Murder, He Sang

My siblings and I have always loved to sing.

Even when I was a snot-nosed skinny git (running around the neighbourhood playing doctor on naive kampung girls), there would be some sort of soundtrack running in my head all the time.

A lot of it was in Hindi but there was a fair amount of English songs as well.

I blame the guy who married my eldest sister.

You see, he actually owned a "record-player" - if you don't know what this is, you're too young to be reading this blog.


In an era where TV was black-and-white images flickering on a small bulging screen encased in a huge console made of real wood, owning a record-player was real luxury.


Only rich people had them because the records that you play on them were expensive also.

Anyway, my brother-in-law had a record player - but not many records.

He wasn't so well off although he did work in a bank (the one that was hijacked by the Japanese Red Army back in the 70s - if you don't know this, you're too young to be reading Lily's blog either).

One year he received a bonus and bought a new record-player and graciously parked the old one at our house and donated a few records as well.

Well, a 45rpm EP and a 33rpm LP actually - and if you don't know these ... well, you know the drill ...



The EP (oh, go google it lah ...) had two songs - from the Hindi movie An Evening In Paris.




The LP was ... The Best of Engelbert Humperdinck ... yeah!

In no time at all, we had memorised all the songs and were wailing all day long.

Until my Dad will lose it and tell my Mum to shut us up (he taught us delegation at a very early age).

After some months of Please Release Me (hey, don't sneer - this song kept the Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever from the UK No 1 slot, okay?) and what passed as Hindi resonated daily throughout the house, my eldest brother started earning money and soon introduced us to the Beatles and Tom Jones.

Until my Dad stopped everyone from expanding the record collection so that us kids will be studying instead of wailing with the Beatles.

We kids simply went next door to my auntie's, where my cousins had no such restrictions.

My first public performance was when I was in Std 5, when my class teacher asked both male and female top students to sing a song each to celebrate our good results.

She, being the younger sister of the winner of Bakat TV*, sang My Favourite Things out of the movie The Sound of Music.

*this was waaayyyy before Juara Lagu, okay? Juara Kugiran and Bakat TV were the star search programs by RTM.

Me? Oh, I belted out Tom Jones' Knock Three Times ... *cringe

I still remember some of the lyrics though ...

Hey girl, wotcha doin' down there,
Dancing alone every night while I live right above you,
I can hear your music playing,
And I can see your body swaying,
...

Then I was foisted off to boarding school and somehow, I was shanghaied into the Form One choir.

Yes, I'm there somewhere ...

That was when I found out a few things ...

a. I was, or rather, am a tenor

b. I love miniskirts

c. You can see through a crocheted blouse when the wearer stands close to you while adjusting your bow-tie before the performance ... and yes, sometimes teachers go bra-less.

I still remember we sang two songs - an Italian song (Ma Come Bali Bella Bimba, or something like that) and Gunung Kinabalu.

Memuncak tinggi mencapai awan,
Tegak berdiri gunung Kinabalu ...

which reminds me of Tony Henry's mountainous Croatian anthem.

Anyway after that I found myself performing regularly on stage at the Aryan Borstal.

It was angklung and recorders the next year, then a kompang group, then modern dance before finally graduating with Deep Purple's Sail Away.

I was a sucker for new experiences - platform shoes, bell-bottoms and all.

Oh, and busting your vocal chords trying to emulate Ian Gillan.

The Aryan Borstal soundtrack was predominantly Grand Funk Railroad, Deep Purple, The Who, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.

And we simply loved the Doobie Brothers.

The three-storey house at 11 Almeida Street in the borough of Islington probably settled a few inches at its foundations in the two years I spent there.

I never could remember much of what went on there - except that Stoli is the only real vodka in the world.


And that knickers confiscated from young horny females do not exactly smell of roses after 24 hours. Either wash them or throw them away.


It was Arsenal, books, booze and bints. In that order - though I'm not sure why Smoke on the Water keeps jumping up and down my head when I reminisce.

Memories of Almeida carry a soundtrack comprising Queen, Dire Straits, Foreigner, Bill Withers, Spyro Gyra and of course, Pink Floyd.

Naive female Malaysian students used to drop their knickers to the strains of The Police and Lionel Ritchie, if I remember correctly.

Nowadays I content myself with MTV and V (after the kids go to bed).

And the occasional karaoke, but not regularly though.

It's hard to take when someone murders your favourite songs right in your face, innit?

--------------------------------------------

Villains ... 1
(Gardner 14th)

Wengerboys ... 2
(Flam 23rd, Ade 36th)

First - focking ESPN didn't carry this live. It was only on Star sports (Astro 813), and of course I only have ESPN in my room, innit?

Second - I get a phone call just as I was finding out the above at 1am, and it turned out to be an office emergency.

Third - As a result of the second, I had to drive 40km on some dodgy roads through some really, really dark countryside of deepest Ganu at 2.30am.

Fourth - As a result of the third, it was 8am when I got back to the hotel; and the damn housekeeping maid rang up at noon to sweetly inquire if I'm sure I don't want her to make up the room.


I did think about asking her to come into my room anyway but then there were no good places for me to hide the body.



Thank God we won anyway ... :))

... and Martin O'Neill is probably the most gentlemanly EPL manager who knows what he's doing.