What is The 78 Love Experiment?
Back in 1996, there was a bunch of young teenagers who happened to be in the same JC. Hey, our future PM happens to be their alma mata. I wonder if he would endorse this bunch of juvenile delinquents. I doubt so. Anyway, these kids were restless and reckless. Hyperactive minds, the whole bunch. Mainly self-indulgent wankers and proud to be so as well.
As most misguided teens do, they have nothing better to do, except to skip school. There are only so many teenage girls to ogle in Orchard Road. So, 3 little pigs decided to start playing in a musical ensemble or otherwise, known in post-modern terms,a rock band. Decidedly very loud and un-decidely often out-of-tune and out-of-time. When they congregated on a love of what was popular back in the mid 90's such as Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, you know the grunge stuff. Mainly, Nirvana though. Teenage angst was rearing its ugly head back then as much as the hormonal urge to get some head as well.
Due to a self-engineered act of over-indulgence, one of them which we shall name as
Willy organised a so-called ARTS Fest in his JC for the Art Club to generate so-called funds. Actually, it was a cover-up to allow an extremely raw and untalented band to perform live. What the hell, they even managed to con two of their friends,
AB and
Andy to join them to embarrass themselves publicly. Those two were smokers, so they gotta be cool maaan. Which they still are, despite what the Government says about smoking. Bah! Plus,
Andy is Malaysian. Don't say these entreprising teenagers didn't know how to recognise foreign talent.
They named themselves
The Corinthian Frets. After a few weeks, they decided to drop the 'Frets', just
The Corinthian. The idea came from the wildly popular
Sandman comic book series which had an eyeball eating demon named
The Corinthian (what else?) and most probably, some deeply buried Catholic guilt. As with 99% of all bands, they had their internal clashes with ego problems. That was even before they achieved the sucess and drugs and groupies! Some people are just fast developers. Coupled with the state phenomenon called National Service, the whole band thing was just simply buried and cast away like a high school yearbook.
Over the next few years, they have all grown into young adults. One of them,
Yeeyong, according to what his parents call him, was studying in Melbourne, Australia. One day, he received a phone call from Singapore. His old bandmates were entering the studios to record a demo. How amazing!!How thrilling!! How fuckin' pissed he was for not being there at all. What could have resurrected the old corpse of wild teenage fantasies of making the world a better place through music?
Strangely, the whole band reconvened under the most unlikely circumstances.
Willy's mate,
Billy Tan who was a NTU Communication Studies student had some free studio time as he was doing a course module that required him to record a band. Yet, in an act of self-indulgence again,
Willy thought that he'd rather benefit himself than others. So, he called up some old mates (yes, you know who) and they were all raring to do it, with the exception of
Yeeyong who was still stuck in Kangaroo Land.
When
Yeeyong was back in Singapore for good, the little tribe of alpha males were back in swing. Since it was a new beginning, a new name was in order. Should they call themselves
The Shoplifters' Union after a song written by one of their collective influences,
The Smiths and a past favourite hobby of theirs? Or what about
The Innkeepers after
AB's friend's mispronounciation of American rock band,
Incubus? Or simply just
Everything Is Willy's Guitar (don't ask, the story is too long to explain)?
Finally,
Weiyuan who was recently married suggested
The 78 Love Experiment. He explained all the five ex-delinquents were born in 1978 due to "experiments of love conducted by our parents" while giggling like a Japanese schoolgirl. He is most probably conducting some love experiments with his wife right now. In any case, the name was unanimously agreed upon by all the rest even though running the risk of being mistaken as a hippie band.
The future looks bright and hopeful for this group of ex-miscreants who finally has their focus right. "We were young back then," the band was quoted to have said. "Now, we know exactly what we want, in this particular order as well. Fame, groupies and our own 12" action figures by McFarlane Toys". Talk about ambition and knowing what you want!
The 78 Love Experiment is Abdul Basheer, Andy Tay, Seng Wei Yuan, Willy Tan and Yeeyong.
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