Kumaresvara (Jack) Nathan, 360\u00b0 Head\nRotation co-founder, musical collaborator, and my very dear friend of almost 15\nyears, is dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jack was cremated with his beloved\n‘Frankenstein’ custom ‘Jack Series’ guitar on Monday, 25 September 2006, at\naround 4pm. On Saturday, 26 September 2006, his ashes were taken to his\nfavourite spot, a friend’s dusun near Kuala Kubu Bahru, and released into a\nstream running across the property. The tribute gig shall be held once we manage\nto shake the fog of extreme grief that is now clouding our heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometime between twelve and one in\nthe morning of Sunday, 24 September 2006, Jack was riding a bicycle home to\nMutiara Damansara’s Palm Springs Apartments when he was hit by a car. An eyewitness,\ndriving behind this vehicle, clocked its speed at over a 100 kilometres per\nhour. It was speeding away to avoid a police roadblock. The car hit Jack and\ndid not stop. I later learned that the driver has since turned himself in, and\nis now out on bail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jack would have turned 41 on 6\nOctober 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jack<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In all the years that I knew Jack,\nhe hardly spoke about his personal life. Most of our discussions revolved\naround music and musicians. Once in a while, he’d fill me in with bits and\npieces:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jack was born in Bukit Mertajam,\nPenang. Youngest in a family of four, he had two elder brothers, Nathan and\nSteve; and a sister, Devi. His father was a headmaster and his mother a\nhousewife. All the boys played guitar well; in the family, there appears to be\na genetic disposition and an almost-instinctual inclination when it comes to\nthat instrument. Nathan started Jack on what was to be a lifelong passion for\nthe blues –namely of the Eric Clapton brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After completing his Ordinary\nLevels, Jack travelled to Singapore and studied industrial design. He later\nfound himself in the Klang Valley, and began his career as a professional\nmusician. I understand he had a brief stint with the legendary pub band\nStreetlights. Sometime in the early nineties, he hooked up with Victor, Joyce,\nRoger and Bino to form a group called the Country Hearts. They were a resident\nband of the now-defunct pub Longhorn, and alternated sets with seminal KL\ncountry band Os Pombos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the last few years, Jack was\nliving with his sister Devi and her husband Ranjit. He lived a blues player’s\nlife: a rollercoaster alternating between extreme joy and the bleakest rock\nbottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jack and I<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jack and I met, sometime in 1992,\nthrough our mutual friend, Victor. Jack played lead guitar and fiddle. He fit\nthe Wild-West frontier-town-saloon theme at Longhorn: belt buckle the size of a\nmotorcycle hubcap, cowboy boots, jeans, checker-ed shirt, ten gallon hat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He sported shoulder-length hair and\nhad a sinister scar running down the left side of his face. Mean guitar and\nfiddle playing motherfucker. He got the scar in a bar fight — he was hit with\na glass beer pitcher, trying to defend one of the waitresses from some\ncustomers who were roughing her up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They allowed guest artists to jam at Longhorn, on Sunday nights. I’d go there and do Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’ and Jack would go totally Hendrix. Sometimes, we would play a few original numbers I’d written. We came from totally different backgrounds, Jack and I: he worshipped Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix; I was on the Bauhaus and The Cure sector of the musical universe. Nonetheless, when we jammed, there was a connection –\u00ad two totally different musical directions had merged to create what can only be described as Punk Blues Goth Rock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We both got to know each other well.\nOn a fishing trip, I learned that we shared the same birthday. Jack was a year\nolder than me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first recording we made together\nwas sometime in 1993. It consisted of two songs I had written, ‘Just One\nMorning’ and ‘Sunrise’. Jack had to feel what he was playing, so he asked me to\ndescribe each song; the meaning and imagery I hoped to evoke. I sat down and\ntold him ‘Just One Morning’ should conjure this picture: Laura Ingalls Wilder\nin her Little House on the Prairie<\/em>,\nenjoying a nasty m\u00e9nage a trois<\/em> with two farm hands, in a hay cart in the\nmiddle of a bunch of chainsaws caught in a twister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That essentially set the way we\nwrote songs together: I’d paint a situation in words and a basic melody; Jack\nwould bring it to aural life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between 1994 and 2003 Jack and I\nhardly saw each other. I had become an oil and gas consultant and was living\nout of a suitcase. Jack was working for an advertising company and was doing\nproduction work. Occasionally, I’d go on set and watch him work — there would\nalmost always be a guitar nearby; he’d get possessed by Hendrix and launch into\na 30-minute solo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 360\u00b0 Head Rotation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometime in 2003 we reconnected. One\nevening, I wandered into the old Paul’s Place, in Damansara Utama. Amir Yusoff\nwas jamming on drums; another guy, neatly dressed with a corporate haircut, was\nplaying guitar. I told Amir: “That guy looks a lot like an old buddy of\nmine, Jack Nathan.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Turns out it was Jack. He had been\nhelping Paul build the stage, and was doing some handyman work around the\nvenue. Many beers followed that night. Later that year, when Peter Hassan Brown\norganised a gig in Jam Asia and asked if I’d be interested in performing, I\ntold him to give me a couple of days to think about it. I immediately called\nJack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 360\u00b0 Head Rotation’s first line up\nwas me, Jack, Edmun Anthony and Paul Millot. We practiced once. At the end of\nthat practice, Edmun gave me a look of what I can only describe as horror, and\npolitely declined to participate in any future rehearsals. Paul had commitments\nwith his band Brown Sugar. Both Paul and Edmun would return to perform with us\nas sessionists, but this was later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jack got headhunting duty. He had\nthree weeks to find a rhythm section. In a couple of days, he nabbed Mohd Nuhi\n“Monkey Boy” Selamat on drums and bassist Nazrul Ahmad. They were\nperforming with the local Seattle Sound outfit Hike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between 2003 to the present day,\n360\u00b0 Head Rotation played over 20 gigs and started recording our debut album.\nThe band was fun for me: a diversion from the world of oil and gas, a chance to\npander to the right side of my brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To Jack, this was serious work. He\nthrew himself at the task of arranging and perfecting the instrumental parts\nfor our songs. We would spend hours getting the proper sound levels and quality\nin the studio — and even more hours mixing and engineering the tracks with\nrecording engineer Meng at Standing Wave Studios. Over the years, 360\u00b0 Head\nRotation developed a Sound: thundering drums, Mephistophelean lyrics, driving\nbass. Amps up to 11. Sweat and spit on stage. The signature Jack Nathan blues\npunk guitar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For more genteel audiences, Jack and\nI developed some acoustic arrangements and deployed them in venues like La\nBodega and No Black Tie. They were interesting, but nothing like our full electric\nsets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stairway to Heaven<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the years, Jack Nathan has come\nto be recognised as one of the most innovative guitarists in the Klang Valley.\nHe was held in high esteem in both the pub musician and independent music\ncommunities. Jack loved all aspects of music: the playing, the lights, the\nglamour photo shots — don’t ask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was one of the most gregarious\nand amiable people I knew, always making new friends. For 360\u00b0 Head Rotation,\nwe made up a bunch of business cards with snarky titles. Jack was Sex Symbol\n& Lead Guitarist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am neither spiritual nor\nreligious. I do not subscribe to afterlife models proscribed by scripture or\ndivinely inspired text. However, in light of this tragedy, I now see the\nbenefit of having that sort of faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because I would then be able to\ncomfort myself with an image of Jack, passing through that proverbial tunnel,\nwalking toward the bright white light, holding his Frankenstein guitar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Approaching the light, he sees a\nwild haired man wearing an old military jacket. He smiles, extends his hand,\nand says: “Hi Jimi, I’m Jack.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Lemme show you how we play\nblues guitar.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~~~<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rafil Elyas builds simulation models for the petroleum industry, and fronts punk blues goth rock outfit 360\u00b0 Head Rotation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This article is an edited version of the obituary Rafil wrote and circulated to the 360\u00b0 Head Rotation mailing list on Fri 29, Sep 2006. <\/p>\n\n\n\n First Published: 03.10.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kumaresvara (Jack) Nathan, 360\u00b0 Head Rotation co-founder, musical collaborator, and my very dear friend of almost 15 years, is dead. Jack was cremated with his beloved ‘Frankenstein’ custom ‘Jack Series’ guitar on Monday, 25 September 2006, at around 4pm. On Saturday, 26 September 2006, his ashes were taken to his favourite spot, a friend’s dusun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7758,7764,7777,7766],"tags":[3914,4033,4037,4030,4035,4040,3913,4034,4042,4031,4038,40,4039,260,484,4032,4036,901,3284,4041,4029],"language":[7785],"writer":[7923],"class_list":["post-27602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artikel","category-muzik","category-obituari","category-seni-visual","tag-360-head-rotation","tag-amir-yusoff","tag-brown-sugar","tag-country-hearts","tag-edmun-anthony","tag-hike","tag-jack-nathan","tag-jam-asia","tag-la-bodega","tag-longhorn","tag-mohd-nuhi-monkey-boy-selamat","tag-music","tag-nazrul-ahmad","tag-no-black-tie","tag-obituary","tag-os-pombos","tag-paul-millot","tag-pauls-place","tag-peter-hassan-brown","tag-standing-wave-studios","tag-streetlights","language-inggeris","writer-rafil-elyas-ms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27602"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39223,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27602\/revisions\/39223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27602"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27602"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}