Boy, have we got some awesome news for you guys! AirAsiaRedTix.com is proud to announce that we’ll be selling tickets for Arthur’s Day 2010! Come celebrate the birth of the legend that is Arthur McGuiness with a stellar cast of performers, such as Flo Rida, Sean Kingston, Colby O'Donis, Thaitanium leading the international line-up, and a host of local acts such as Mizz Nina, Pop Shuvit, DJ Fuzz and Melissa Indot performing at Sunway Lagoon's Surf Beach on 24th September 2010! Learn how you can get your tickets from http://www.AirAsiaRedTix.com/Events/ArthursDay/.

That’s not all! We’ve got even bigger news for fans of Paramore! The explosive band from USA will be having their first ever concert in Malaysia on 19^th October 2010! We’ve even got a special contest exclusively available for those who purchase Paramore tix from AirAsiaRedTix.com. Just purchase any Paramore tix from us before 16^th October 2010 and you’ll be in the running to win a pair of backstage passes to meet Paramore in person!!! You better grab your tix from us fast because we’ve only got 3 pairs of these precious passes to give away!

Paramore will be performing their one-night only concert at National Stadium Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur, so hurry up and get your tickets at http://www.AirAsiaRedTix.com/Events/Paramore/.

IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN (cue music on background)! It’s the day we’ve all been waiting for, the day where all our hard work comes to fruition. It’s the redAMP Finals concert! With all 3 bands eager to have a go on the stage and the mysterious Wildcard band entry that’s got everyone talking. Let’s not forget about our guest artist line-up featuring Hujan, MizzNina (featuring Colby O’Donis) and THAItanium. Are you as excited as we are?!?!?!

Preparations for the concert began as early as 6am, where the crew were getting busy with the stage set-up and sound checks. Even our guest artists were there for their sound check session, making sure that it’s gonna be an unforgettable night of music!

While the event organizers were busy preparing for the Finals concert, redAMP Chief Judge Roslan Aziz and 1 representative from each of the top 3 bands were invited for a television interview during the morning. Chief judge Roslan Aziz also revealed the line-up of judges for the night during the interview, with a list of big names across the ASEAN music industry. Curious to find out whom the judges are? Keep reading then. :)

When it started to rain after lunch, we were beginning to worry if the heavy downpour would continue throughout the day. Concerned faces were beginning to creep up from the crew and band members. Will the rain stop in time for the concert?

Thankfully, the weather gods turned our frowns to smiles, as rain began to cease just before crowd admission begun! Soon after, people were beginning to queue up with their tix in hand, and excitement was buzzing among the crowd, with debates about who will win as tonight’s best band, and who the wildcard entry will be were among the hot topics of conversation during their wait.

Just as the crowd were getting restless while waiting for the concert to begin, our hosts of the evening, VJ Utt and Belinda Chee began proceedings by introducing the opening act of the night, Malaysian indie band Hujan.

Our stellar line-up of judges were next on the introduction cue, with Chief Judge Roslan Aziz heading the team, followed by: Hans Anwar, prominent music producer from Brunei; Adib Hidayat, Chief Editor of Rolling Stones Magazine Indonesia; Don Skelchy, Territory Manager of Valleyarm International Kota Kinabalu; Tony Ward from Music Matters Hong Kong.

Now that introductions are over, it’s time to get down to business! The first redAMP band to take the stage was Golden Dragon from Indonesia. The crowd were amazed with the band’s extravagant costumes, and were already cheering for the Yogyakarta-based band even before they started performing their self-composed Mandarin song entitled "神堂" (Hall of Gods). The band’s leader and lead singer Icun Lin even prepared his special fireworks effect for the end of their performance, which received rousing applauses and appreciation from the excited crowd!

Once the crowd was pumped from the energetic performance of the first band, we had our funk jazz band Sixty-Nine next in line to keep everyone in a groovy mood with their original composition of a 2-in-1 song entitled Global Burning/Coward. Don’t be fooled by the band member’s relatively young age; these guys certainly knew how to funk up the beat!

All these performances certainly got the crowd hungry for more, so it was only befitting to serve up some Pancake 80 to satisfy everyone’s music palate! The Philippine powerhouse rocked the crowd their song named “Time” as we capped off the top 3 redAMP bands for the night.

Which band was the wildcard entry? Who made it as the judges’ pick? That was the million dollar question that’s been hanging on everyone’s lips. VJ Utt and Belinda finally broke the vow of silence and revealed which band was selected by our panel of judges. Malaysian band Stonebay was finally announced as the Wildcard entry, as they were selected based on what the judges believe was the most technically sound band among the top 10 redAMP bands.

Being the home team has its advantages, as fans started to cheer louder for Stonebay than any other performers of the night. The band reciprocated to the crowd’s support with their song entitled “Si Murai Penipu” (The Lying Mockingbird). With a powerful and polished performance, it quelled all doubts whether the band deserved to be awarded the Wildcard entry spot.

After the performance from all our redAMP bands, the judges were guided to their discussion area to tally up the scores and determine the rankings for each band. In the meantime, the crowded were treated to the homecoming performance by MizzNina featuring Colby O’Donis, where they sang the chart-topping track “What You Waiting For”. Incidentally, the pair also told the crowd afterwards that this was the first time they were performing the song together on a live stage!

Thai hip-hop sensation THAItanium was up next to pump up the crowd with their first ever live performance in Malaysia, capping of the guest performers for the night.

As soon as the performances were over, the crowd were demanding for the final results. The thrilling suspense was almost unbearable for the fans and the bands, as nervousness were showing on each and every one of their faces. Who would be crowned as the best ASEAN band in the inaugural redAMP 2010?

Just as VJ Utt and Belinda were informed of the results, all four bands were invited onto the stage for the results announcement. Here’s how each band finished…

3^rd Runner-up: Pancake 80

2^nd Runner-up: Stonebay

1^st Runner-up: Sixty-Nine

And finally…the moment you’ve all been waiting for…introducing the inaugural champion of “redAMP – Are You ASEAN’s Best Band” – GOLDEN DRAGON!!!

There it is, ladies and gentlemen. After more than three months of preparation, screening over thousands of band submission entries, flying more than 20 bands in for semi-final auditions, more than two weeks of public voting, and more than a week of boot camp training for our top 3 bands, we finally have our champion for the first ever redAMP competition! Nothing beats the satisfaction of celebrating the glory of one band’s triumph, but none of this would have been possible without the participation of others. We wouldn’t have enough space on to thank each person if we had to list the names out one-by-one. So on behalf of AirAsiaRedTix, we’d like to thank everyone involved, be it one of the organizers, our voters across the ASEAN region, or the concert attendees. Here’s wishing all the best to everyone, and hopefully there will be a redAMP 2011 to trump our achievements!

Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes in the lead-up to a concert? The road to organizing the redAMP concert was one filled with blood, sweat and tears (OK, we exaggerated on the blood part :) ). It’s easy to watch a performance and not be aware of the amount of hard work that was put in behind the scenes; after all, as concert-goers, we tend to focus on the performance and not the preparation. Don’t get us wrong, this isn’t an entry to bemoan the hard labors of the AirAsiaRedTix team in the lead up to the redAMP Finals concert (our boss would kill us :) ). How could we? We’ve thoroughly enjoyed every second of it! Rather, this is to tell the tale of how our top 3 bands were living in the “boot camp” for more than a week, and coped with the pressures of daily practice and interview sessions. Most importantly, as corny as this may sound, this is a story about our bands’ hard work and dedication to what they believe in: their own music.

Just before the Finals concert, the AirAsiaRedTix team had already made plans to get our bands down as soon as possible so we can prepare them for the concert. redAMP chief judge Roslan Aziz insisted that we flew the bands in earlier prior to the concert, so he can have a better look at them in person, and in return offer them valuable lessons and pointers. “Bands such as Pancake 80 and Golden Dragon have tremendous amounts of performing experience under their belt as they have lots of gigs, but they still need to learn how to perform for a large-scale concert. Raw, young bands such as Sixty-Nine definitely need a lot more work on their vocals and live performance bit.

Since we’ve only seen their pre-recorded submission videos and acoustic-version auditions, we needed a better idea on how they performed with full sets of instruments. The bands were housed in our designated hotel, and were required to attend practice sessions in Tune Studios every day. For the next five days, our top 3 bands were put under intensive training to sharpen up their music and on-stage performance. Each band was given a 3 hour timeslot everyday to come up with a 7-minute long performance with their own composition. Chief judge Roslan Aziz took time from his busy schedule and made it a point to drop by everyday to watch over the bands’ progress, and offered valuable pointer on what their needed to improve on. With only one week till the big showdown, all 3 bands knew this was a now or never opportunity for them to shine on a big stage.

Sometimes, words alone cannot express enough nor do justification to the band’s hard work. We’ll let our pictures and videos do the talking, so be sure to take a look at these exclusive behind-the-scenes footage.

Who will walk away as the best ASEAN band in the inaugural redAMP 2010? Stick around and you’ll find out more about it at our Finals concert, happening in Plaza Mont’ Kiara on 16^th July 2010!

Helloooooooo Bali! AirAsiaRedTix team touches down in Bali, Indonesia for the eagerly anticipated press conference for “redAMP – Are You ASEAN’s Best Band” competition, where we will be announcing which bands made the cut in the top 10. Sunny skies and cheerful smiles greeted us as we landed upon the beautiful landscapes of Bali, as we look forward to a busy set-up.

As soon as we checked into Tune Hotel (Legian), we were swamped by some of the press who were flown in earlier to cover the redAMP press conference. “Who made it?” was topic of the day but we made sure our lips were sealed! Some even began asking if there were any interesting tales from the audition, where we told them the heart-warming tale of the Myanmar band, Unrivalled, about the hardships they went through to come to Malaysia and what happened during the audition.

The welcoming dinner started shortly once all our guests from different parts of the ASEAN region flew in. The AirAsiaRedTix team was busy answering press queries from every corner, but we made sure they’ll have the full story during the press conference tomorrow, and it’ll definitely be worth the wait!

Suspense was lingering in the air even before the redAMP press conference begun the next morning. Our event organizer Creative Events Solution (CES) did an awesome job in setting up the press conference room in Aston Kuta Hotel and Residence. With all systems in place and all set to go, we were excited by the impending arrival of all the press and our VIP guests. Boy, have they got a surprise at what’s installed for them!

Invited guests and press shortly made their way to the redAMP press conference venue. We even managed to invite MTV Asia VJ Utt to be the Host of the press conference, which was something of a coup for the ladies =).

Soonafter, everyone took their place in the press conference room, with Head of AirAsiaRedTix.com Rafizah Amran, celebrity judge Syafinaz Selamat and VJ Utt leading the line-up and starting off the press conference. As soon as Rafizah finished her opening remarks regarding the redAMP competition, the press were fed with some jaw-dropping stats: we had a total of 2575 band entries from all across ASEAN!

Our chief judge Roslan Aziz could not attend the press conference due to personal reasons, so we had a teleconference call session with him instead. Roslan commented that the quality of the bands certainly exceeded his expectations, and the rest of the judging panel had a difficult time to choose who made it to the semi-final audition.

As soon as that was done, Roslan began introducing the top 10 bands who made the cut for public voting:

· Pancake 80 (Philippines)

· sandRa (Indonesia)

· Karacoma (Brunei)

· Winfield (Vietnam)

· Black Infinity (Vietnam)

· Golden Dragon (Indonesia)

· Bizharo (Malaysia)

· Sixty-Nine (Thailand)

· MUZTAVA (Indonesia)

· Stonebay (Malaysia)

We showed the audition and submission videos, and provided a brief introduction about each band. This was followed up with one-on-one interviews with Rafizah, VJ Utt and Syafinaz as the press were keen to hear their personal thoughts of the competition so far.

So there you have it, ladies and gentleman, redAMP’s top 10 list all set and ready to be voted by you to be the best ASEAN bands. Voting will begin on 23^rd June 2010, and it ends on 7^th July 2010. The top 3 bands voted by the public will make into the Finals, where these bands will be required to perform in the redAMP Finals concert on 16^th July 2010.

That’s not all! We’re even running a contest for the voters! The top 3 voters during the redAMP voting campaign will win all-expense paid trip for four persons to catch the redAMP Finals concert and special invites to the after-party event. Make sure you put in tons of votes! Here’s how you can vote for your favorite ASEAN band:

1. REGISTER AS AN AIRASIAREDTIX MEMBER TO VOTE

i. Sign-up and become an AirAsiaRedTix member from our Registration page.

ii. Once you have registered, login with your account details.

iii. Once you have logged in, you can start voting for your favorite ASEAN band.

iv. You get to vote once every 24 hours via website.

2. VOTE ON FACEBOOK

i. Click on the "redAMP Vote" Tab on our RedTix Facebook Fan page

ii. Make sure you're a fan of our RedTix Facebook Fan page, if you haven't become one, join now.

iii. Log in with your AirAsiaRedTix account. If you do not have an account, please sign up here.

iv. Once you log in, you will collect one vote every 30 minutes. Once you collect a vote, click on the "Vote now" button for the band of your choice.

v. Use your collected Votes on the band(s) of your choice at http://www.airasiaredtix.com/redAMP/Results/. You can even distribute your collected votes to more than one band.

3. VOTE VIA SMS

i. Select from our list of countries at http://www.airasiaredtix.com/redAMP/Register/HowtoVote.aspx and follow the steps to send in your SMS votes.

All in all, the redAMP press conference was a huge success, and we have countless people to thank for making it possible. Special shoutout goes out to MTV Asia, VJ Utt, The AirAsia team, Tune Hotel, Aston Kuta Hotel, The Public Relations Company, Creative Events Solutions, Uberfusion, our lovely AirAsia flight attendants, and all the press who came all the way to attend the press conference. The top 3 bands shall be unveiled once the voting ends, so watch this space!

Phew! What a hectic month it’s been here at the AirAsiaRedTix camp! We’ve been working our socks off to prepare for this day: the semi-final auditions for “redAMP – Are You ASEAN’s Best Band” competition. Our judges had to go through rigorous judging sessions, having countless sleepless nights just to go through thousands of submission videos in order to unearth the best bands across the ASEAN region. We must say that when we were handed the list of those who’ve made the cut, we had no clue what we were in for, and were really eager to meet the semi-finalists during the live audition and hear what they’re all about.

Once the equipment and audition rooms were set-up from 8.00am onwards, we were eagerly awaiting for each band’s arrival. With a list of shortlisted bands from Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brunei, and even all the way from Myanmar, the AirAsiaRedTix team was in for a musical fete from different parts of the world.

    

First up were the bands from Brunei, Karacoma and Nation of Hydroge respectively. They’ve been flown into Malaysia during the previous day, so they were the first up for the audition. Their bubbly characters certainly did a good job in knocking a lively tune into our sleepy heads.

Next up were the Malaysian bands, with Vernadium, Stonebay, 40 Winks, Once Upon a Time There Was a Sausage Named BOB (what a name!), Lab the Rat and Bizharo representing AirAsiaRedTix’s home country.

Thailand was represented by Sixty-Nine, a 6-piece funk-jazz band. Their choice of jazz music certainly stood out from the rest and got the rest of the crowd tapping along to their funky tunes.

The next flavor of the hour was Vietnam, with Black Infinity, Recycle, Winfield and Oringchains up for their audition. Some of the bands even had to be rushed back to LCCT airport just to catch their next flight home!

  Pancake 80 from the Philippines was next in line to entertain us with their energetic performance.

We soon saw the Indonesian contingent flying in for their auditions, and the bands that represented Indonesia were Danger Ranger, sandRa, Mustava, Respito, and Golden Dragon. Special mention goes out to Golden Dragon as all the band members came in full gear with their costumes! Talk about being in it to win it!

Last but certainly not least was Unrivalled, the band from Myanmar. These guys deserve a special mention for their commendable efforts to attend the audition as they had to go through various hassles to travel all the way from Myanmar to Malaysia via a stopover in Thailand. One of the band members lost his passport and was detained in Thailand, so the rest of the band had to travel to Malaysia without him. He eventually found his passport and boarded the next flight to Malaysia, but somehow managed to disappear from our radar without a trace! Without a single clue of his whereabouts, everyone at the audition was worried for his well being as he didn’t even have a phone for us to get in touch with. It took us nearly 6 hours before we managed to track down his whereabouts and found out that he managed to check himself into his hotel in Malaysia! Talk about being adventurous eh? We could tell that the members of Unrivalled were worried sick and were extremely exhausted from almost 2 days of non-stop travelling, and even offered to delay the band’s audition to a later time, but they were adamant in moving forward, and insisted that we carry on with their audition to maintain the spirit of fairness of the competition. We at AirAsiaRedTix sincerely doff our RedTix caps off to your dedication and determination.

What’s left a deep impression among us is the sheer grit and determination of some of the bands who really wanted a bite of the redAMP cake. From the bottom of our hearts, we salute you! Our heart also goes out to the organizing committee for making the audition a resounding success. They’ve had to work around the clock to arrange for flights, accommodation, and even visitor visas from some of the bands!

So what has the redAMP competition really taught us? Well for one, it certainly echoes the testament that music is indeed a universal language. We didn’t need to understand the language some of the bands sang in to fully appreciate what their music is about. We also learned that when there’s a will, there’s always a way, even in the face of adversity. On an eventful Saturday, music really united us in more ways than one could imagine, and music managed to sooth our tired souls from audition that was filed with lots of hard work and drama.

Here’s wishing the best of luck to our impending Top 10 bands that will be announced in Bali, Indonesia on 22^nd June 2010, and we’re really looking forward to an awesome redAMP Finals concert on 16^th July 2010! Watch this space as we’ll be blogging about our Press Conference in Bali soon!

p/s: Don’t forget that public voting for redAMP starts at 23rd June 2010, so make sure you make your vote count and vote for your top 3 ASEAN bands! What’s more, the top 3 voters will also win an all-expense paid trip for FOUR PERSONS to watch the AirAsiaRedTix.com Finals concert on 16th July 2010! More details at http://www.AirAsiaRedTix.com/redAMP