Tarigan takes stock of new rock

Chris Holm, Contributor, Jakarta

From a young age, music buff and CD-producer David Tarigan knew he was nuts about "things", especially musical things.

"I've always had a fetish about objects; cultural things. I collect them, I suppose, because I love memorabilia," he said.

"Since I was very small until I was about 10 I created my own country -- I called it 'Antarctica' but it wasn't a land covered with ice and snow.

"This Antarctica had people; a government, a history, a national flag. I spent ages writing notes in exercise books about this place. I guess I wanted to write a biography of an entire nation."

Born and bred in decidedly un-Antarctic Jakarta, some things in Tarigan's newly discovered country were more important than others.

"I spent a long time writing notes detailing the country's football players and, of course, its rock bands -- two things I was interested in," he said.

But it was music that became a full-time obsession (soccer, Tarigan quips, is only a part-time mania).

He remembers he got his first cassette at the age of two, a country music tape he picked out at the supermarket "because it was bright yellow had a cowboy on the front".

Later he moved on to living-room sessions with his parent's Beatles collection, and Rolling Stones tennis racket jams at the house of a neighbor.

By about the age of eight Tarigan took the plunge and with saved pocket money went out and bought his first record, an album by 1980s U.S. guitar rocker Van Halen.

A spotlight flashed on in his head and he knew it was essential he procure all of Halen's work. After that there were still more bands he had to have.

Fast-forward to this year, and 27-year-old Tarigan is the content manager at a specialist music store and says he personally owns "more than 2000" CDs, records, and cassettes.

"I've kept collecting from junior high until now, and it's getting scarier than ever."

And it wasn't just Western music. When he was about 11, he became interested in seeking out old Indonesian albums, "... vinyl stuff from the '60s and '70s; groups like Koes Bersaudara, Koes Plus and the Rollies."

"Overseas they call it 'Indo Rock' -- in Japan and all over Europe. There's a lot of interest from collectors there."

But Tarigan was never content just to collect music. He had to be making it, too. Skip back a few years and Tarigan was at art school in the country's "rock city" of Bandung, immersing himself in a vibrant underground scene.

He had also started his own band, The Jonis, and was writing for an independent music magazine cataloging the achievements of new acts.

"In Bandung you can do almost anything," he says. "Bands have their own crowds and they will come and listen to whatever new thing they are doing, even if it is the silliest thing you've ever seen. There is that spirit of creativity, of doing it yourself; a DIY mentality."

Back in Jakarta after six years in the city, Tarigan began to ready himself to the inevitable maturing process that was supposed to result. Bandung was the rock scene the country, where you hung out at gigs as a student and discovered your independence and other forms of knowledge. Jakarta, on the other hand, was the place where you got on with more serious pursuits: Career, family and making money, not music.

But the urge to keep going to see bands prevailed, and Tarigan found the Jakarta music scene surprised him. Not the slick professional cover bands, who play Top-40 hits in hotel bars, but rock and electronic acts experimenting with original songs, mostly in Bahasa Indonesia.

His friend Jimi played him a tape of his new band The Upstairs, he went to a band called The Brandels, and Tarigan realized "it was impossible to sit back and watch".

The experience reminded him of the days of the Jakarta music scene in the early '90s at the Pid Pub, and Poster. There had been many bands with many fans playing music for years in the city, but apart from the odd cassette in the hands of an former- band mate there were now only fading memories.

This desire for documentation led Tarigan, together with executive producer Hanindito Sidharta and co-producer Leo Ringo, to make JKT:SKRG (Jakarta:Now), an attempt to capture music history as it was being made, featuring 13 tracks of 11 bands, all who still play in Jakarta.

A listen to the CD reveals good production values, an eclectic array of original acts -- and, of course, a full book complete with pictures and write-ups.

"It's easy to record things but I wanted to represent things. I think this compilation is the first time (locally) there has been so many linear notes on bands, before it was always just the music," Tarigan said.

JKTA:SKRG features the infectious choppy guitar rock of C'mon Lennon's Aku Cinta J.A.K.A.R.T.A, an upbeat soccer anthem, to the Stooges-inspired tunes of Indonesia's garage rock revivalists The Brandels and Teenage Death Star, to more jangly, ethereal or downright experimental compositions by the likes of Sajama Cut, Sore and Zeke & the Popo.

One highlight is The Upstairs, a group that crafts tricky songs by melding new wave synch-pop with heavy guitars, all sung with a knowing nod to 1970s German pop, or "kraut rock". Think five young guys, singing odes to the Televisi and telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell in Bahasa Indonesia with deep pretend German accents.

For Tarigan, JKT:SKRG is the realization of a dream, but he doesn't plan to stop there.

"I'm mad about archiving. There are so many good bands from the early 1990s onwards who hardly ever recorded their own original material. And no one has provided them with write-ups about their music."

This sense of the past, musical or otherwise, is essential to the country's cultural development, he says.

"This kind of thing, this documentation, is starting to happen everywhere in Indonesian society; people are starting to gather, analyze and criticize things now. Perhaps these are Western ideas, but they're still important."

But most importantly, like he's always done, Tarigan wants to turn people on to the new music and get them out seeing original, contemporary acts.

"Jakarta is different now. People realize they can create things that have never happened here before.

"You can do many things here, not just go to the office and go home, but also go out and broaden your mind."

* JKT:SKRG is dedicated to the memory of Hendra Petrof 1984-2004. The album is available at local music stores and small independent music shops.