been amazing \u00c3\u00b1 foreign musicians who come into town always seem to find their way here, or someone brings them. We\u00c3\u00adve had members of the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas series and Winston Marsalis\u00c3\u00ad band walk in, pull out their instruments and play!<\/p>\n
I am doing this for the love of music. I could never do anything else. I am a performer and playing alone is not enough, so the more the merrier! And it becomes a family, a community. One of the first thing that Pete ever said to me was \u00c3\u00abEvelyn, you should have open-mike here, that\u00c3\u00adll bring the community together \u00c3\u00b1 and what do you know, now we\u00c3\u00adre doing it!\u00c3\u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Yasmin Yaacob, Options2 – The Edge Johnny Cash put it best, says Pete Teo: \u00c3\u00acWhere have all our love songs gone?\u00c3\u00ae For Teo, popular songs of the past were narratives of universal experiences. Love, life, growing up, coming of age, change and social consciousness were given nuance by the voices of the times. Today, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peteteo.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peteteo.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peteteo.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peteteo.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peteteo.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.peteteo.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peteteo.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peteteo.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peteteo.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/11\/laughing-blog.jpg\" "\\"No,")
Johnny Cash put it best, says Pete Teo: \u00c3\u00acWhere have all our love songs gone?\u00c3\u00ae For Teo, popular songs of the past were narratives of universal experiences. Love, life, growing up, coming of age, change and social consciousness were given nuance by the voices of the times.<\/p>\n