The mad professor of guitar science explained two things throughout his two-hour Laney clinic this Tuesday: That being crazy is cool for geniuses and that every guitar player wannabe should grow their own mustache.
It was almost seven o'clock, and the steep climb to the second floor of Balai Kartini didn't look inviting to those coming late. Two excited looking guys waited for the elevator with one of them holding the cassette cover of Freak Kitchen's fourth effort in 2000: Dead Soul Men.
Rushing toward the Mawar conference room, the annoying bunch blocking the entrance was the consequence of Planet Musik's generosity, as it had displayed 20 new, flashy guitars and basses, from Cort to Music Man Stingray.
The inside, nevertheless, was predictably overflowing, just like the Ciliwung River in December.
Feeling like one had just stepped into a guerrilla meeting in a typical balai kecamatan before an important ambush, all the chairs were full. The rest were hovering in the back of the hall, with more than 20 people on the floor on the left side of the stage, facing stacks of Laney amplifiers.
The space between the stage and the seats was gone, replaced by the boney faces of guitar mongers.
"The sales number of cassettes and CDs in Indonesia has reached around 10 million per year -- fought over by not just local, but also international artists. Passband survived by building a solid fan base; fans who love our music, love watching us live and love buying tickets to our concerts," the voice of Passband's Beng-Beng bounced off the high ceiling of the room, in answer to a question about the band being different from mainstream, mellow, lovey-dovey Indonesian music.
Along with Beng-Beng, local bass hero Indro Hardjodikoro opened the clinic for Ia (Mattias' nickname; poetically meaning "him" in Bahasa Indonesia) that night. And though missing Indro's performance, Laney made a good call choosing the two skillful players as its local endorsers.
It was about eight when they killed the light. Soon a giant statue of a golden-haired man came forward waving his yellow signature guitar. "JAKARTAAAAAAA!!!!!!" he growled. "IT'S GOODY-GOODY TIME!!!!"
Wait -- what?
The crowd was of course cheering like maniacs on death row, and after he briefly introduced himself with the help of a guy named Chucky as translator, he plugged the cord of his Caparison Apple Horn into the massive Laney amp.
Born in 1969 in Gothenburg, Sweden, Mattias "IA" Eklundh quit school at about age 15 to spend the rest of his teenage years in his basement, goofing around seriously with his guitar and his four-track machine.
After joining bands like Frozen Eyes and Fate in the 1980s, he went back to Sweden to form a prog-rock power trio named Freak Kitchen with fellow Swedes Joakim Sjvberg on drums and Christian Grvnlund on bass in 1992.
Their 1994 debut album Appetizer appealed to critics as "the best debut album a Swedish band has produced in both this and the last decade".
Currently working on their seventh album, Land of the Freaks, the lineup for the trio changed in 2000 with Bjvrn Fryklund replacing Sjvberg and Christer Vrtefors replacing Grvnlund.
The vegetarian guitarist has so far released three solo albums: The lesser known Sensually Primitive in 1997 -- under the pseudonym Mr. Libido, the highly acclaimed Freak Guitar in 1999 and Freak Guitar-The Road Less Traveled in 2004 -- the latter two under Steve Vai's Favored Nation label.
His 2007 project Art Metal combines the mastery of Swedes bass-god Jonas Hellborg with the tabla maestro Selvaganesh in a tight Southern Indian flavored prog-rock.
Kiss was his favorite band and his playing has often been described as influenced by the likes of Frank Zappa and John McLaughlin. But nothing sounds like the way he plays -- technically and lyrically.
He plans to release a third solo effort in 2010 -- hopefully a double album.
"I'm left-handed, but I play guitar the right way -- everyone else's way is the wrong way!" he jokingly said, explaining his use of a distinctly Swedish-made fretboard, directly plugging it into the amp without effects or pedals.
He tried to cover as much as he could into the clinic from the very beginning, packing the session with both excellent music examples and complete play-along tracks from his Freak Guitar solo releases and a couple of new tracks.
Beginning with a new tune, he continued onto the theory of guitar harmonics and where to find them on the fretboard.
And after playing "There's No Money in Jazz", he demonstrated how to use five-string arpeggios to emulate the sounds of a "urinated" Nintendo and played "The Battle of Bob". He also demonstrated how different interpretations of bar and phrase counting can be interesting, even at full speed as long as the beat is maintained. A power chord song such as "La Bamba" was also played meticulously.
While effortlessly performed, these theories are of course unplayable without causing serious damage to your fingers.
One thing that stood out about Ia was his wonderful sense of humor and the way he carried himself. He would growl like an injured death metal monster, shriek like a fat lady opera singer from hell or yell "GOODY-GOODY!" in the hopes of a unison reply -- while most of the time making scary faces and stupid gestures.
Every time he would ask the soundman at the back to play a track by number and long pauses would occur. And during these time he would do a waiting posture, say ludicrous things and occasionally take a peek at his watchless wrist.
A group in the audience on the left side of the stage once complained that they were unable to see the lesson on the big screen, and he responded nicely by demonstrating the lesson right on their face -- literally.
He didn't seem to mind sharing his knowledge or revealing his signature sounds. "Absorb as much as you can, but find your own sound. Grow your own mustache, and have fun with your music," adding that playing with fun and imagination is much better than just speed.
He told the audience to be both creative and resourceful. And then he magically revealed a cheap play phone, played it with his guitar and threw it at the audience. Next came a chopstick, he hit the strings with it before throwing it also to the audience and said "I only got one" to a kid who wanted the other stick.
And then he played "Father" from his Freak Guitar-The Road Less Traveled, a ballad dedicated to his late father Bernt.
"Putting a purely emotional song on a record, I think, will ultimately make an album more powerful for the listener. It's all about dynamics and working on different layers within a song," he once stated.
And after playing "Minor Swing", complying to a request from the audience, he closed the clinic at about 10 p.m. with a new track called "Sharsce", a witty composition with a Frenchman saying over and over "you're so beautiful," and "you're a beautiful man".
Waiting about 20 minutes after the show with about 30 other fans, this writer finally got his signature on two Freak Guitar cassettes and said, "Ia, you're the best guitarist ever!!" to the man personally.
"This is an exhausting night; the crowd here is just wild!" he said, promising to come back with Freak Kitchen soon. Ia head down to Bandung the following morning. Knowing the crowd there, he's in for another exhausting night.
The writer is an avid devotee of the Mattiasology, acknowledging Mattias as God and the likes of Ron Thal, Buckethead, Paul Gilbert and Steve Vai as prophets.
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