Was It All Worth It?

So it’s coming up to a year since I resurrected this blog and as is usually the case when I do anything for a prolonged period of time, I tend to ask myself what it’s all worth. And truly, in the case of Three Fingers Back, the question of “who gives a fuck?” has never been more important.

It is no secret that my hit count/page views tend to go up when I’m ripping someone apart but when I’m not, when I write about the music that affects me, few turn this way. I understand why that is, of course. It’s ’cause a whole load of people actually do think Dragon Red is shit. And they really hate Sasi the Don. But none of them motherfuckers have the balls to rip ’em up on their own. So when I do it, they all snigger, send the link to their friends and hope someone shows it to the victim(s). Motherfuckers!

Just for them. And just ’cause I liked getting that award from Juice for Biggest Balls last year, I wish I could spew bile on demand. But I can’t. And even if I could, the Malaysian indie scene isn’t big enough. Sooner or later I’m bound to run out of artists/victims. Unless, of course, I change direction and start attacking politicians. That could be a whole load of fun except that I think if you’re going to attack anything, you’ve got to have some sorta insider knowledge and I don’t fucking know where Anwar Ibrahim dry-cleans his batik shirts.

But coming back to it ... does it all matter in the end?

I mean, I take pains to make sure that even when I am peppering sentences with “cocksuckers” and “fucks” that everything is as grammatical as possible. But you and I know that it means jackshit because there are whole load of skanks who call themselves bloggers (or worse, WRITERS) but really wouldn’t even know a noun if it punched them in the nose and only post instagram-ed pictures of the food they never eat, the fucking parties they attend, their fucking dogs, their fucking iPhones, their fucking pouty duck-lipped friends and yet, somehow get thrown trips to Germany to drive the latest Volkswagen and review it. Why? Simple. A zillion people read their blogs. (When I say “read” know that I use the term loosely. I mean HOW THE FUCK DO YOU READ PICTURES?)

Do I have a hitlist made up of people I feel should be shot for daring to call themselves writers? Oh yeah, I do. But who cares lah, really? If I write a piece about, oh I dunno, cheeserland.com or beingpauline.blogspot.com, people are probably just going to snigger and send the link to a friend and hope the victims see my posts and all that really accomplishes is that now, not only do Dragon Red and Sasi hate me, so do two girls I’ve never slept with! So fuck that.

Three Fingers Back is going to stay fixed and fixated on the music. And if that means only Fuad Alhabshi and Ili FM and Eddy Lim and Deep and Max and Ari and Azmyl and Gael and IP Freeley and Meng and the guys and girls from Juice and Andri and David Owen and Sarah Chan and Navin and Alif and Nazirah and DrBig and Irdina and Reza and Loque and Abby and Sazali and Nick Chim and Emir Ashraff and Sally Pothead and Naj Frusciante and Liyana Fizi (see, I can namedrop too, motherfuckers!) take the time to read me, so be it. I’ll take all y’all any day over cheeserland’s million muppets!

Is it worth it?

Yes, it is. You all make it worth it. And I thank every single one of you. One day soon, when I get a trip thrown my way, I’m taking all of you along. Promise.

In the meantime, I’m going to do what I’ve been doing and just fucking write. Because you know, what? I AM a writer and at the risk of being accused of tooting my own vuvuzela, a good one. And while a million readers would be nice, you can never really call yourself an artist/writer if you’re overly concerned about the numbers.

So once again, thank you, everyone. Oh and Nick, I’ll get to reviewing your album, dude. I just had to get this off my chest and outta the way.