On September 20, 1997, my friend Dario and I were sitting just in front of the stage at the Crazy Elephant on a dead Wednesday afternoon. I'd been looking forward to this all week, and with a few persuasive words ("I'll kill you if you miss this"), I'd managed to convince my Spanish comrade -- a new blues convert, and in need of some perspective -- to tag along and check out the guy who first introduced me to the idea of "Singaporean blues."

Onstage, Siva Choy and Crossroads were rehearsing "I Ain't Superstitious." It got off to a loud and rocky start; Gary Tan, the drummer, and John Chee, the lead guitarist (and one of the partners of the Elephant), were duking it out to set the tempo of the intro. Finally, Siva, donning squarish specs and holding a red Strat against his belly, signalled "cut" and got to the point: You're both wrong. In an instant he was singing the guitar melody and clapping the beat for the first four bars. It was Blues 101 with Professor Choy; Lesson No. 1 -- don't solo the crap out of everything.

"Let's try again." He reminded me a little bit of Carl Silfer, my old violin teacher. Like Siva, you could never argue with him about the music because you knew he was right. He had to be right.

It's hard to explain how much people like Siva and Jimmy Appudurai-Chua mean to the blues scene in Singapore; you won't, I guess, unless you hear and see them in the flesh. R. Segar (Siva's bassist who gave Dario and me this open invitation to the band's rehearsal) used to say that Siva looked a lot like Willie Dixon. To me, Siva seemed closer to Howlin' Wolf. I suppose both our comparisons rang truer than we actually meant. But even a Howlin' Wolf figure had a hard road making it in Singapore, where blues was a tough draw. Siva was now based in Perth, Australia. As for Jimmy Appudurai-Chua (Singapore's Chuck Berry), he'd moved on to England. Jimmy was due in tomorrow, the day before the gig, i.e., the 2nd Singapore Blues Festival. As for me, this was round two -- I finally got to hang out with the guys who rocked the hell out of the Clarke Quay gazebo a year ago.

Chee and Tan pulled off the intro the second time around, and Siva faced the band as he came in with the vocal: I ain't superstitious, but a black cat crossed my trail. Siva wasn't using a mike, but you could still hear his voice above John Chee's 200 Watt Marshall, which was cranked to 10 as usual. Deafening. But that's the way the Crazy Elephant patrons prefer their blues.

This was the first time I'd been to the Elephant since January or February, and since then, they had bought out the shop space next door (almost doubling the size of the original place) and remodelled. New wood furnishing, new bar, new table area, new everything, except for one scrap I noticed tacked to an upright beam: a framed, yellowing newspaper clipping of a 1980s Junior Wells concert. I gave it all my scrutiny, since it turned out to be the only real blues relic in the whole joint; the rest was the usual rock 'n' roll decor: guitars hanging from the rafters, graffiti on the walls, alcoholic sign boards, waitresses in tight black clothes. The latter were setting up tables for the happy hour crowd, and they looked at me like I was some idiot. But I didn't really blame them, since the only things people typically read at the Elephant were beer checks and waitresses' asses.

"Can I have a Coke?" That pissed her off even more.

The band played on. Next on the set list was Bobby Troupe's jazzy "Route 66," which got the ZZ Top treatment courtesy of Chee's "Tush"-like guitar part. But add Siva's voice and Stephen Rufus' sax to the mix, and you could hear the swing groove floating above all those power chords. Little Milton's "Just a Little Bit" took a lot longer for the band to jell, as they argued over a five-note run leading into the guitar solo. (It was straight out of James Brown's "I Feel Good" -- a nice little stop-time trick that gave the song a really funky feel.) But the real problem was that the band wasn't tight and no one was hearing each other. John offered to set up the vocal mike, but Siva refused.

"These are new songs. It's better to learn them by feel, not by relying on the vocal cues. Onstage you're not going to able to hear me anyway through the amps and the feedback. We learn it now -- not guess onstage tomorrow."

On the next take from the top, Siva still drowned out John's amp like it was a Fischer Price toy. His singing soared, and finally the band clicked. Then he cut both the sax and guitar solos short, since he knew they didn't need any work. Until showtime, this band was all business.

The waitress retrieved my empty glass. I ignored her and focused on Siva's instructions for the arrangement of the Jimmy Reed tune, "I Ain't Got You" -- which incidently was one of the first blues songs I ever picked out on my guitar. (Okay, I admit it . . . I had been listening to the Yardbirds' version.) Crossroads didn't have a harp player, though, so the saxman and the bassist took care of the trademark harp theme. It was a strange way of winging it, but it worked; more jazzy, but it still fit.

Chee was getting bored (no guitar solo in this number), so he lit up a cigarette. He's a great guitar player, but my respect for his musicianship was plummeting like Robert Johnson's soul into hell. I guess when you do this day-in, day-out in a place like Singapore, you get immune to the blues. Just another song by another band for another gig.

Siva continued to conduct and sing. I got an El Dorado Cadillac / with a spare tire on the back. I got a charge account at Goldblatts / but I ain't got you. I watched and listened from the edge of my seat; if I'd had a tambourine I would have loved to have sat in. And that's something very unique about the way Siva plays the blues -- he gets his audience wanting to run up and play with the band, not just observe them from afar. That was my lesson du jour from Professor Choy.