We sent him off to the Lord today.

Those of you who knew Wayne Seah As Wayne Thunder of The Suns would know how hard it is to see a friend like him go.

Wayne died in his sleep on Monday. We received news on Tuesday morning and it took a while to settle in. I thought it was someone playing a sick joke on me.

But it wasn’t.

Wayne Thunder helped arrange and co-produce 4 tracks on Newfound Jealousy. This guy worked hard to promote local music, founded Gilarock.com and worked closely with Soo Wei on 98.7 Home, promoting local talents, getting their stuff heard on the show. Wayne also kept himself busy putting together shows for local bands, recently working really hard to promote Rock For Good, teaching drums, and being a really awesome friend.

I met Wayne when I was in Melbourne 2005 for a holiday. Joan had asked me to look him up. This dude with a big smile walked up to me outside the apartment, introduced himself, kissed me politely on the cheek and whisked me away to a restaurant for dinner. We couldn’t get a table so we settled for vegetarian on Brunswick Street. There was no airs about him, he spoke with a true-blue Singaporean accent with no hint of Aussie accent in him. We spoke about music, about his struggles in Melbourne as a musician holding two part time jobs. About how he balanced that with practising drums everyday, about how he recorded, mixed and mastered his band, about how they traveled around from gig to gig in Australia. About how it was so different between The Suns and The UnXpected cos according to him,they probably couldn’t play a cover song with a straight face. I had only written a wee few songs then, two of which were recorded live for UnXpectedly Live at Wala Wala. We exchanged CDs, Wayne had passed me a copy of their EP Rock.

I came back to Singapore, remembering our conversations about the local music scene and how he wanted to help it along. When Wayne decided to come back to Singapore, I was thrilled to meet him again and we hung out sometimes.

When Newfound Jealousy came along, Wayne offered to rearrange some tracks and we discussed some, jammed some and finally agreed on the final arrangement. Having Wayne see through all the recording of the instruments involved for those tracks (and more) was very encouraging. He always had ideas and he always took his time to explain them.

He also always had his Yakult. And he loved the Nasi Padang near Snakeweed Studio.

Wayne writes pretty damn well and he wrote an awesome review on the launch of Newfound Jealousy.

I will always remember him as the guy who always had a smile, always said “right or not?” when making a point, and always worked towards his dream and most notably always helped others to work towards theirs.

This is one guy than makes me truly proud to be a Singaporean rocker. Singapore has lost a good son.

Our sincere condolences to the Seahs, and to all the rockers whose lives have been touched by Wayne.

R.I.P, Wayne Thunder. We will miss you and we will continue rocking on, for you taught us to never give up. You are the ROCK STAR!

Till we meet again, m/ !!