'KECHEWAS had Johan on Bass and Rhythm Guitars, Eddie on Drums, Iesta on Vocals, Izham Omar on Keyboards and Bass, Datuk Kamal on Percussions and Azhar Borhan on Lead Guitars. Our X-Man MZul was absent due to his study leave in the UK for Script Writing. We rocked the stage of Media Prima TV Screenings 2013 like we never did before. We even had special guest playing the bass for us, who else no other than the Media Prima big boss, Dato' Amrin. It was a night to remember. It was aesthetically fun. It was passion burning with the desire and love for music. It was D'Kechewas.
We hit the stage with an opening medley of Red Hot Chilli Peppers' Give It Away, Aerosmith's Walk This Way and a classic from Queen's Under Pressure. The trio medley gave the crowd a reason to stick around head banging like there was no tomorrow to appreciate music. Enough of a punchy opening, the band mellowed down into
Every Breath You Take with Dato' Amrin leading the band with his bass lines like Sting himself playing the bass strings.
To light up the night, out of no where, Jacqueline Victor appears driving the crowd nuts and there was nothing else that we could do other than hitting a bluezy number of Give Me One Reason by Tracy Chapman. From the blues, we progressed into rock & roll manifested by Free's All Right Now, of course, still having Jacky on vocals. Jacky's voice was so mesmerising that something had to be done to reinforce that feel..... and with the wisdom of our keyboard wizard, Izham, Jackson 5's I'll Be There filled the air with Jacky's best ever live performance for that night.
The Jacky and GMD (Amrin) session ended full of flavour that it was appropriate to have some local taste to the explosive night. Iesta continued on with Search's
Rozana and like Halley's Comet striking the Earth, on the second verse, Amy Search! jumped on board. Bloody'ell.... the owner of the song himself performing it - what an epitome line up! As we all know it, Amy Search is a big fan of the Stones (Rolling Stones),.. and what happened next, was beyond believe. The stage was rockin of Stone's Honky Tonk Women with everyone rollin and rockin. Truly a dream come true for a small jamming band like us.
Next with horns flanking us, we did a number on our signature cover for Wilson Pickett,...... Yes!
Mustang Sally! Ride Sally Ride! ... and we were riding Sally all night long, we were. For some reason we've always enjoyed performing Mustang Sally and I think, we will continue to have this song on our list to mark our presence. As usual, Izham vetoed everyone with a song from his favourite band, the Beatles, doing a Twist & Shout and as you may have guessed,... the crowd was doing the Twist!! on the dance floor..... If that is not participation, I don't know what is..... Awesome! An ending with the Beatles have always been successful leaving behind a sweet after taste to the whole set.
The crowd began to shout, "We want more! We want more!". What more can we give? We had done 11 Songs, the most we'd ever done so far. Then we remembered that we used to fool around with some Hendrix in the jamming studio. So,.. Hendrix it is then. Izham abandoned his keyboards and was now grabbing the bass from Johan. Johan had to grab something else - the closest to him was a Gibson Les Paul,.. oh! whadda hell, guitar it is then. And with full of firing inferno, D'Kechewas bazooka'ed the night with Fire. The crowd was chaotic like it was the remake of Woodstock! Fuhh!! Hendrix never failed to crunch that raw feel in you, don't you think so? Everyone was tired and again, some sweet song that everyone can sing along had to be done for the real closing of the night. Surprise, Surprise, another Beatles - Hey Jude ended the concert..... and it was history that we all shall remember forever :)
