Musical Exploration!

I went out last night to start exploring the local music scene of Singapore.  First stop was the Theatres On The Bay complex at the Esplanade, which is a set of performance spaces on the bay that include a couple of indoor venues of different sizes and also an outdoor amphitheater that has free concerts on weekends.  Basically Singapore's version of the Lake Harriet bandshell.

The show tonight was a cover band doing American hits by decade in each of their three sets.  I stuck around for the 70's set and was treated to some actually pretty amazing guitar work, but mostly just true-to-the-original covers.  Still fun.

Afterwards I headed over to The Hood bar and grill, which touts itself as a music venue, but mostly seems to have a stable of house bands that rotate through each night playing, you guessed it, true-to-the-original covers of American classics.  Saturday, though, they have "open mic night" for bands to play original songs.  It was sparsely attended (no pictures of _how_ sparsely unfortunately, as my phone had run out of juice), and the band wasn't exactly amazing, but it was proof that there are musicians writing and performing in Singapore.  After the open mic section the "late evening" cover band took the stage and I got more covers.  

From the online research I've done, it sounds like most of the _actual_ music scene occurs across the causeway in Malaysia.  The border town of Johor Bahru (the locals just call it "JB") seems to be where average Singaporeans go to avoid sin taxes and musicians go to avoid arduous venue/performance licensing processes.  I haven't been yet since apparently the border crossing can be a huge pain and I want to get my actual immigration paperwork sorted, but I figure that's going to be a necessary stop on my music scene exploration.