Well, so a colleague very kindly introduced me to Aimee Mann just this evening. When I mentioned that I liked Sarah McLachlan, she said that I might like Rachael Yamagata’s “I Wish You Love”. So I searched for “Rachael Yamagata” on YouTube, and I saw that she sang “River”.
At first I was entranced by the singing, but then I got the sense that she was yawning while she was singing, or otherwise trying to sound a little different, and while the effect wasn’t half-bad I thought it too pretentious. So I decided to search for another “River” that I remembered sounding a little different too, which led me to Robert Downey Jr’s. The cello’s deadly sad.
Then I saw a link I had to click, given that I’d just realised how talented Mr Downey is.
And then I saw another one. And I cried a bit watching it.
P/S. I so totally enjoyed watching Ally McBeal and listening to Vonda Shepard and the Christmas songs – especially the Christmas songs :)
as in a journey’s way-point. This haunting half-narrated, half-sung gem is in Chinese, and I’ve attempted my usual clumsy translation of its lyrics below. Do check out the YouTube video after the lyrics.
驛 (Read by 黃舒駿; sung by 林慧萍)
火車站的候車室 (In the waiting room in the train station)
時常坐著一位打扮整齊的中年婦人 (Would sit a tidily arranged middle-aged woman)
手裡抱著一個老式皮箱 (Hugging an old-style leather suitcase)
游目張望 似乎在期待什麼 (Her restless eyes would wander, as if she was awaiting something)
第一次見到婦人是他高中的時候 (The first time he saw the woman, he was in high school)
每天夜裡從桃園通車到台北補習 (Every night he would travel from Taoyuan to Taipei for tuition)
深夜十一點回到桃園 (When he returned to Taoyuan late in the night at 11pm)
婦人總是準時地坐在候車室的木椅上 (The woman would always punctually be sitting on the wooden bench in the waiting room)
等待著的姿勢 不安的眼神 端整的打扮 好像在等待著某一個約好的人 (Anxious, waiting, dressed well, like she was waiting for someone she had arranged to meet)
起先他沒有特別留意她 可是時間一久 (At first he didn’t pay any special attention to her, but as time went by)
尤其是沒有旅客的時候 (Particularly when there were no tourists)
婦人就格外顯的孤寂 (The woman would seem especially lonely)
有一天他終於下定決心 (One day he finally decided)
在候車室等待那婦人離去 (To wait in the waiting room for the woman to leave)
一直到深夜落 一直到凌晨一點 (Night fell, and it was 1am in the morning)
婦人才站了起來 (When the woman finally stood up)
走到候車室的黑板前用粉筆寫著 (And walked to the blackboard at the back of the waiting room and wrote with a piece of chalk)
「水, 等你沒等到, 我先走了. 英 留」 (“Shui, waited for you in vain, I’ll leave first. Ying”)
那時他才知道 (Only then did he realise)
原來候車室長久以來的這則留言是出自那婦人 (That those words in the waiting room that he’d seen all this while were written by the woman)
後來車站的老人告訴他 (Later, the old people at the station told him)
婦人已經在候車室坐了二十幾年了 (The woman had been sitting in the waiting room for twenty-some years)
有人說她瘋了 有人說曾看見她打開皮箱 (Some said she had gone mad. Some said they had seen her open the suitcase)
箱裡裝的是少女時代的衣服 (In it were clothes from when she was young)
大部分的人都說 在二十幾年前那個夜晚 (Most said, on that night twenty-some years ago)
英和她的水約好在車站碰面 (Ying and her Shui had arranged to meet at the station)
要私奔到某一個不知名的地方 (To elope to some nameless place)
可是叫水的那個男人卻缺席了 (But the man named Shui had not come)
有一天他回家的時候 不再看到英的影子 (One day, he did not see Ying at all on his way home)
問了車站許多人都不知道為什麼 (He asked many people at the station but still did not know why)
這風雨無阻的婦人那一天沒有來 第二天的清晨 (This woman, who came everyday rain or shine, did not come that day. In the morning the next day)
英殘缺的身體被發現在鐵道上 (Ying’s broken body was discovered on the tracks)
皮箱滾到很遠的地方 (The suitcase had rolled far far away)
旅客留言板上有她的字跡 只改了幾個字 (On the travellers’ bulletin board were her writing, only some words were changed)
「水, 等你三十年, 我先走了. 英 留」 (“Shui, waited thirty years for you, I’ll leave first. Ying”)
就這樣 斷了線 就真這樣 不再相見 (Just like this, the line breaks; just like this, we’ll never see each other again)
飛出了時間 飛出天邊 飛到另外一個 沒有我的天 (Flying out of time, out of the sky, to another sky without me)
經過許多年 所有的眷戀 飄浮在時空裡 沒有終點 (After many years, all the longing floats along in time and space, without destination)
人生是一張 泛黃的相片 而我站在車站靜止的畫面 (Life is a faded photograph, and I stand at the station, where the scene stops)
In the comments section of my last post, I wrote that I liked Tanya Chua’s version of “The Blower’s Daughter”, which I had heard first, better than Damien Rice’s (below). Then I went to listen to the latter again. And got struck by the sadness of the cello chords.
Yes, Minister is British satirical humour at its best – smart, precise and hilarious. Watch it or read it! (It’s been my bedtime reading the past few nights.)
Listened to this on repeat for half an hour during one productive stretch of work today, then realised I could be missing important snatches of office corridor talk and snatched out my ear-buds, reluctantly.
Am struck by iPhone envy. But learning to re-love my nifty E71, where I’m drafting this post :)
Shall finally write about the enjoyable 天冷就回来 soon.
The song is “Gran Torino” by Jamie Cullum, and here are its lyrics.
Realign all the stars above my head
Warning signs travel far
I drink instead on my own
Oh how I’ve known the battle-scarred and worn-out beds
Gentle now a tender breeze blows
Whispers through a Gran Torino
Whistling another tired song
Engines hum and bitter dreams grow
Heart locked in a Gran Torino
Beats a lonely rhythm all night long
These streets are old
They shine with the things I’ve known
And breaks through the trees
They’re sparkling
Your world is nothing more than all the tiny things you’ve left behind
So tenderly your story is
Nothing more than what you see
Or what you’ve done
Or will become
Standing strong
Do you belong
In your skin
Just wondering
Gentle now a tender breeze blows
Whispers through a Gran Torino
Whistling another tired song
Engines hum and bitter dreams grow
A heart locked in a Gran Torino
Beats a lonely rhythm all night long
May I be so bold and stay
I need someone to hold that shudders my skin
They’re sparkling
Your world is nothing more than all the tiny things you’ve left behind
So realign all the stars above my head
Warning signs travel far
I drink instead on my own
Oh how I’ve known
the battle scars and worn out beds
Gentle now a tender breeze blows
Whispers through the Gran Torino
Whistling another tired song
Engines hum and bitter dreams grow
A heart locked in a Gran Torino
It beats a lonely rhythm all night long
It beats a lonely rhythm all night long
It beats a lonely rhythm all night long
I think I must be, despite the great company of my colleagues. I woke up one day humming a fragment of a song, and later in the day I found myself singing out loud in my head the lyrics. They go like this.
景色依旧良辰不在，人儿几时回来。 [The scenery is as it was, but the good times are past; when will he come back?]
I don’t think I consciously meant to remember the rest of the song; at least, I don’t remember trying to recall the rest of the lyrics as actively as I sometimes did when I genuinely wanted to remember a song; but, all through the day, at odd moments, I would catch my mind turning these lyrics over and over; the sense was that there was more to look for.
Then today, I found myself singing another part of the song.
我有诉不尽的悲凄，寄托在梦里带给你，[I have uncountable sorrows, which I entrust to dreams to bring to you.]
虽然千山万水隔离，但愿在梦里相依。[Although mountains and seas separate us, I hope we can lean against each other in dreams.]
And immediately I realised (maybe it was an after-the-fact rationalisation; it occurred too quickly for me to tell the difference; our minds are mysterious things) that I had been singing that song because of the line “although mountains and seas separate us”, because that vast immutable distance from a certain bedrock of familiarity was what I had been feeling through all those colourless meetings, even though the meals have been uniformly good to excellent and despite the great company.*,**
I prescribed a call back home for my homesickness, and I am happy to report that it’s abated, a bit :)
*Ok, not totally colourless - the meetings have been enlivened by a brusque Indian who breaks iron-clad protocol at his will and stands out like a caveman would in genteel society.
**A recent “fruits of the sea” pasta – mussels, squid and shrimp tossed together with al dente spaghetti in olive oil and white wine – and the second prawn buffet in a week were particular highlights. A galling episode occurred after the pasta meal: we went to a restaurant in the Old Town part of Geneva for warm chocolate cake – we had heard from a colleague who was stationed here that it was good, the warm chocolate cake – but when we ordered, the proprietess of the establishment (known for its roast chicken, which smelled delicious) told us that she had many customers and could not serve us if we didn’t order anything else. The thing is, this was at 9-something pm, by which time all reasonable folk would have had their dinner, don’t you think?!***
***Ah well, it was really her perogative. And the restaurant was crowded. *grudgingly, still fuming a bit* I guess in these times she would have an added reason to squeeze as much profit out of her operations as she can, and that’s what she did.
When I heard about it from a tall, long-legged friend, my jaw dropped. All these artistes, on the stage, together, at the same event? She had to be kidding me, right? Because here’s who she mentioned, not in order, because I lost track when I had to look away for a while to pick up my jaw: Jonathan Lee李宗盛 (one of the most prolific, popular and evocative lyricists of the past couple of decades); Emil Chau周华健 (singer of many singalong hits, mostly in the 1990s, and a supremely charismatic onstage presence); Mayday五月天 (by my reckoning the most popular Chinese band in the world, and by all appearances a bunch of amazingly down-to-earth, airless blokes); Cheer Chen陈绮贞 (stunningly talented Taiwanese singer-songwriter, with a magnetic voice); Tanya Chua蔡健雅 (criminally under-appreciated Singapore singer – she has to have a solo concert here soon!); A-Yue 张震岳 (I don’t quite care for him :p).
And later, looking for it on Sistic, I found out that the concert was billed as the Lee Guitars All-Star Concert Singapore, and owed its name to 李宗盛, who after many years of composing, producing, singing and writing lyrics for music decided to craft instruments of music – guitars, to be specific – and set up a guitar-crafting business called Lee Guitars. The concert was meant to be a celebration of the relationship between these artistes and their guitars, and the stories of how the guitars gave them their voice, to share with the rest of the world.
So I did the only thing I could and bought a ticket and went to watch the concert this past Saturday night. Some observations:
The first thing I noticed was that the audience was diverse, age-wise. Itty bitty teenyboppers were there, and folks just slightly younger than my parents, and those in-between. It was interesting to see Mayday go mad on stage, and the teenyboppers bop bop bop in the crowd, and among them, the older folks in their seats, relaxed, a little puzzled at the attraction of the noise, then smiling at the remembrance.
During the recorded voice-over introduction to the concert, the artistes were announced one by one, and the chap who did the list must have had some sort of applause modulator, because the audience’s reactions to the names, in order, were like this: 李宗盛 (cheers); 周华健 (cheers, loud); 张震岳 (louder); Tanya (loudeR); 陈绮贞 (very loud, high-pitched); 五月天 (high-pitched, ear-piercing, prolonged mangling of vocal chords).
But the loudest, most sustained applause of the entire night (three-plus solid hours; worth it!), by far, was for a guitar solo by an accompanying guitarist. He was phenomenal! I forgot his name – shame! – and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what he was playing! So many seemed to know, but I didn’t. Darned. But he was electrifying – so psyched up, so in the flow, and then, after he finished, so pumped that he did it perfectly, that we were pumped for him too.
All the singers were better ‘live’ than on the CD, 李宗盛 and 周华健 because of their stage presence, the former earnest and likeable, the latter charming and witty; 五月天 because of their energy and chemistry with one another and the audience; 张震岳 because he is really a shy git unless he’s onstage, where he becomes a sly and mouthy mix of brash hip-hop and sensitive R&B; 陈绮贞 because of her talent and her incredible intensity – she gets so lost in her performances; Tanya because she was just absolutely born to sing on a small stage, with acoustic instruments and a small, attentive audience. It was not that sort of venue, and we were not that sort of audience, but there was this point when Tanya appeared on stage, at the back, and the lights came on a bit early so we caught the last few seconds of the elevator lifting the platform she was on, and she chuckled, nervously, and then started a rendition of 记念, and – you know how sometimes at concerts you get disappointed by renditions of your favourite songs because the artiste insists on singing it in a creative i.e. different way, with a creative i.e. stupid rendition of your favourite part? Tanya sang 记念 differently too, but it was an intoxicating and bracing sort of difference – a bit of jazz improvisation. You had to hear it. You think what you hear on the radio, from her CDs, on YouTube is amazing? Wait till you hear her ‘live’. Just wait. Which is why she needs to have a solo concert, or several, on the double chop chop.
五月天 are amazingly popular, and they seem like such fundamentally decent people that you don’t grudge them that at all. When lead singer 阿信 went into the chorus of 温柔, he sang a bit, and, sensing that many many of the teenyboppers present (and some older folks, ahem) were champing at the bit to show that they of course knew the lyrics by heart, happily obliged and played the part of acoustic guitarist. What a simple but effective way of engaging the audience.
The best way to get a cab after a full-house concert at the Singapore Indoor Stadium is to walk across the bridge over to Tanjong Rhu Road, where there are many blocks of condominiums, and, at that time, many people returning to their blocks of condominiums in cabs, one of which you can then grab :)
I haven’t blogged for a while. Work’s been extremely occupying. This coming week should end with epic satisfaction.
So this shall be a short blog. I wanted to share two YouTube videos. They are from a Taiwanese version of America’s Got Talent or American Idol – 超級星光大道. In this episode, two of the most outstanding competitors in the contest get to sing with a much-admired veteran, David Wang (黃大煒). In fact, as she introduces him, the host says that instead of wondering who is going to win today’s contest, the audience is probably wondering how many songs he’s going to sing.
And so, he goes on to sing with two of the competitors. And sing tremendously well. But what impressed me more was his generosity. David Wang not only cedes the spotlight to the two amateurs, he goes beyond that to make sure the audience appreciates and acknowledges the competitors’ (admittedly excellent) performances. I want to be this generous when I am in this sort of a position.
天天想你 is one of those songs that, were I to hear it on the radio, I would marvel at my luck, and at how long ago I last heard it, and then I would think about getting a 張雨生 (English Wikipedia entry) CD (he sang the song), and then I’d wonder whether they still sell any. (The chap died in a car accident a while back.)
Through the magic of YouTube, I found 3 (!!) versions.
This first one is the original one. Sounds rather more dramatic than I remember it.
This second one is an amazing ‘live’ slow rock version. 天天想你 apparently happens to be 五月天’s (Mayday) favourite song (even though lead singer 阿信 got the lyrics wrong…). In this video, at about the 4min 10sec mark, one of the band members proposes to his girlfriend! I found it touching that the band members were so obviously thrilled when she nodded and nodded and nodded :) (Okay, so it was a tad staged…)
This third one is my favourite. 陳綺貞’s (English Wikipedia entry) pure, effortless performance, laced with bits of improv, made for a terrific homage to a song she used to listen to on a broken Walkman and still occasionally hums.
When I first knew 优客李林, I thought their name was supposed to be a play on the word “ukulele”. They were a short-lived (1991-1996), but immensely popular duo, which always reminded me of the Japanese duo Chage & Aska – especially because both duos featured someone who wore shades all the time.
Their biggest hit was arguably their first one: 认错. Felt like reminiscing today, so dug up a couple of versions via YouTube. Enjoy.
The single version:
The ‘live’ version:
I had a really good secondary school and JC friend who loved 优客李林. After I started working, I bumped into him a few times. Although we never kept in contact, our conversations were always comfortable, if truncated. I hope he is well now.
