Another Trip Down Memory Lane

Those old TV Pendidikan Sang Kancil cartoons sure did bring back a flood of sweet childhood memories. Not just from me, but from a lot of friends who saw the link I posted on FB. It was almost transcendental, the way so many people are affected and influenced by a shared childhood memory and the way it brought so many people from disparate backgrounds, areas and ages together.

The cartoons also reminded me of another treasured piece of childhood nostalgia - patriotic songs and jingles. And so I went a-searching on the Internet for what I could dig up. I found a few pieces, some of them in their original form, others not. Nevertheless, they were all delightful and more than a little sentimental.

What was sad though, was the cynicism with which many of the people reacted to them. They seemed to think it was all government propaganda and another evil Barisan Nasional plot, while it was in fact, nothing more than patriotic jingles or motivational tunes or civic songs. Oh well, some people will be haters no matter what.

For those that aren't, feel free to take another stroll down memory lane.

SEJAHTERA MALAYSIA

SENYUM SEINDAH SURIA

INILAH BARISAN KITA

FIKIRKAN BOLEH

SETIA

All I Want To Do...is shag you silly.

<--- Would you throw these babes out of your bed?

If there were to be an award for dodgiest song ever, Heart's All I Want To Do would be right up there, along with Extreme's More Than Words.

Both these songs could definitely be voted as the official anthem/theme song of playas too. I'd have to say though, that All I Want To Do just about nicks it for sheer hypocrisy and blatant playa-ism.

But don't just take my word for it. Let's have a look at the lyrics of the song and then you can decide for yourself.

ALL I WANT TO DO

It was a rainy night

When he came into sight,

Standing by the road,

No umbrella, no coat.

So I pulled up alongside

And I offered him a ride.

He accepted with a smile,

So we drove for a while.

I didn't ask him his name,

This lonely boy in the rain.

Fate, tell me it's right,

Is this love at first sight?

Please don't make it wrong,

Just stay for the night.

Let's take this one verse at a time. First of all, what is she doing picking up strange men on rainy nights? Hasn't she watched enough slasher flicks to know better? This song could have just ended right here if she'd picked up the wrong man. You know..."He accepted with a smile, so we drove for a while....acckkk!!! Gurgle, gurgle, moan, moan, Kersplatttt!!!!"

Plus, she didn't ask him his name! Wtf?? You give a ride to somebody and don't even ask his name? And, love at first sight? C'mon. Call it like it is! It's lust at first sight. Ain't nothing wrong with that!

So we found this hotel,

It was a place I knew well

We made magic that night.

Oh, he did everything right

He brought the woman out of me,

So many times, easily

And in the morning when he woke all

I left him was a note

I told him

I am the flower you are the seed

We walked in the garden

We planted a tree

Don't try to find me,

Please don't you dare

Just live in my memory,

You'll always be there

My question is, how does she know that hotel well, hmmm? Sounds like she's paid more than one clandestine visit, hasn't she? And 'he brought out the woman in me so many times, easily"? Puh-leeze! He gave you multiple orgasms is what he did! And in the end, what did you do? Bailed out on him without even splitting the hotel bill. The guy can't even afford a car. You think he can afford to pay the bill? Poor dude. And she has the nerve to tell him not to look for her. Some people...

Then it happened one day,

We came round the same way

You can imagine his surprise

When he saw his own eyes

I said please, please understand

I'm in love with another man

And what he couldn't give me

Was the one little thing that you can

And now we get to the climax (no pun intended) of the matter. They meet again. And he sees the fruit of his loins. And what does she do? She tells him she's in love with another man and the only reason she shagged him was coz that dude either couldn't get it up or was shooting blanks. And all this comes after she's earlier said it was love at first sight and warbled chorus after chorus of how she wants to MAKE LOVE to him. She justifies it by saying she just wanted a kid. What about IVF or adoption? The Wilson sisters were reaaaaallly stretching it there, weren't they? Jeez. And to say that he gave her a 'little' thing was a low-blow. There's absolutely no need to do that to the boy's ego.

They should have just titled the song "I'm Horny and Need a Shag. Fertile Studs Apply Here."

The Art of the Mixtape

It ain't easy, let me tell you that.

It came upon a midnight clear, this wonderfully Christmassy idea. Or should I say, IDEA.

I was lounging in bed, once again unable to sleep, when it dawned on me - the perfect Christmas gift for my family and friends.

I thought that this Christmas, I'd (instead of leaving in their stockings presents, two front teeth or promises I don't intend to keep) make my near and dear ones a compilation of wonderfully unique, unusual and relatively unsung Christmas tunes - a merry mixtape, if you will.

So, as they say in the snooker parlour - set biji sepuluh! Game, set and match. After all, how hard can it be to burn an Xmas CD, right?

Pretty hard, as I'm finding out now.

You see, the art of the mixtape is all in the setting of the tempo. The tempo of the tape, or CD in this case, determines all. It determines how successful, or not, your offering is.


Do I start fast and gradually wind down? Or do I start slow and progress to a grand finale? Or, do I start slow, build up to a crescendo and then taper off towards the end?


If I start too fast, the risk is of an anti-climatic ending. If I go too slow, the danger is that they will lose interest too soon. Problems, problems! Everything has got to be just nice, the perfect blend of fast and slow, upbeat and mellow, religious and commercial, frivilous and profound. In a nutshell, it has to encapsulate Christmas and all the emotional, nostalgic bric-a-brac contained therein.


I've already cooked up in my head a list of songs I want to have. None of this stupid Jingle Bells or Silent Night shite for me (unless of course it's the Bing Crosby version of the former and The Temptations' take on the latter).


My mixtape is going to be full of unknown, but beautiful numbers.These are the contenders for the final list, in no particular order (since the order is my biggest problem!):



The Most Wonderful Time of the Year - Andy Williams


Pretty Paper - Roy Orbison


Little Altar Boy - Glen Campbell


Senor Santa Claus - Jim Reeves


Sarajevo 12-24 - Trans Siberian Orchestra


Happy Christmas (War is Over) - John Lennon


O Holy Night - Tracy Chapman


Ave Maria - Connie Francis


Hallelujah It's Christmas - Roger Whittaker


Merry Christmas Baby - James Brown


Santa Baby - Madonna (or, preferrably, Eartha Kitt, if I can find her version)


Christmas Bride - The Ray Conniff Singers


White Christmas - The Drifters


Auld Land Syne - Kenny G (I'm still very iffy about this one. Not only does Kenny G just scream corny, but the interspersed dialogue is just to Americana-oriented for me)


Kids - Kenny Rogers


I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - Jackson 5 (I'm iffy about this one too, coz I always thought the kid must have been a mean trouble causer to want to tell on his mom. And not to mention dumb for not knowing Santa was his dad..)


The Fairytale of New York - Ronan Keating and Marie Brennan (I don't have the original and superior Pogues' rendition, sadly)


Christmas in New Orleans - Louis Armstrong


Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth - Bing Crosby and David Bowie


Silent Night - The Temptations


Blue Christmas - Elvis Presley


Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Judy Garland


I'll Be Home For Christmas - haven't decided whose cover I'll get for this one






Yes, I know I said it's going to be full of unknown songs. Yes, I know that most of these songs are known songs. So, let me rephrase what I said earlier. I want it to be full of my favourite Christmas songs and everybody has no choice but to like them. So there!


After all, what is Christmas without Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas or I'll Be Home For Christmas? And anybody who's listened to Chapman's soulful take on O Holy Night will definitely fall in love with it. Also, the songs by The Drifters and The Temptations both just beg inclusion, being such unique renditions of terribly overdone numbers.


And last but not least, how can we celebrate the arrival of the Kid without a song by the King?

This is the sum of all the work I did today.

My top 10 songs (in no particular order) to listen to while I luxuriously wallow in my own depression are:

1) I Am...I Said - Neil Diamond

2) Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word - Elton John

3) I’ll Never Fall in Love Again – Tom Jones

4) Piano Man – Billy Joel

5) The Trouble With Love Is – Kelly Clarkson

6) Crying – Roy Orbison

7) Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley

8) Eleanor Rigby – The Beatles

9) She’s Out of My Life – Michael Jackson

10) I Started A Joke – The Bee Gees

Honourable mentions go to Nobody's Child (Karen White), Are You Lonesome Tonight (Elvis Presley), Little Altar Boy (The Carpenters) Holly Leaves and Christmas Trees (Elvis Presley), Tears of a Clown (Smokey Robinson), Tracks of My Tears (Smokey Robinson).


My top 10 stoner songs are:

1) Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd

2) Puff The Magic Dragon – Peter, Paul and Mary

3) Pass the Dutchie – Musical Youth

4) Legalise It – Peter Tosh

5) Cos I Got High – Afroman

6) Summertime – Janis Joplin

7) Yellow Submarine – The Beatles

8) Don’t Worry, Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin

9) Dream On – Aerosmith

10) Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
Honourable mentions go to A Little Help From My Friends (The Beatles), Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys), Paint It Black (Rolling Stones) and Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (Bob Dylan).

WHAT IF THEY LIVED?

Elvis
Elvis He would have probably have died sometime in mid-2006. In 2004, he'd have released, That's All Right: 50 Years On, his first album in 20 years. It would have been produced by Rick Rubin, and, like Rubin's work with Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, would have been bare, stripped down and minimal. It would have been hailed as one of the best albums of the year, Elvis best work since his Aloha from Hawaii concert and a shoo-in for a Grammy. It would have been the high point of a career that had gone seriously downhill since he narrowly cheated death in August 1977. Fans around the world watched with sadness as the King of Rock n' Roll's drug-fuelled lifestyle led to a downhill slope he never fully recovered from. His battle against the bulge was as well documented as his various aborted comeback attempts. The newer generations wondered what it was their parents saw in the foolish old man arthritically flailing about the stage, clearly doped up to his eyeballs and struggling to remember the words to his signature numbers. The only things that went worse than his music careers was his film work and his family life. Never the greatest of actors, his releases in the 80s were so bad they couldn't even be called B-grade movies. Bleary-eyed and paunchy, his romantic loverboy roles would have been hilarious if the lecherous pairings of Elvis with women young enough to be his granddaughters were not so paedophilic. Friends said he lost interest in his music, and in life itself, after Priscilla left him, taking Lisa Marie with her. A succession of incresingly vapid and hollow-eyed girlfriends did nothing to bring him out of his funk. At his funeral, his fans - the legion of once screaming teenyboppers now in their dotage - ruefully said said That's All Right was too little too late. They couldn't reconcile the bald and stooped old man, flabby gut hanging obscenely over his belt garter, to their memories of the sleek, gyrating Adonis of their sepia toned memories. They said it would have been better if the 1977 overdose had killed him.


James Dean
James Dean It was ironic that Dean cheated death while driving his Porsche Spyder only to die a few years later in the same car while playing the part of a stock-car driver.The first accident, in 1955, came as he had just burst on to the scene as a devilishly handsome movie star who seemed destined to be Hollywood's torch bearer for the next decade. For a while it seemed as if the car crash had smashed his future as gruesomely as it smashed his legs. But, with a determination that became the stuff of countless articles, anecdotes and stories, Dean fought his way back from the brink.In a coma for two months, and his legs mangled in the wreck, nobody expected him to pull through. But pull through he did. When asked in interviews later how he managed to steel himself for the 9 months of intense physiotherapy, Dean would always have a perplexed look in his eyes."What would you have expected me to do? Lie back and let the accident lick me? Stay an invalid for the rest of my life?" was his stock answer.He did admit that the crash made him reassess his life and throw himself more frenetically behind his work.In the decade that followed, he amassed a body of work that became legendary. Anything and everything he touched immediately turned to gold. The critics loved him, but the audiences loved him more. Drama, action, westerns, epics, comedies, horror - he did them all. Good guys, bad guys, fathers, sons, priests and playboys - he played them all. His romances became the stuff of legend, the most memorable being his courting of young Tina Turner. Their interracial relationship became the talk of the town and played as important a part in ending segregation as did Rosa Parks refusal to give up her seat on the bus. Even though the relationship eventually ended, Turner always referred to him after that as "the great love of my life".His second accident - this one fatal - occurred in 1967. His directoral debut, the movie was about an aging race car driver who is killed in the race that would have won him his first championship. Poignant and touching, with gripping race squences, the movie won Dean an unprecendented posthumous double Oscar - for best director and best actor. He won a five minute standing ovation at the ceremony. The scene of his crash was used in the movie, as was the actual footage of the desperate attempts to save his life. The tears were real.




Kurt Cobain
Everybody always predicted that Cobain was just crazy enough to one day take a gun to his head. Nobody would have ever, in a million years, thought he would end up as the quintessential suburban dad, complete with the minivan and white picket fence.It was on Oprah, in 2004, a full decade after he had left the music scene once and for all that he revealed how close the predictions came to coming true. He broke down - as everybody but Tom Cruise does on Oprah - and admitted that he had gone so far as to write out his suicide note and point a shotgun at his chin."I hadn't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music, along with really writing for too many years," he said, sobbing like a new-born babe."I was so high on heroin and valium that I had no idea what was going on around me. I just needed to escape. "And then I pulled the trigger. And nothing happened. I pulled the trigger over and over and nothing happened. So, I just went to sleep hoping I would never wake up again."I woke up the next day and found that the only reason my brains were not all over my wall was because I had forgotten to load the gun. It was then that I decided that it was either my music or my life," he said.That same day, Cobain held a press conference to announce his immediate retirement from music. He sold everything he had, bought a mid-sized house in a leafy Atlanta suburb and all but disappeared from the public eye.Rolling Stone called it "music's greatest loss since Lennon was killed". Time magazine put him on the front cover. CNN had an hour-long special report on him and his work with Nirvana. Everbody mourned his exit as leaving the industry so much the poorer, but Cobain himself has no regrets.As he told Oprah - "I'd rather be a live, ordinary man anytime over being a dead legend."