SINGAPORE – On regular days, this tiny, unventilated room is merely a jamming studio where bands practice and rehearse. Pack in more than 50 people between the four bare walls and it becomes a venue. No elaborate lighting, no proper sound system, and sometimes there isn’t even a stage to speak of. So why would bands and an audience even bother to come to a gig held in a jamming studio – a rising trend among the local indie gig circuit?

“All bands will start out small. No band that I have ever heard of started as a mega headliner for a major event. Most bands will start out playing in small venues, trying to garner some support from the crowd they play to before they get discovered” says Gerald Sim, lead guitarist of Waiting For Nothing (WFN), an up-and-coming five-piece indie alternative band. Conceived in early 2007, WFN (which also includes Rueben on drums, Joey on vocals and guitars, Wang on bass, and Mindy on keyboards) has been cutting their teeth, playing all sorts of venues ranging from tiny studio affairs to bigger club venues. No band wants to present themselves in a setting where there’s bad sound and ear-piercing feedback, but small intimate jamming studio gigs are an instrumental training ground for bigger things to come. After all, if you can’t win over a crowd of 50, how would you win over a crowd of 500?

“A friend once told me this: ‘The difference between a good and a lousy band is the ability to adapt to the situation and make something out of it’,” explains Gerald. In a small, confined place, there’s no “third wall” .

There’s no “We are the band and you are the audience” divide. Everybody becomes one and the same, driven to fervor with spit and sweat and the need to be there only for one thing alone – the music. “Bigger venues are fun to play at, and we all love the bigger stages, better equipment, and sound. However, at the end of the day, a question we asked ourselves is, who are we doing this for? Without people coming to our shows, we can have the biggest stage in the world and it will amount to nothing but emptiness. Smaller stages draw your physical presence closer to your audience. People felt the closeness and proximity when we played at the local jamming studio. I was in the crowd jumping and moshing. I have never been any closer to my friends and fans than this.”

On The Web: www.myspace.com/wfnsg